Mark 3

Chapter 3. The Master Workman in Relation to Sickness and Healing(Part 1)So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. (Mark 1:31)The development of divine healing in the Gospel of Mark is full of significance for all Christian workers, and calls for fuller consideration than the brief references in our last chapter. There appears to be a distinct order in the unfolding of this truth in the incidents related in this Gospel. With divine discernment the Lord adjusted Himself to the conditions He met and step by step prepared His hearers and disciples for the full unfolding of God’s plan of mercy for the bodies and souls of men. We will find it interesting to trace these steps in the several miracles of healing recorded in the first few chapters of Mark. Each suggests a different lesson and a deeper line of truth. The Healing in the Ho Use of Simon (Mark 1:31) The first case of healing occurred on the memorable Sabbath to which we have referred in a former chapter. After leaving the synagogue in Capernaum He entered the house of Simon and Andrew, and they immediately reported to Him that “Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever” (Mark 1:30). The fact that they promptly told Him suggests some expectation on their part of help and healing; nor were they disappointed. “So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them” (Mark 1:31). In this first case of healing, there is little special or deeper teaching. His purpose appears to be to impress upon the people the general fact that He was able and willing to minister to suffering bodies as well as to sinful souls. The parallel gospels, however, add an intimation which has special significance, following as it did the casting out of the demon in the synagogue just before. They tell us that He “rebuked the fever” (Luke 4:39). This certainly suggests more than a hint of Satanic power behind that to be rebuked. There must have been some personal agent responsible for that fever. And so we get our first suggestion here of that tremendous fact which Peter, who was virtually the author of the Gospel of Mark, at least the source of Mark’s direct information, refers to in his address in the house of Cornelius, “He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil” (Acts 10:38). What a dread meaning it gives to sickness to recognize it as the hideous touch of the Wicked One. How it emphasizes the prophetic words which describe the Lord’s commission, “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed [sick]” (Luke 4:18). The sick are bound by chains that have been forged in the flames of the pit. Sickness may not always be directly caused by Satan, but certainly it was in this case, and this was an ordinary fever. Again we note the simple and striking way in which her healing is described. There were no spells or incantations or mystic rites attempted. He did not even parade His miraculous power, but in the most unostentatious way He just came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. He did not override her own individuality or make her the subject of some hypnotic power outside herself. He required her cooperation. He extended His own hand, and the touch of that hand no doubt brought supernatural strength, but it was necessary for her to meet that touch and rise by her own volition. So still we cannot expect the Lord’s healing unless we meet Him in responsive and active faith. We must not fail to note that it was not until she had arisen that the fever left her. The Lord does not heal us on our back, but on our feet. The paralytic must arise and take up his bed himself. The impotent man must stretch forth his hand. Finally, it is emphatically noted that she ministered unto them. Her healing called her to higher service. The Lord does not heal people simply to gratify their selfishness or enable them to have a good time, but to enable them, like her, to minister. This is the fatal defect in much of the new Immanuelism. It is too self-centered. People are taught that they may spend the night in pleasure, and when they find themselves exhausted, nervous or ill, they may simply turn to some process of psychotherapy and take in new life and strength, only to get up the next morning and plunge again into the world of selfishness and pleasure. It is a very sacred thing to receive the Lord’s healing, and it leaves upon all its subjects the solemn charge, “You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20). The corrected reading makes that passage a very impressive message to all who have learned to count their bodies the temples of the Holy Spirit. The Healing of the Multitude (Mark 1:23-34) It might have been supposed, if nothing else had followed, that the healing in the house of Simon was a special favor shown to the Lord’s immediate friends, but did not give any assurance of larger promise of help for a suffering world. A great many people are willing to believe that the Lord may occasionally heal the sick today when it is His sovereign pleasure to do so and they have some special claim on His intervention. Such persons do not recognize the privilege of healing as in any sense general or common to the house of faith. And so the Lord appears to have had a special purpose in the incident which followed later in the day, “That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons” (Mark 1:32-34). Matthew adds in his fuller account of this occurrence that He did this to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases” (Matthew 8:17). Surely we cannot mistake the profound significance of this second incident and the larger scope which it gives to the gospel of healing. It is not some extra privilege of the favored few, but it is the common heritage of the children of faith. It is based not upon special personal claims, but upon Christ and upon His great atonement, His finished work for the souls and bodies of men, the fact that He bore our sickness and carried our infirmities, and we need to carry them no more. Surely if it was necessary for Christ to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, then it is necessary for Him to continue to fulfill it through all the generations, or Jesus Christ is not “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). We are not told that He healed all the sick, but He healed many of them. It was not universal, and it was not special. He does not heal all the sick yet, but He heals without distinction or respect of persons all that are able to touch Him and take His help according to the conditions of the gospel. Oh, what a gospel of love and of help this is for a suffering world! What right have we, the ministers of Christ, to deprive men of it? What a message this story is to the Christian worker! Are we, as followers of the Master and workers together with God, giving the world the full gospel He entrusted to us, and the full purchase of His precious blood? And what a foundation it gives to faith to know we are asking and believing, not because we have had some special revelation of God’s will to help and heal, but because it is our redemption right and covered by His precious blood and His all-embracing Word. The Healing of the Leper (Mark 1:40-45) Here we note a still further advance in the order of the Lord’s teaching concerning divine healing. The very condition of this sufferer was in itself an object lesson of truth. Leprosy was God’s punctuation mark in the revelation of the connection between sickness and sin. It was the stamp of moral evil on the physical frame. That diseased and dissolving body literally going through a living death and dropping into the grave piecemeal was an awful picture and parable of the spiritual death which was destroying the soul within. A little later we will find the Lord emphasizing yet more the connection between sickness and sin, but here He lets the picture speak for itself. But the great lesson of this incident has reference to the question of the Lord’s will respecting our healing. This poor sufferer came as a sort of “committee of the whole” representing the human race in its suffering and need to ask one supreme question for all the ages: What is God’s will about our healing? What supreme interest hangs upon the answer! It comes with the very words that our own hearts would speak if they were honest, “If you are willing, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40). Scarcely no one doubts the Lord’s power to heal, but how few really believe He is willing; and yet it is much more unworthy of us, His children, to doubt His love than it would be to doubt His power. Which of us would say to an earthly parent, I know you can help me, but I do not believe you will? How this little speech reflects the heart of humanity and the unbelief even of the child of God. But how promptly and unmistakably the answer comes. There is no hesitation; there is no qualification; there is no ambiguity, but frank and wholehearted the answer bursts from His very heart, “I will.” We can almost see the Master smiling in the face of the timid, trembling sufferer at His feet, and hear Him say, “Of course I will. How could you ever doubt it?” Beloved, this is Christ’s answer, not to one suffering man, but to that great multitude for whom He stood sponsor and spokesman. It is His word to you and me through all the ages, “I am willing…. Be clean!” (Mark 1:41). And that great “will” is seconded by His whole life of love and compassion and blessing. When did He ever refuse to help a trusting sufferer? And how often was He grieved because their unbelief prevented them from trusting Him for more! And should anyone say, “Yes, but what is the will of the heavenly Father above?” The Lord Himself has answered that question, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). “My food… is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). The will of Jesus, the work of Jesus is the will of God forevermore. But the will of Christ does not settle the matter. There are two wills which must meet in this great transaction, and the one is as necessary as the other, and this explains the rest of His answer, “Be clean!” (Mark 1:41). Do not let us invert the order of the words. It is not the indicative mood, but the imperative. It is not a promise or a pronouncement, but a command. Christ wills it, but the leper must will it too, The two currents must meet in contact before the electric flame can burst forth from the wires. The will of God must be answered by the will of faith before the miracle can be complete. This is one of the most profound of all the teachings of the Master’s life. We see it in all His later healings. It is the missing of this which explains the failure—so-called—of divine healing in so many cases. Men and women are looking for some miracle to drop from heaven upon them, as it is said the lazy poet, Thompson, used to lie under the apple trees expecting an apple to fall into his mouth. God does not give His benefits in that easy way. Faith is a spiritual force, an actual factor in the mystic process of divine working, and it is just as essential as for the electric current to have a conducting wire along which to carry its message. Faith is an act, an exercise of the human will. It is not an emotion, a feeling, a sensation, but a volition, a choice, a hand upon the helm, setting the course of the Spirit with firm, inflexible purpose. We have to go through two experiences in our spiritual life; first, to lay down our own will in submission to the will of God, and then to take it up again from God in harmony with His will. “God wills it and I will it,” was the victorious cry of an ancient conqueror. It may have been fanaticism with him, but it is faith with us if we are acting in accordance with His Holy Word. We take because God gives. We dare to believe because God has dared to bestow. Does this solemn message speak to you? Is this the weak place in your spiritual life? Listen as He speaks to you today, “I will, will you?” There are one or two other interesting points in this story of healing that should be briefly noticed. Mark, in his graphic way, pictures the compassion of Christ. Not coldly nor from a logical necessity does the Lord help the sufferer and meet his faith; but his whole heart is in His response. He loves to heal and save. Oh suffering one, He has watched your weary way. He has carried your sick and suffering body. He has seen your pains and privations and been touched with the feeling of your infirmities, and He will be more glad than you to lift your load and change your groans and tears to songs of deliverance. You do not need anybody to persuade Him to help you. He loves you much better than any of the helpers to whom you are looking now. You do not need to make Him willing to answer your cry. He has always been willing. All you need is to get into the attitude where you can take what He is longing to give, and respond with the strength of answering faith to the overflowing of His heart of love. Mark also tells us He touched the leper. Nobody else would have touched him; but Christ meets us on our level. There is a physical touch in divine healing that we must learn to recognize. There is a substantial reality in the meeting of God with the human soul and body which gives added emphasis to that splendid definition of faith, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for” (Hebrews 11:1). We may know that touch, and we may meet it with that other touch of which it is forever true, “All who touched him were healed” (Mark 6:56). The Healing of the Paralytic (Mark 2:1-12) Up to this time the Lord had not especially emphasized the question of sin. It appeared to be His purpose to impress upon the people His ability and willingness to help and bless, but the time had come when He must go deeper and reveal that subtle poison which was the source of all human ills and infirmities. He takes occasion in this next miracle to bring out the sin question in its most vivid colors. They had brought this sufferer to Christ for healing, and expected, no doubt, that He would immediately perform a miracle upon his body. But Christ for the present paid no attention whatever to his body, but passed right on and pressed right home to the question of sin. “Son,” He said, “your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:9). And not until this question was settled and the sufferer had accepted forgiveness and son-ship did the Lord take up his physical condition and complete the work of healing. What an object lesson this is for the Christian worker! In dealing with the sick we must realize the deeper causes of their physical conditions. This question is a fatal defect in psychotherapy or Immanuelism. Moral and spiritual conditions are ignored, and even faith is regarded as of importance merely as a physical force, and faith is just as good in a Hindu as in a Christian, in believing a lie as in believing on the Son of God. It is not the truth believed that explains its power, but it is the pure psychical force which faith adds to the case. Not so did the Lord deal with men. He was far more anxious to get them right than to get them healed. Let us as Christian workers follow closely in His footsteps and always recognize divine healing as a moral and spiritual ministry. Again the Lord emphasizes in this healing the place of personal faith. Many people seem to think that the Lord healed this man because his four pallbearers brought him in the arms of faith. The Lord did nothing of the kind. He proceeded to instruct him to save him; and when he got him to the place where the man could himself believe, then the Lord challenged his own faith and said, “Get up, take your mat and walk” (Mark 2:9). A paralytic would not be likely to do that unless he had very real and adequate faith. The Lord does not heal people over the head of their unbelief. He loves them too well for that. But He first teaches them to trust Him for themselves, and then He gives them all they trust Him for. As Christian workers it is a great mistake for us to tell people we are believing for them and they are surely going to be healed. We have no right to let anybody lean over on us. Wiser far was the word of Elisha when he refused to go to Naaman the Syrian and satisfy his superstition by a number of passes and outward manifestations, but rather sent him to go and wash in the Jordan himself seven times and he should be clean. It was thus that Paul dealt with sickness. As he preached the gospel at Lystra, he looked upon his little congregation, and we are told that another paralytic was sitting there. And Paul “looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, ‘Stand up on your feet!’” (Acts 14:9-10). The best thing we can do for people is not to get them to trust in us, but to trust in the living God. The Man with the Withered Hand (Mark 3:1-5) The next chapter leads us over this ground again and a little farther on. In the case of this man we see the same insistence on the part of Christ that he was himself to actively take hold of the Lord’s help and healing. “Stretch out your hand” (Mark 3:5) was the Lord’s command. How could a man with a withered hand stretch it out? He could choose to do it. The stretch could begin inside, and that is where all life and power begins. Faith is but the embryo of fact, the Stardust out of which worlds are formed, the pollen lightly falling on the air which matures into the bud, the blossom and the fruit. And the Lord was there to follow the first outreaching of his faith and quicken it into victorious power and clothe it with new muscles and healthy flesh and restored functions and organism in his physical frame. We cannot stretch a paralyzed arm, but we can choose to do it, and the Lord can make our purpose real and good. The special added truth lying back of this miracle is the relation of this healing to the Sabbath. It was a test case. They were watching to see whether He would heal on the Sabbath day, and He deliberately, and we might almost say defiantly, went on and finished His work of love in the very teeth of His scowling enemies. Why did they question His healing on the Sabbath day? The reason is a profound one and touches the whole question of physical healing. They regarded healing as a purely secular matter. It belonged to the workaday week and not to the holy Sabbath. It was remanded to the province of material and secular life. That is just where medical science places it today. It is a profession, a trade, a mere material thing. The body has ceased to be the handiwork of the Creator and become a machine at the bidding of science and skill. Here divine healing takes radical and bold issue with this present evil age. The body is not a mere material organism. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, a member of Christ and an embryo of the glory of the resurrection. Matter is not sinful or unholy, but is as sacred as spirit. God demands our bodies as well as our spirits. He has redeemed them. He has honored them by His own incarnation. He has destined them by His Holy Spirit’s presence, and He regards their healing as a sacred matter, a part of our heritage of faith. We do not go to the Lord for healing merely because we want help, but because we are jealous of any hand but His touching the sacred vessel which He has been pleased to call His own. Therefore the Lord brought healing into the Sabbath day and brought the Sabbath day into the very heart of the Christian economy as the best of days, the day of which He said, “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28).