On This Day: To Grapple with Jesus About Healing

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:40-45)

 

   Since we are the children, there is nothing wrong with us not knowing something. As long as we are willing to wait on God to teach us, and not run off in the wrong direction doing our own thing while we are waiting, it is good to be like children who don’t know the answers right now, but want the Holy Spirit to teach us the truth in love.

   So, what happens when we read of a leper coming to Jesus and all he had to say was, “If you will, you can make me clean”? Can we admit to longing for that without knowing for sure what would happen if we did the same thing?

   And what about when Jesus responded so simply with, “I will; be clean”? Can we admit to longing to hear such words as that even while not knowing how such a thing would be possible?

   One of the very good things about admitting we don’t know something is that it means we are not jumping aboard false doctrines because we think we need to decide between two opinions.

   In fact, this is a good place to add my soapbox message that so many church folk get tricked into picking between two opinions when there are really three. Most of the time I hear real conflicts over doctrine it is one pendulum-extreme arguing against the other. Both sides are partly right and partly wrong and we are told to pick a side. The whole while there is a plumbline of truth between the two that is often hated by both sides because it doesn’t agree with the “distinctives” of either group!

   When we consider healing in the Bible, and we rule out the pendulum extreme that says God doesn’t heal today, or he doesn’t give the spiritual gift of healing today, and we rule out the other pendulum extreme that turns healing into a circus of deception, we can sit at the plumbline like little children and ask Father how in the world we are supposed to know how to see Jesus working in and through our churches to heal people today.

   And when we also consider that we are the body of Christ through which he wants to do his work in others… well… that just gives us little children a lot more thoughts to grapple with in our quest to know and do the will of God!

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)