PHYSICIAN

‘They that be whole need not a physician’!

In today’s reading the Lord uses the analogy of a physician to explain His ministry, to the criticism of the establishment. As a sick person needs a doctor, so a sinner needs a Saviour.

There is physical and also spiritual sickness. At times, our Lord healed the physically sick. While not only helping the hurting, this actually established His messianic credentials and validated His spiritual message. ‘How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?’, Heb. 2. 3-4.

In the epistle to the Romans, we learn of God’s spiritual diagnosis of humanity. As man is a sinner by choice and practice, he is seen as under God’s wrath. What I do, and why I do it, is wrong and the ‘disease’ is terminal. The sinner is worthy of death. God’s remedy for this is a Saviour who became my substitute on the cross.

In Romans 5 and 6 a deeper diagnosis shows the source of sin and death: through our connection with Adam’s race man is a sinner by birth. As what I do and why I do it is wrong, now who I am is wrong. God’s remedy for this is adoption into a new family where there is new life, His. Here, Christ legally disconnects us from Adam, by His death, and provides, by His resurrection, adoption into the family of God.

In Romans 7 and 8 the diagnosis reveals sin’s location: ‘sin that dwelleth in me’ - a sinner by nature. Now, we see that what I am is wrong. God’s remedy for this is not the ritual of the law but the indwelling Spirit.

Peter picks up on this spiritual mission of Christ today when he writes, ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed’, 1 Pet. 2. 24. Truly, Christ is the great physician for only He can bring healing to the spiritually diseased.