The Great Physician

Mark 2:17

            There’s obviously a lot of talk about disease right now. Disease has always been something terrifying to mankind; you can’t see it and you usually don’t know you have it unless it has already begun its attack. It truly is the silent assassin, better than the most highly trained covert ops team our military could ever produce.
            The way in which our world has panicked due to this virus may be new, but the panic in of itself is nothing new. Disease has been around since the fall of man; for millennia people have watched those they love die from disease with little to nothing they could do to stop it. Whether it was leprosy, the plague, smallpox, or some new disease we haven’t even heard of yet- they have been around, and they will continue until Christ returns.
            However, there is good news. We serve a Savior that has power over any disease, any sickness, any malady we could imagine. Throughout the gospels we see Jesus prove His power over the human body.
            Matthew 4:24- “And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.”
            Mark 6:56- “And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.”
            Now, contrary to many so-called “healing ministries” today, we don’t see God working like He did in the gospels. But does that mean He’s not still healing? I believe God still moves and works in the lives of those who are sick just as much today as He did then, however, I believe He uses different means to do so. In His providence, He can guide a doctor to a proper diagnoses or prescribe the right medicine just as easily as He can supernaturally heal.
            However, the real problem is not a physical disease, but a spiritual disease; not a sickness that can kill the body but a sickness that can kill the soul. In the book of Mark, Jesus had gone to the house of Matthew to have fellowship. The Pharisees were mad that Jesus would dare go to the home of a sinner, to which Jesus replied, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Mark 2:17)
            The fact is we are all sick with the deadliest disease- sin; and we all have need of the only Physician that can cure us. This particular disease can’t be cured with medicine or surgery but only by the blood of an atonement sacrifice. Of course, God loved us enough to send that sacrifice in the form of His only Son.
            For those cleansed by His blood, we have been, “quickened (made alive), who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). He is the Great Physician indeed- the only one who can take those who are dead and make them alive like they have never been before.