Matthew 9:35

Healing every sickness.

Christ the Physician

Christ’s healing activity had this double value: it was evidence of His Divine authority as a Teacher; it was a picture in detail addressed to the sense of what, as a restorer of our race, He meant to do in regions altogether beyond the sphere of sense. But these aspects of His care for the human body were not primary, but incidental. We may infer with reverence and certainty that His first object was to show Himself as the restorer of human nature as a whole-not of the reason and conscience only, without the body. Thus our Lord has thrown radiance upon the medical profession, associating it with His redemptive work.

1. The physician can point out with authority given to no other man the present operative force of some of the laws of God. The connection between indulgence and decay. He can give physical reasons for moral truth.

2. The physician can point out the true limits of human knowledge. He knows the ignorance of science.

3. The medical profession may be a teacher of reverence-reverence for the body as the tabernacle of the soul.

4. The profession of medicine is from the nature, I had almost dared to say from the necessity, of the case a teacher of benevolence. (Canon Liddon.)