The Great Physician
The Great Physician THE GREAT PHYSICIAN
R. C. Bell In one flaming sentence, Paul flashes out the basic philosophy of all human history: “He hath made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek God” (Acts 17:26). God is the Maker of men and na-tions, and presides over their destinies. The drama of time is his drama. Men have not always existed, they did not just happen to come into existence, nor do they belong to themselves. Moreover, since any creation must do that for which its Maker designed it or be a failure, men and nations, no matter what else they may achieve, are failures unless they seek and find God.
Another deep Scripture that admits man further into the secrets of the divine economy and gives him his place in it more definitely reads: “The heavens are the heavens of Jehovah; but the earth hath he given to the children of men” (Psalms 115:16). Man has no part whatsoever in the government of the heavens; but God, trusting him with the freedom of a steward who must give account to his Lord, turned the earth over to him to manage for a season, and to take the consequences of his good or bad management. When God surrendered the initiative of choice and action to man, purposing to do nothing on earth himself independently of man, he thereby lost his moral right to have a world as he, primarily, wants it to be. By this plan, he can do nothing arbitrarily, but only that which is in moral consonance with human deeds. Of course, all of man’s activities, good and evil, influence God in his presiding over the world as its absolute owner and final judge. The prayers of saints, for example, are mighty factors in divine government. And how different history would have been in the past and would now be, if no praying had ever been done, no man can know. Consequently, according to God’s primitive arrangement, man is morally responsible for what hap-pens on earth; if things go wrong, he, not God, is to blame. God’s changeless soul is still grieved at the misery of men as of old (Judges 10:16), but, by his own wise, good, and eternally fixed moral order, he can not change things without the consent and cooperation of men. The world, therefore, will be better, only when men choose to make it better. The world after the war will be no better unless better men and women live in it.
These two great Scriptures, one from each of the Testaments, proclaim the cardinal truth that God is Creator, Father, and Judge of all peoples of all climes and times. The Old Testament contains scores of examples of this truth applied in history. The tenth chapter of Isaiah is a striking case. The Jews had per-sisted in idolatry and its associate sins until, in a moral universe, they had to be punished. God, the Judge, chose war as the fit punishment and Sennacherib, the king of heathen Assyria, as the man to wage it. Sen-nacherib did not know God, but he liked to fight and get booty. While he served his own purpose when he made war on Jerusalem, he, at the same time, served God’s also, not knowing however that he was doing so. This is one of the many cases of the supernatural in the natural recorded in the Bible for man’s learning. A little later when God removed the Jews as an in-dependent nation and made them subject to Gentile kings until the Romans, several centuries later, finally destroyed them even as a subjugated nation, he gave their first Gentile master, Nebuchadnezzar, to under-stand that he himself was still Sovereign of all the earth and would hold the heathen kings responsible for their stewardship. God further informed boastful, presumptuous Nebuchadnezzar that he would afflict him with certain evils “to the intent that the living might know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the lowest of men” (Daniel 4:17). When the threatened punishment came, Nebuchadnezzar was humbled and confessed that Cod was ruler of the heav-en and the earth and that those who “walk in pride he is able to abase.” These two historical sketches, so replete with the supernatural in the natural, are sufficient to demonstrate that God’s claim to sovereignty over all the earth is no empty boast. Not only does God sometimes use evil men as his agents, but he also uses even Satan sometimes. “The anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them saying, Go, number Israel and Judah” (2 Samuel 24:1). Concerning this same in-cident, another Scripture says: “And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1). How did both God and Satan move David? Roth God and Sennacherib, though for very different reasons, wanted war against Jerusalem. Roth God and S>atan, for very different reasons again, want-ed Job to be tested; therefore upon Satan’s asking God’s permission to afflict Job; he got it (Job 1-2). In a similar way, both God and Satan desired that Israel be numbered, and God allowed $atan to do it. Much later, Satan asked and received permission to “sift” Peter (Luke 22:31). Satan is not independent of God and can not touch Job, Peter, or even a pig (Matthew 9:31) without first getting permission from God. These few cases, out of many scattered throughout the entire Bible, must suffice to show that the supernatural from beneath is worked into the mosaic of divine government as well as the supernatural from above. If men do not believe that God is absolute Sovereign over the realms of men and angels, both good and bad, it is not because God failed to write it into his autobiography, the Bible. When God, in the government of his world, made un-necessarily complicated by his unfaithful steward, needs a devil, a Pharaoh, a Sennacherib, a Judas, or a Hitler, he knows where to find him and how to use him so that his wrath will praise Jehovah (Psalms 76:10) and his evil contribute to final good. He overrules men and angels who will not be ruled by him. Men may learn how God is running the world today by reading their papers and listening to their radios. Those who want to know God should read history, sacred (especially ^ and secular, ancient and modern, for history, when readers climb high enough to interpret it properly, is just the record of God’s using men as they, by using their freedom under God, have fitted themselves to be used. For being the cause of the fall of his race and the wreck of the world, man is without excuse. From the beginning, God in grace gave his steward of earth ample directions to enable him to live happily forever.
He left man to his own efforts for the most part, to become acquainted with the physical world as best he could. If he never learned much geology, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and the like, there would be no ir-reparable loss, for he could still know God, which is life eternal. But in the moral and religious realm, where the welfare and eternal destiny of immortal souls were at stake, God left nothing to man’s discovery. With miscarriage here, both God and man would suffer such inestimable loss that God took no chances of failure because of man’s lack of moral knowledge. Moral concerns were too important to leave to human searchings, therefore, God revealed them to man di-rectly and fully.
What a privilege for man to have free access to the knowledge, wisdom, power, and goodness of his infinite Creator! Strange to say, man, not believing that he had ultimate truth in-ethical and religious matters; but believing that he could learn and grow by experience here as elsewhere, demanded the same self-direction in the moral sphere that God granted him in the material sphere. Here is the key that unlocks the mystery of all the wrongs, sorrows, and horrors of earth for all time. In the beginning, the faithless steward failed to realize that it was as impossible to have a good world without God as to have an irrigated valley without water. Nor has man even yet learned that the clock of civilization without God must ever run down in strife and woe.
Study of man’s first sin throws much needed light upon the cause of the troubles of earth down through the milleniums of time. If men can be brought to see the cause and nature of their world-old malady, they can better cooperate in their recovery. God permitted Adam to eat freely of every tree in Eden except “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The penalty for eating of that tree was death. Satan convinced Eve, however, that instead of dying, if she ate, she would be “as God, knowing good and evil.” And when beguiled Eve believed “that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she did eat” (Genesis 3:6). Thus she brought death not only upon herself and Adam, but also upon their posterity till the end of time. Is there not something here far deeper than eating literal fruit? Surely the eating is symbolic of something vaster and more momentus than itself. Observe the emphasis that the account puts upon the human craving for knowledge. The devil who has never been accused of being a fool, with shrewd and black malice, taking advantage of Eve’s disposition to prize knowledge above such emotional qualities as veneration, devotion and adoration, and of her indifference to the truth that worship, although it has small intellectual content, is the highest function of human nature, seduced her into thinking that to know was better than fidelity to her trust of stewardship and love for her God.
One wonders at the devil’s consummate psychology, profound, diabolical strategy, and dreadfully efficient, single essay which threw hcman nature out of balance and wrecked man so completely that he can no more function properly than a rapidly-revolving flywheel can run smoothly when it is out of balance. Just as the wheel must run with vibration and irregularity, so must men live unnaturally and futilely until their original balance is revstored. In other words, the devil so upset and perverted human nature that the posterity of Eve became his children (John 8:44) and “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3), dead in trespasses and sins. After Eve’s transfer of the stewardship of earth to Satan, he, not God the rightful owner, used the brains, energy and wealth of the defaulting steward to run the world in his own interest. And he so entirely, for a few thousand years, possessed the world which he had unlawfully seized that Christ in speaking of this usurpation and Satan’s relationship to the subverted world-order said: “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). And Paul called him “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). This usurping and bedeviling the world is the devil's masterpiece of sagacity and infamy. His ingenious, criminal plot blasted the race of men in its infancy and initiated mankind’s all but unrelieved failure as steward of the earth. Who but the ‘‘earthly, sensual, devilish” Archfiend could have been wise and wicked enough at once to do such a heinous thing? The crime of exalting knowledge to the disparage-ment of emotion, which the devil, Who is himself the best example of such an unbalanced personality, so long ago foisted on Eve is stdl prevalent among men. Modern civilisation is definitely guilty of it. The scientific spirit has nothing but contempt for emotion. To it, feeling is a relic of an ingiorant, superstitious, bygone day, and it not to be countenanced among cultured people. Though a man be proud, selfish, hard, cruel, and even very licentious, if he has brains, scholarship, and learning, he has recognition and honor from men. But this is not true “wisdom that cometh down from above.” It worships at the shrine, of “Divine Reason” and places usurper knowledge on love’s throne. Of course knowledge is wholly all right, if kept in subor-dination where it belongs. lake money, it makes a good servant, but a poor master. When intellectualism crowds the emotional nature off her thone, the result is a fatally unbalanced personality, more like the new god, Satan, than like Jehovah God. Is not this the sad condition of some of the rulers of the world today? No measure of mere intellectual knowledge and belief can make either men or demons good (James 2:19). “Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Not knowledge, but feeling is the dynamic of conduct. Although thieves know it is wrong to steal, they will continue to steal until they also feel that stealing is wrong. Not what men know, but what they love and honor determines w’hat they are.
Christian worship and work are surcharged with the intellectual of course; but both are supremely emo-tional. Indeed, without love, only in form, never “in spirit and truth” could either exist. When the heart is wrong, what can be right? Loveless knowledge is nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2). Nor can that which must be done with the heart be done with the head. When God got ready to save the world, he used love as the means, not philosophy, learning, and reason. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” God came to men in love, and it must be by loving him back that men go to Cod. They can not reason themselves to heaven. Scientific knowledge, academic scholarship, and mental attainments can not ao men’s Christian thinking, feeling, and li\mg for them. However, it is very easy for erudite men, who prize such acquisitions, to sacrifice spirit for letter and mistake chaff for wheat. Is it not worthy of remark that Paul, the only apostle who was equipped to discuss “moral philosophy” and “metaphysics,” resolutely refused to do so? (Romans 8:11-24). The devil has never needed a more modern, a more subtly devised, or a more deadly wile to destroy the souls of men than his original snare in Eden.
“The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving that the light of the gospel . . . should not dawn upon them” (2 Corinthians 4:4) so completely that they do not even know that ”the kingdom of heaven” and “the kingdom of the world” are opposing kingdoms, ruled by antagonistic kings, namely, God and Satan. The only stranger thing in history, probably, is the truth that the devil has even many of “the elect” fooled. too, about the mutually exclusive nature of these rival kingdoms. “Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one” (1 John 5:10). Why should not Christians know the difference between these kingdoms as well as they know the difference between “the kingdom of God” and denominational churches ? That Satan failed in his personal, frontal attack m the wilderness to entice Christ into thinking that he could serve the interests of both these kingdoms, is clear from Christ’s stern rebuff: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10).
Later, when Satan changed his tactics and made an oblique attack upon Christ by using malicious men to accuse him of being in league with the devil and of casting out demons by Beelzebub, Christ thought the charge so false and damaging that he refuted it with a careful, elaborate, four-fold argument (Matthew 12:2230). And neither Christ nor any inspired man was ever less positive about the impossibility of serving the “two masters.” But men, thinking they knew a better way to extend Christ’s kingdom than his own way, have continuously compromised with the devil and used his tools in trying to do the Lord’s work. Who can say how much this has contributed to the success of “the kingdom of the world” and to the comparative failure of “the kingdom of God” as they exist on earth now? Are not the sons of Eve sill “beguiled” by her old enemy, using his same old nefarious stratagem?
Christ came to earth to “bruise” the devil’s head, to retrieve the world from his illegal dominion, and to re-store the original balance of man’s nature. Neither Christ nor Satan were under any illusions about all this, for their inveterate enmity, seemingly, antedates the creation of Adam. But the remainder of this lecture must deal directly with Christ as “The Great Physician” for sin-sick, sink-sunk humanity.
First of all, the physician knew the extreme need of the patient. He came to heal; he knew that man was very sick, sick even unto death. Christ had a sad con-ception of humanity. Because he knew that the world was in a state of corruption and darkness, needing a wholesome, preserving agent and an illuminating, quickening influence, he told his disciples that they were “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14). He knew that most people were travel-ing the broad way to destruction. “When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). He bore the griefs of men, carried their sorrows, and felt “the pain of sympathy.” Near the end of his life, he wept over Jerusalem, for he knew the sin and unhappiness within her walls and the destruction that awaited her at the hands of the Romans. Not only the sorrows of the Jews, but also the false standards of greatness and happiness throughout the earth, and the tragedy of the perpetual human waste and wretchedness from the beginning wrung his heart and moved him to tears. “This painful earth did not leave him cold.” Said he: “I am come ... to call sinners to repentance.”
Christ knew furthermore that his patient was so sick that superficial treatment of symptoms and functional disturbances could never reach the old, deep- seated, organic disease of human personality out of proportion since Eden. He knew, too, since man was sicker than he thought or even suspected, that the first step toward recovery was to get him to realize the seri-ousness of his condition and to accept a correct diag-nosis.
Consequently, when a lawyer asked Christ, “Which is the first commandment ?” Christ, with a depth of wis-dom that must have surprised the lawyer, replied: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets” (Matthew 22:36-40). In substance Christ said to the lawyer:
“Crown love, not knowledge; make love the law of your life; live a love-mastered life, ‘And it must follow, as night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man or to God. Then, you can treat God and man as law requires without feeling either the constraint or the restraint of law, for law shall have passed from letter into spirit; then, you can be a faithful steward over your charge and no longer be a failure, for you will be able to live as your Maker intended you should live.” “Love therefore is the fulfilment of law.” When a rich young ruler of admirable character, an exceedingly rare four-fold combination in any man, came to Jesus, thinking that he probably had some mino*’ ailment, asking about eternal life, “Jesus look-ing upon him loved him.” And Christ seeing that he, as most men are, was blinded by the world-order of the devil, with respect to Jiis heart’s allegiance and atro-phied emotional nature, undertook, by a dual test, to show him himself as he really was. The first part of the test was in moral conduct; this he passed with an exceptionally high grade, at least JDy nis own grading. The second installment of the test was in economics; this he failed so miserably that his average fell way below passing, and he went away “a sadder and a wiser man.”
Christ asked the ruler to give his great wealth to the poor and to follow him. His refusal to part with his possessions precluded his admittance into the group of Christ’s followers, for a rich man among them would have disrupted their fellowship, something Christ could not tolerate. The ruler departed know mg 1 hat he was afflicted with a frightful malignant tumor of covetous-ness and worldlmess. When the skillful, honest phy-sician had diagnosed the man’s disorder, he faithfully recommended the necessary major operation. What more could he do ? Thus, the curtain drops on the sad
scene.
Another ruler of the Jews, a philosophic, self-cen-tered, typical Pharisee of the elite, named Nicodemus, benighted both bodily and spiritually, came to Jesus. He was another man so blinded by “the god of this world” that he did not know he was sick. By strict observance of rites and rules, by much studying and striving, Nicodemus had lifted himself to honor and power as “the teacher of Israel.” Of course he was proud ef his efforts and success. To make him realize the futility of all this, and the emptiness of his religious life, required skill, honesty, and courage. The physician had all these plus, however, and probed his disorder to the root with, “Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). By this, Nicodemus was to understand that his way of intellectualism, self-sufficiency, and human merit was the way of “flesh,” and that by means of it he could not enter the spiritual kingdom; understand that entrance into the kingdom required such a radical change in his life that it could best be described as a birth. That is, the change would require him to discard all his laboriously built up religion and life as a means of acceptance with God and begin all over again. In trying to help Nicodemus grasp this puzzling, new doctrine, Christ illustrated by telling him that the birth “of water and the Spirit” was as independent of human wisdom and work as is the wind and its doings. In other words, as God uses no energy and “wisdom of men” in making the wind to blow, so he uses no human philosophy and learning in effecting the birth from above. “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy” (Romans 9:16).
Christ closed the interview with Nicodemus by gra-ciously giving him the way of the new birth in skeleton outline. The key-words are “Lifted,” “Loved,” and “Light” (John 3:14-21). Gods’ love, Christ’s suffering on the cross, and man’s loving and embracing light. Here are some cardinal truths concerning the way out of “the kingdom of the world” into “the kingdom of God,” and all of them are articulate with man’s emotional nature rather than with his inteelectual faculties. Love lays her “ . . . just hands on that golden key That opens the Palace of Eternity.” From the three preceding typical diagnosis may be gathered:
First, “TheGreat Physician” is not a quack, treating mere symptoms. He does not hack at the branches of sin, but digs it out by the roots. His technique is that of a Hercules who, in order to change the flora and the fauna of a land, would not destroy a few flowers and animals artifically, but raise the altitude of the country a few thousand feet. Even so, Christ raises the whole life-level of his patients from the depths of Satan to the heights of God.
Second, he is not a specialist, with different remedies for different sins. Instead, since all sins are the bitter fruit of one sour stock, he lumps them all together for one, great, expiatory treatment with his sovereign panacea “that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). And what is his panacea ? In a word, himself. In the gospel by John, several familiar Scriptures from his lips, which may well be called “Great I am passages,” although very succinctly, very fully and emphatically give his reationship to the world of men. Some of these passages are: “I am the bread of life,” “I am the light of the world,” “I am the good shepherd,” “I am the vine,” and “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” In general, these passages mean that Christ himself is adapted to human nature as a key is to its lock; that in him man can find everything he needs for his highly complex nature. They mean that Christ is bread for man’s hunger, drink for his thirst, light for his darkness, cure for his diseases, and life for his death. Since he is the way, without him there is no going; since he is the truth, without him there is no knowing; since he is the life, without him there is no living.
Christ can restore the original balance and perfection of human nature and enable man to face the past, the present, and future in true hope and optimism. All other hope is false; all other optimism is blind. Paul’s soul had ample cause to catch up its tambourine and sing the grand lyric of redemption found in the latter part of the eighth chapter of Romans. With more study, each of these great comparisons would yield more gold. For example, what plain, non-figurative exposition could teach so well that Christ is to the souls of men what literal bread is to their bodies, as “I am the bread of life”? In the controversy with the Jews which this statement provoked, Christ supplemented it with: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves” (John 6:53). “Eating” Christ put into literal language means appropriating him by faith and obedience. As literal food, by the process of assimilation, is identified with the body and becomes part of it, so Christ must be assimilated and identified with the Christian’s personality and life, to live and work in him. That is, Christians must be instinct with his life; impregnated and animated by his Spirit; incorporated into his personality; in short, share his mind, his heart, and his very life. Christ will restore men’s fallen, perverted nature and enable them to live as their Creator intended up to the measure that they “eat” him. Those who nibble at him, he will civilize; those who lunch off him, he will moralize; and those who feast on him, he will Christianize.
Let it be emphasized that Christ himself is this im-perial Panacea. He himself must be “eaten.” And it does not necessarily follow because men go to church on Sunday to pinch the loaf and sip the wine that they are “eating Christ.” The “Lord’s supper” is a symbolic representation of “eating him,” intended to help men really to partake of Christ’s nature and life and personality. If it does not serve this end, but becomes a symbol, without signification, it is “not for the better for the worse” (1 Corinthians 11:17). His supper is not he. Nor the Bible Christ. Christ tried to set the Jews right on this point by saying to them: “Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me that ye may have life” (John 5:39-40). The Scriptures, like the supper, are not the life-giver, but the necessary means when correctly used, to the person who is “the life.” If the Bible does not lead its readers and students to Christ himself, it not only fails to be a “savor from life unto life, but even becomes a “savor from death unto death” (2 Corinthians 2:16). The Bible never leaves people as it finds them. When it does not lead them to Christ and thus make them better, it hardens them and makes them worse, no matter how well they may know the letter of the Bible. There is perpetual peril of form and letter usurping spirituality and personality; of “holding a form, but having denied the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:5). In the commerce of love nothing can win a person but a person, therefore Christ “gave himself for us” (Titus 2:14).