The Sure Cure

The Pharisees were happy! After many days of closely watching Him and analyzing all His moves, they finally caught Jesus! Oh, He was in for it now. They caught Him eating with publicans and sinners! And He claimed to be the Son of God….

I love how Jesus handled the situation. The Pharisees had learned it didn’t do any good to approach Him with accusations, so they approached His disciples. They asked why Jesus was eating with publicans and sinners. Before the disciples could answer, however, Jesus overheard them. He gave probably one of the most simple yet most profound statements in the Bible, saying “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.”

It seems so simple that a healthy person wouldn’t need a doctor, but it seems that so often this is what we try to do with Christianity. Think about what would happen if a doctor refused to see patients who were sick because he was afraid he would catch what they had. The doctor wouldn’t be able to see or touch any patients because he might get sick as well. The doctor wouldn’t be doing his job, and nobody would be getting better. But isn’t this what we often do as a church? We accept people who are well, but if someone really deep in sin came to us, would we be so afraid of contamination that we would refuse to help them?

Think about the huge responsibility doctors have. If they refused to care for a patient, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs and perhaps even get sued. Yet how much greater of a responsibility do we have as Christians to reach out to the lost? We’re not dealing with bodies. We’re dealing with souls. Our responsibility as Christians should be even greater than a doctor feels his responsibility.

How horrible would it be if you had the only cure for an incurable disease and you kept it to yourself? People would be dying, but you could help stop it. The reality is that souls out there really are dying, and we have the cure. Many people in the world claim to have found another cure, but Jesus is the only cure that can save souls. Let’s take this cure to a lost and dying world.