Health And Healing For Body And Soul.3

"Is it easier to say, 

'Your sins are forgiven,' or, 'Rise and be healed'?

That you might know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive all wrongs, I announce to the sick:

"Rise Up! Be of good cheer; 

your wrongs are forgiven.

Go your way! 

As you have believed, so shall you receive. 

Your faith has made you well!" 

-- Jesus

Let us agree on this simple notion: 

 Jesus cares little for our opinion.

If you think he was asking for a show of hands when posing the question; if you think he cared a wit about whether they thought one form of the command was more effective than another; if you think that getting our opinions in order is the objective of Jesus or, for that matter, any writer of the Bible...then you qualify as a modern day disciple of historic Pharisaical proportions!

Test yourself:

When considering a doctrine or command of scripture do you say, 'Do I believe or feel this thing right?' In doing so have you forgotten the true question: 'Have I left all to follow him?' 

"To the man who gives himself to the living Lord, every belief will necessarily come right; the Lord himself will see that his disciple believe aright concerning him. 

If a man cannot trust him for this, what claim can he make to faith in him? It is because he has little or no faith, that he is left clinging to preposterous and dishonouring ideas, the traditions of men concerning his Father, and neither his teaching nor that of his apostles.

What I insist upon is, that a man's faith shall be in the living, loving, ruling, helping Christ, devoted to us as much as ever he was, and with all the powers of the Godhead for the salvation of his brethren. 

It is not faith that he did this, that his work wrought that—it is faith in the man who did and is doing everything for us that will save him: without this he cannot work to heal spiritually, any more than he would heal physically, when he was present to the eyes of men.

Do you ask, 'What is faith in him?' I answer, The leaving of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of his and him; the leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as he tells you. I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this necessity—this obedience.

It is the one terrible heresy of the church, that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ. 

The work of Christ is not the Working Christ, any more than the clothing of Christ is the body of Christ. If the woman who touched the hem of his garment had trusted in the garment and not in him who wore it, would she have been healed? And the reason that so many who believe about Christ rather than in him, get the comfort they do, is that, touching thus the mere hem of his garment, they cannot help believing a little in the live man inside the garment.

Get up, and do something the master tells you; so make yourself his disciple at once. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said, 'Do it', or once abstained because he said, 'Do not do it'. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in him, if you do not anything he tells you.

If you can think of nothing he ever said as having had an atom of influence on your doing or not doing, you have too good ground to consider yourself no disciple of his.

Jesus' mission was not correct opinion concerning himself or the Father, his objective was and is obedient love in the heart of the poorest he healed or persuaded. That is his kingdom come."

(adapted from MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons II, The Truth In Jesus, emphasis added)