The Great Physician
Since the dawn of time a deadly disease has plagued mankind. It is a devastating disease that most do not even know they have, nor will they, until it is much too late. It is a disease so destructive that it literally penetrates to the very soul of man. Even so, man has learned to live with it and, yes, even to enjoy it. We will even be so bold as to declare that man has learned to love it. What is the name of this devastating and destructive disease that man loves to contract and cultivate in his very bosom? Man seems to have forgotten it but it has not forgotten man. Its name: sin!
But, as if sin is not devastating enough by itself, the calamity has been compounded. Many today are loosing their souls to false remedies for the spiritual sickness of sin. Just as a medical doctor who unwittingly orders an injection of medicine that costs a person their life, preachers today are peddling false doctrines that are costing men their souls. This is the tragedy that is happening every day, a tragedy which can and must be stopped.
When the publicans and sinners gathered to hear the Lord speak those wonderful words of life, the Pharisees saw and asked the Lord’s disciples, “How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mark 2:15,16). With those words the Lord made it very clear that He was the physician who could heal the spiritually sick. He is the Great Physician with the greatest of all remedies.
But the world is still sick with sin; the disease seems to be spreading. Like the person receiving a fatal dose of medicine, mankind’s spiritual health is swiftly and steadily declining. If man could only recognize what is not the proper treatment for sin, if he could only recognize that which would cost him his soul, he would never let himself be indoctrinated by counterfeit cures for sin; he would never accept a false remedial system.
We must expose and refute the many false systems of salvation that now plague the religious world. While we desire to make perfectly plain our enmity for all religious error we likewise want it known that we harbor no ill feelings toward anyone. Our motive is pure. Our motive is love for the truth and for the souls of men (Eph. 4:15). If we speak the truth without tempering it with love, we err. If we speak out of love but do not speak the truth, we err. We do not wish to be in error where the souls of men are concerned nor do we want others to be.
Sometimes, though, the remedy of truth hurts. But is it not better to be hurt for only a short time instead of all eternity? Is it not better to pull a sleeping man out of a burning house, taking the risk of physically hurting him or offending him, than to let him burn? Let us, then, likewise reject all false remedies for sin which possess no healing power at all, but rather assure spiritual death. Let us faithfully follow the remedy of the Great Physician!
Eric L. Padgett