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 are used nearly sixty times in His four biographies. The New Testament contains more than seventy-five 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 those who had need of healing” (Luke 9:11). Jesus thought of Himself as a physician, and He seems to have been seen in this light by others. He said to those in His hometown, “You will surely say this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’” (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 He also specialized in
- pediatrics (healed Jairus’ little daughter, Mark 5:23),
- hematology (stopped a woman’s issue of blood, Luke 8:43–44),
- ophthalmology (caused the blind to see, Luke 18:35–43),
- orthopedics (made “the bent over” to be straight, Luke 13:11–13),
- otolaryngology/ear-nose-throat (made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak, Mark 7:32–35),
- neurology (cured paralysis),
- rheumatology (caused the lame/ maimed to walk and be whole, Matthew 15:30),
- internal medicine (healed dropsy, Luke 14:2–4), and
- infectious diseases (cured those with afflictions, Mark 3:10, and leprosy, Luke 5:12–13).
Jesus never made a referral (“He Himself was 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 from many physicians. She had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse” (Mark 5:25–34). She had been sick for twelve years; Jesus made her well.
- There was a woman who had “a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up” (Luke 13:11–13); Jesus healed her.
- “Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years” (John 5:5–9); Jesus brought him back to health.
- He saw a man who had been blind from his birth (John 9:1–33); Jesus gave him sight.
- Jesus met “a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs” (Luke 8:27–35); Jesus returned him to normal life.
JESUS HEALED MINDS (PSYCHIATRY)
“They brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them” (Matthew 4:24; cf. 17:15–18).
Isaiah prophesied of the coming Messiah: “He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who 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 10:34). Broken bones and bleeding wounds are bound up, that they may knit and close again.
Jesus binds up 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 4:6–7).
God alone 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.”2
JESUS HEALED SPIRITS
The Pharisees asked, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus replied, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:11–12). He was not talking about physical symptoms. He often used a medical metaphor for sin. For instance: “For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them” (Matthew 13:15). Sin is pictured as a disease (Isaiah 1:6); thus, salvation is the cure (cf. Malachi 4:2).
Jesus specialized in impossible spiritual cases, too. While on earth, He cured the thief on the cross (Luke 23:40–43), the woman taken in adultery (John 8:1–11), and the publican Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10). Later, He cured Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9), the immoral Corinthians (1 Corinthians 6:9–11), and the very ones who had screamed for His blood to be shed (Acts 2:37–41).
Another example is Mary of Magdala, a little village on the northwest of the Sea of Galilee. She was afflicted with seven demons, and Jesus set her free. Jesus offered her forgiveness, giving her self-respect once more. The result? She became a new person, full of love and loyalty to Jesus, who had transformed her life (Matthew 27:56, 61; 28:1).
Make your appointment with the Great Physician. His office is taking new patients.
Endnotes
1David Stevens and Gregg Lewis, Jesus, M.D.: A Doctor Examines the Great Physician (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 9.
2James Hastings, ed., The Speaker’s Bible: The Gospel According to St. Luke, vol. 2 (Aberdeen: The ‘Speaker’s Bible’ Offices, 1950), 235
