The Doctor Who Never Lost a Case: Part 1

Allen Webster

Topic(s): Jesus

Links to this entire series:

• The Doctor Who Never Lost a Case: Part 1
• The Doctor Who Never Lost a Case: Part 2
• The Doctor Who Never Lost a Case: Part 3

Many parents want their children to grow up to be doctors. It is an honored profession; it is rewarding to help others; it pays well. It is a popular enough field that there are 800,000 licensed physicians in America alone. Jesus could have been a doctor. One of His followers, Luke, was (Colossians 4:14). But Jesus never carried a medical bag or opened an office on Main Street, Nazareth.

Still, Jesus was a healer. Various forms of the word heal is used 55 times in His four biographies. The New Testament contains more than 75 references to the healing work and ministry of Christ.¹ He was known to say, “I will come and heal him” (Matthew 8:7). In fact, He “healed them that had need of healing” (Luke 9:11). Jesus thought of Himself as a physician and seems to have been seen in this light by others. He said to those in His hometown, “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself” (Luke 4:23).

Jesus healed bodies.

Lots of bodies. All parts of bodies. You could say that He had a general family practice (Matthew 8:16; 12:15), but also specialized in

• pediatrics (healed Jairus’ little daughter, Mark 5:23),
• hematology (healed a woman’s issue of blood, Luke 5:43),
• ophthalmology (caused the blind to see Luke 18:35–43),
• orthopedics (caused the “bowed” to be straight, Luke 13:11–13),
• otolaryngology/ear-nose-throat (caused the deaf to hear, Luke 22:51),
• neurology (cured “palsy”² , a condition Jesus seems to have faced often since at least three separate references are found in the New Testament, Matthew 4:24; 8:6; Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:18–25),
• rheumatology (caused the lame/maimed to walk and be whole, Matthew 15:30),
• internal medicine (dropsy³ , Luke 14:2–4), and
• infectious diseases (cured those with plagues, Mark 3:10, and leprosy, Luke 5:12–13).

Jesus never made a referral (“and healing every sickness and every disease among the people,” Matthew 9:35). Jesus never found a case too hard. In fact, He seems to have specialized in impossible cases. Consider these:

• the woman who had an issue of blood “had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse” (Mark 5:25–26). She had been sick for twelve years.
• There was a woman who had “a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself” (Luke 13:11) whom Jesus healed.
• The “certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years” (John 5:5–8) that Jesus brought back to health.
• The man who had been blind from his birth (John 9:1, 20, 32) that Jesus caused to see.
• Jesus met “a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs” (Luke 8:27) who was rendered normal by Jesus.

Jesus healed minds (psychiatry).

“They brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them” (Matthew 4:24; cf. 17:15).

Isaiah prophesied of the coming Messiah: “He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1). Luke recorded the fulfillment when Jesus started His work in his hometown of Nazareth (Luke 4:18). The image is of a doctor tenderly rolling a bruised or diseased arm in a bandage or placing a broken one carefully in a sling (cf. Luke 10:34⁴ ). Bro-ken bones and bleeding wounds are bound up, that they may knit and close again.

Jesus binds up broken hearts with the bandage of His love. Inner lives crushed by sin and feelings rubbed raw with conflict find lasting peace in His presence (Matthew 11:28–30; Philippians 4:6). Only God can put broken hearts back together (Psalm 147:3; Isaiah 57:15). Matthew Henry makes an interesting point: In a sense, we are all broken earthenware—cracked, mutilated jars that have been picked up from the waste heap and been mended and made serviceable for the King. No other religion ever even entertains the idea of making a broken vessel new.

Jesus healed spirits.

The Pharisees asked, “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” When Jesus replied, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick” (Matthew 9:11–12), He was not talking about physical symptoms. He often used a medical metaphor for sin. For instance: “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them” (Matthew 13:15). Sin is pictured as a disease (Isaiah 1:6); thus salvation is the cure (Malachi 4:2).

Endnotes:

[¹] Jesus, M.D. A Doctor Examines the Great Physician, Introduction, Zondervan, Grand Rapids. 2001.

[2] paralytic. Whenever Luke mentions this disease, he uses the verb and not the adjective παραλυτικός paralytic (as Matthew 4:24; 8:6; his usage in this respect being in strict accord with that of medical writers (Vincent).

[³] hudrōpikos. Robertson’s Word Pictures says, “Late and medical word from hudōr (water), one who has internal water (hudrōps). Here only in the N.T. and only example of the disease healed by Jesus and recorded.”

[⁴] The phrase “bound up his wounds” (katedēsen ta traumata, first aorist active indicative of katadeō, old verb, but here only in the N.T.) literally means “bound down.” We say “bind up.” Medical detail that interested Luke. The word for “wounds” (traumata) here only in the NT (Robertson).