Medical Ministry at Watermark

The Rallying Cry of Christian Medicine

“That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Luke 5:24

The friends of a paralyzed man had just lowered him before the Messiah in hope of a healing. But rather than heal the man, Jesus forgave his sins. The outcry was swift and pointed, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Jesus did go on to heal the paralyzed man, but first he offered a short phrase that contains the purpose of all of Christian medicine: “…that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

Every surgery to remove a tumor, every antibiotic to defeat an infection, every bandage to dress a wound, every transfusion to restore the blood, every splint to bind a bone, and yes, every miraculous healing – all for this single and glorious purpose: that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

To the Christian health care professional, physical healing never stands by itself, but is always pointing to something deeper and greater and more fundamental. Just as with Jesus’ healings, the Christian medical professional heals as an illustration of the deeper healing that is found only in Christ: in his death on our behalf, in his bearing of our grief, in his carrying of our sorrows, in his wounds for our transgressions.

This is what medicine is for: to direct the heart of man to Jesus, to help establish Jesus as the only authority on earth to forgive sins. After all it is sin, not mere sickness, that is killing us all. And so it is Jesus’ atoning death on our behalf, not mere physical healing, that is the necessary cure.

Every good doctor knows the need to relentlessly pursue the pathology to its most fundamental cause – anything less is mere band-aid. And so we must never be satisfied with physical healing. We do of course relentlessly pursue physical healing, though never for its own sake, but as a sign pointing to Christ’s healing of our sinful nature. We must never shy away from this larger purpose in our medical work, to do so is to miss the whole point of why God has placed us there in the first place.

Chris Berry

Tags:

This entry was posted by Chris Berry on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.