The Great Physician

Scripture Reading: Matthew 9th chapter.

Text: “But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” Matthew 9:12.

What does the life and death of Jesus, the Christ, mean to us personally and to the world? In the Bible there are over 250 names and titles given to Christ. Why is Jesus not always called by this name? Names in the Bible all have significance and are intended to express the thing named. There are no names that are sufficient to express the fullness of Christ, but in these many titles and names given there is an effort to do so, but these that are named fill every conscious need of the soul if we personally appropriate them. “In Him is all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him.”

If we are hungry, He is the Bread of Life; if thirsty, He is the Water of Life; if weary, He is our Rest, the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land. If in bondage He is the Deliverer; if friendless, Jesus says: “Behold I have not called you servants, I have called you friends.” Then the salvation of Christ is presented under many different figures. We are a family and God is our Father, and Jesus is ever seeking to restore harmony and unity in the family. We are soldiers engaged in a great conflict between right and wrong and Christ is our Captain of Salvation, a Leader and Commander. We are engaged in a competitive race, and Christ is our Salvation and the prize is a Crown of Life.

In our text is another figure, and a most significant one. The world is sick and Christ is the great physician, the healer of souls. “They that are whole need not a physician but they that are sick.” You will recall the incident wherein Christ made this statement, in this 9th chapter. He had called Matthew, from the Custom table to be fisher of men, and a publican had asked Jesus to dine with him and the Pharisees, as usual, were criticising Him, and asking the disciples “Why eateth your Master with Publicans and sinners?” Jesus heard this question and answered it in the words of our text. Christ could do nothing for the Pharisees for they did not think they were sick and it is the same today. But the whole ministry of Jesus shows Him as The Great Physician, and this whole chapter is a record of healing and giving life.

While Jesus was ever sympathetic to the sick and suffering all His healing of physical diseases was designed primarily to reveal Him as the Great Physician of souls, and only secondarily to relieve physical suffering. He healed the lepers that they might see the contagious leprosy of sin and its results. He always wanted to emphasize the spiritual cleansing before the physical. Often, He said “see thou tell no man,” but He never said this when a spiritual deliverance had been made. In this same chapter He said “son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee,” speaking to the man sick with the palsy. It was evidence of His power to heal both body and soul. Sin is the transgression of law, both physical and spiritual. The primary, collective, racial cause of all physical disease, as well as of all spiritual disease, is transgression of law. “As by one man sin entered the world and death by sin, and so death hath passed upon all men for that all have sinned.” If this is true of death, the culmination and result of sickness, it is true of both physical and spiritual sickness.

Look at the centralization of wealth, unimagined wealth on the one hand, and abject poverty on the other, both of them conditions of disease. Look at crime and the conflicts in industrial, racial, and political life, with no rest anywhere, who can say the world is not sick. Remember there is no collective disease that has not had its beginning in an individual. Just as sweetness does not exist apart from sugar, just as righteousness does not exist abstractly, floating around apart from men and women, just so moral and spiritual disease, wickedness does not exist abstractly apart from individuals. Ten men cannot be wicked collectively without first having been morally and spiritually diseased individually. Paul said, “Christ Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” As Carlyle says, “let no man lay flattering unction to his soul,” for who can say “I am whole,” and have no need of The Great Physician? Let us open wide our hearts by the prayer of the Publican.

There are many ways of being sick, but in the ultimate analysis the sick man is poisoned from within or without. Either he is taking poisons into his system which the system ought to destroy, but through some weakness fails to do so, or he is failing to eliminate properly the poisons constantly made in the body. This may be inherited from others, or it may be from our own self-poisoning. It is the same spiritually and morally. We are poisoned from within or without. There are two kinds of doctors. One who tries to cure the symptoms, and one who goes back of the symptoms to the cause. There can be no result without a cause. Pain is a sentinel standing in the road, urging a better way than the way we are going.

Christ, the Great Scientific Physician, diagnosed the world's sickness with reference to causes and said it was selfishness, loving ourselves better than others. In the providence of God this diagnosis was never so plain as now. What is Christ's remedy? The Cross is the answer. Crucifixion of self which will remove the cause. The devil has tried to hide this wonderful significance of the Cross, which has in its salvation for the world. He has sought to make us think that we do not need crucifixion, it was only necessary for Christ.

But we hear Christ, the Great Physician, say, “except ye take up your cross and deny yourself daily and come after me, ye cannot be my disciple.” There is Christ's prescription for a sin sick world. In Galatians, we are told that “whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, — against such there is no law.” Also read Romans 6:1–11 and Philippians 3:7 to 14.

It was under this process of crucifixion of the flesh, and a resurrection into newness of life of the Spirit that Paul was transformed, and he besought us to present our bodies a living sacrifice for this same crucifixion, that we might not be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds.

In presenting this world Christ's panacea for sin and sickness, the Great Physician, shows us that the Kingdom of love can only triumph through our willing acceptance of His cross and fellowship with Him, until all self is crucified and Love is supreme in our lives.

“The great Physician now is near,
The sympathizing Jesus,
He speaks the drooping heart to cheer,
O hear the voice of Jesus.”

George E. Fifield