The Physician

Jesus is the greatest healer ever to walk the earth.  He stopped leprosy in its tracks, restored sight, and made the lame to walk.  He even raised the dead! Matthew 4:23 reads, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”

Did you catch that?  Jesus healed “every” disease and sickness.  It you could arrange a meeting with Jesus you were pretty much guaranteed a healing.  Your healing would be instantaneous, verifiable and complete.

Have you ever met someone who hasn’t walked in years?  I have known a few as friends.  In each case their muscles had atrophied and they had adjusted to a rhythm in life that doesn’t involve standing on two legs.  Some had spinal cord damage and some muscular diseases, but the result was always the same: they were confined to a wheelchair or hospital bed, forever.

This was the case with a lame man who was lowered from a rooftop in a house in Capernaum where Jesus was teaching (Mark 2:1-12).  When Jesus saw him He forgave His sins, causing no small stir among the teachers of the law.  Then, to prove He had authority over sin, Jesus told him to pick up his bed and go home.  The man stood up, grabbed his bed and walk out in clear view of everyone.  What a scene!  I have often wondered if he waved at the crowd and strutted a bit on his way out.  There was no wobbling or staggering to find his balance.  He just stood up and left.  The rhythm of his infirmity had been replaced by a new beat; his atrophy reversed.  This sort of thing just doesn’t happen, even with modern medicine.  People don’t go from years of immobility to carrying stuff around in an instant, unless they have met the Physician.  When the Physician shows up, anything is possible.