When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, 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
And the people, when they knew it, followed him: and he received them, and spake unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing.
~ Luke 9:11
Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed.
~ Psalm 6:2
The Only Physician of Sick Souls, by John Flavel.
They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.—Matthew 9:12
The Lord Jesus Christ is the only physician for sick souls. The world is a great hospital, full of sick and dying souls, all wounded by one and the same mortal weapon: sin. Some are senseless of their misery, feel not their pains, (and) value not a physician. Others are full of sense, as well as danger: (they) mourn under the apprehension of their condition and sadly (wail over) it. The merciful God hath, in His abundant compassion to the perishing world, sent a physician from heaven and given Him His orders under the great seal of heaven for His office (Isa 61:1-2): “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted.” He opened and read in the audience of the people (Luk 4:18). He is the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations (Rev 22:2): He is Jehovah Rophe, “the Lord that healeth us”; and He is Jehovah Tzidkenu, “the Lord our righteousness.” The brazen serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness was an excellent type of our Great Physician, Christ, and is expressly applied to Him (Joh 3:14). He rejects none that come and heals all whom He undertakes. But more particularly, I will point at those diseases that Christ heals in sick souls…
First, the guilt of sin: This is a mortal wound, a stab in the very heart of a poor sinner. It is a fond and groundless distinction that Papists make of sins mortal and venial; all sin, in its own nature, is mortal: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). Yet though it be so in its own nature, Christ can and doth cure it by the sovereign (fragrant medicine) of His own precious blood: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph 1:7). This is the deepest and deadliest wound the soul of man feels in this world. What is guilt but the obligation of the soul to everlasting punishment and misery? It puts the soul under the sentence of God to eternal wrath—the condemning sentence of the great and terrible God from which nothing is found more dreadful and insupportable. Put all pains, all poverty, all afflictions, all miseries in one scale and God’s condemnation in the other, and you weigh but so many feathers against a talent of lead. This disease, our Great Physician, Christ, cures by remission, which is the dissolving of the obligation to punishment, the loosing of the soul that was bound over to the wrath and condemnation of God (Col 1:13-14; Heb 6:12; Mic 7:17-19). This remission being made, the soul is immediately cleared from all its obligations to punishment. “There is therefore now no condemnation” (Rom 8:1). All bonds are cancelled, the guilt of all sins is healed or removed, original and actual, great and small. This cure is performed upon souls by the blood of Christ. Nothing is found in heaven or earth besides His blood that can heal this disease. “Without shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb 9:22). Nor is it any blood that will do it, but that only which dropped from the wounds of Christ. “By his stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5). His blood only is innocent and precious blood (1Pe 1:19); blood of infinite worth and value, blood of God (Act 20:28); blood prepared for this very purpose (Heb 10:5). This is the blood that performs the cure, and how great a cure it is! For this cure, the souls of believers shall be praising and magnifying their great Physician in heaven to all eternity: “To him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood…to him be glory and dominion, for ever and ever” (Rev 1:5).
Next, I shall show you that Jesus Christ is the only Physician of souls. None (is) like Him for a sick sinner. This will be evident in diverse respects.
First, none (is) so wise and judicious as Jesus Christ to understand and comprehend the nature, depth, and danger of soul-diseases. Oh, how ignorant and unacquainted are men with the state and case of afflicted souls! But Christ hath “the tongue of the learned, that (He) should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary” (Isa 50:4). Only He understands the weight and depth of inward troubles of sin.
Secondly, none (is) so able to cure and heal the wounds of afflicted souls as Christ is; only He hath those medicines that can cure a sick soul. The blood of Christ, and nothing else in heaven or earth, can cure the mortal wounds that guilt inflicts upon a trembling conscience…Conscience may be numbed by stupefactive medicines prepared by the devil for that end; but pacified it can never be but by the blood of Christ (Heb 9:22).
How inexpressible is the grace of God in providing such a physician as Christ for the sick and dying souls of sinners! Oh, blessed be God that there is a balm in Gilead and a Physician there (Jer 8:22); that their case is not desperate, forlorn, and remediless, as is the case for the devils and damned!…Though there be such a disease as is incurable, yet take this for thy comfort: never any soul was sick, i.e., sensibly burdened with it and willing to come to Jesus Christ for healing; for under that sin the will is so wounded that they have no desire to Christ. O inestimable mercy—the sickest sinner is capable of a perfect cure! There be thousands and ten thousands now in heaven and earth who said once, never was any case like theirs—so dangerous, so hopeless. The greatest of sinners have been perfectly recovered by Christ (1Ti 1:15; 1Co 6:11). O mercy, never to be duly estimated!
What a powerful restraint from sin is the very method ordained by God for the cure of it! “By his stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5). The Physician must die that the patient might live; no other thing but the blood, the precious blood of Christ, is found in heaven or earth able to heal us (Heb 9:22, 26). This blood of Christ must be freshly applied to every new wound sin makes upon our souls (1Jo 2:1-2)…Oh, think of this again and again, you that so easily yield to the solicitations of Satan. Is it so easy and so cheap to sin as you seem to make it? Doth the cure of souls cost nothing? True, it is free to us, but was it so to Christ? No, it was not. He knows the price of it, though you do not…If you renew your sins, you must also renew your sorrows and repentance (Psa 51; 2Sa 12:13). You must feel the anguish and pain of a troubled spirit again, things with which the saints are acquainted; of which they may say, as the church, “Remembering mine affliction…the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance” (Lam 3:19). Yes, and if you will be remiss in your watch and so easily incur new guilt, though a pardon in the blood of Christ may heal your souls, yet some rod or other–in the hand of a displeased Father–shall afflict your bodies or smite you in your outward comforts (Psa 89:23).
If Christ be the only Physician of sick souls, what sin and folly is it for men to take Christ’s work out of His hands and attempt to be their own physician! Thus do those that superstitiously endeavor to heal their souls by afflicting their bodies; not Christ’s blood, but their own must be the plaister. As blind Papists, so many carnal and ignorant Protestants strive by confession, restitution, reformation, and stricter course of life to heal those wounds that sin hath made upon their souls without any respect to the blood of Christ. This course shall not profit them at all. It may divert for a time but can never heal them: the wounds so skinned over will open and bleed again. God grant it be not when our souls shall be out of the reach of the true and only remedy.
How sad is the case of those souls to whom Christ hath not yet been a physician? They are mortally wounded by sin and are likely to die of their sickness. No saving, healing applications have hitherto been made unto their souls. This is the case of the greatest part of mankind, yes, of them that live under the discoveries of Christ in the gospel.
What cause have they to be glad that are under the hand and care of Christ in order to a cure, and who do find, or may upon due examination find, their souls are in a very hopeful way of recovery! Can we rejoice when the strength of a natural disease is broken, and nature begins to recover ease and vigor again? And shall we not rejoice much more when our souls begin to mend, recover sensibly, and all comfortable signs of health and life appear upon them? (This is) particularly when the understanding, which was ignorant and dark, hath the light of life beginning to dawn into it. Such is that in 1 John 2:27. When the will that was rebellious and inflexible to the will of God is brought to comply with that holy will, saying, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Act 9:6). When the heart, which was harder than an adamant, is now brought to contrition for sin and can mourn as heartily over it as ever a father did for a dead son, a beloved and only son; when its aversations from God are gone, at least have no such power as once they had; but the thoughts are now fixed much upon God, and spiritual things begin to grow pleasant to the soul; when times of duty come to be longed for, and the soul (is) never better pleased than in such seasons; when the hypocrisy of the heart is purged out, so that we begin to do all that we do heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men (Col 3:23; 1Th 2:4); when we begin to make conscience of secret sins (Psa 119:113) and of secret duties (Mat 6:5-6); when we have an equal respect to all God’s commandments (Psa 119:8); and our hearts are under the holy and awful eye of God, which doth indeed overawe our souls (Gen 17:1). Oh, what sweet signs of a recovering soul these are! Surely such are in the skillful hand of the great Physician, Who will perfect what yet remains to be done.
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