Jesus said to him,
“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
Jesus said this in order to call those who heard to deeper faith. The royal official in particular might have been uncertain of whether or not Jesus could help, desperate to try anything with a possibility of saving his son. Even when Jesus critiqued those who had to see in order to believe he persisted in his initial request. He asked him to go to the place where the child was so that the healing could be accomplished in a manifest and observable way. He intensified the request, and perhaps also his faith, by addressing Jesus as Lord. It was as though he was admitting the critique of Jesus was correct but also that he didn't know any other way to ask.
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The response of Jesus was almost certainly a challenge to the royal official's faith. He called him Lord. But what did that really mean? Jesus responded to the effect that he would not and need not come but that the beloved son of the official would nevertheless be healed. If the official put his faith in the words of Jesus, he could believe in order to receive the desire of his heart. It reminds us of the lepers who were told by Jesus to show themselves to the priests and who were healed as they were obedient to his command. One might have thought that in his desperation the royal official would have pressured Jesus to come to be physically present to his son, to take every possible measure to see and make sure that the healing was accomplished. But it seemed rather that his desperation, which was certainly real, actually made him open to deeper faith. There was no indication of an argument with Jesus. Rather, he was told "You may go" and he went. As a consequence he received news along the way that what he had asked had been granted, precisely in the moment that Jesus had said, "Your son will live", precisely in the moment he believed.
and he and his whole household came to believe
The way that Jesus orchestrated the healing of the official's son brought him and his whole household to a deeper level of faith than if he had merely come and performed the healing in person. They now had every reason to trust the primacy of belief and understand how faith attains its goal. Yet stories such as this do also serve as signs for others. They are able to understand, not only that a sick child was healed, but also that a family was transformed, and it was through faith that it came about.
What Jesus did for the royal official's son was in fact a preview of coming attractions. The faith of the royal official called a little bit of the future described by Isaiah into the here and now of his present moment. He came to experience that:
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and exult in my people.
No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there,
or the sound of crying;
No longer shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime;
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