What does it mean that God is a healer?

We should be with God about our sickness, and after bowing under His mighty hand, we may rest assured that He will raise us up. This is not at all a question of so-called faith cure. There is often more pride in what is called that than in the humble employment of proper means for recovery. God may, and doubtless often does, heal in answer to prayer, and without the use of medicines, just as He often blesses the instrumentalities used. But the point of importance is that recovery is not the first object. What would God have us learn in our sickness? Has there been disobedience for which we are feeling His chastening hand? Or, if there has been no direct act of disobedience, has there been a low, carnal, worldly state, worse than actual outbreaking evil? How foolish to expect or want recovery to bodily health before the soul is healed.

But (verse 5) the strong exercise of conscience leads to a profounder searching into the root and fountain of human wretchedness. Sinful conception is an evil anterior to personal transgression: the latter comes of the former as its fatal fruit. Grace, then, if it deal remedially with a sinner, must meet the evil in its source. God is accordingly invoked no longer as a helper in the sinner's work of self-recovery: the work is purely and exclusively His own. What He requires in holiness He must effect in grace (verse 6). This primal, yet often imperfectly learned truth of Christian doctrine, if once divinely taught in the cross of Jesus, secures the tried believer from despair in the darkest hour, how much soever he may have to loathe himself meanwhile on account of his experienced vileness. Satan cannot work a work of evil in a believer which God has not already counteracted and excelled in measure in the finished work of grace. "Where sin abounded, grace has superabounded." Atonement once complete is of an eternal validity. In justice therefore, and in faithfulness to Jesus, God forgives continually the confessing sinner. "The Lord has put away thy sin" was the immediate response of Nathan to David, when the simple confession of his sin was made. God is Himself the healer and restorer of the soul. The broken spirit can be bound up effectually only by His gracious hands The plenteousness of forgiving mercy re-opens in the heart of the believer the springs of pure desire toward God. Fruitful works of love flow also from the soul that has been thus restored (verse 13). There is no true restoration where this result is not perceived.

In the days of old we read of Jehovah that, "He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds" (Ps. 147:3). In order to heal the broken-hearted He became flesh, and shed His tears to dry ours, and broke His heart to bind up our hearts.

Turning to the word of God, we discover for our comfort that God is not indifferent to these broken hearts. The Psalmist tells us that God is One that "heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds." Moreover, the Psalmist immediately adds, "He tells the number of the stars, He calls them all by names. Great is our Lord" (Ps. 147:2-5). The number of the stars is too great for us to tell; the sorrow of a broken heart too deep for us to fathom; but God can count the stars in heaven and heal the broken hearts on earth. In the greatness of His love He gave His only begotten Son to come into this world to heal the brokenhearted.

It is very significant that our psalm tells how God heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds, before we are told that the same God tells the number of the stars, and calls them by their names. What do we glean from this order? We gather how intensely God cares for the sorrows and sadness of mankind.

Or it may be a sick saint. Sorrow after sorrow has fallen upon him. Sick in body and mind, and yet here again the Great Healer enters, and ministers heavenly cordial, raises the drooping spirit, fills the empty heart with heavenly joy. Have we not seen this hundreds of times? When we felt tongue-tied in the presence of want and sorrow, often have we been rebuked as we saw how such were sustained, not only sustained, but “more than conquerors through Him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).

My very dear friend — I do not know where you are, but I think you must imagine, I have bade an eternal farewell to everything below, so long have I been answering your letters; but there is one you may write to, who will be sure to answer immediately. Our life should be, I conceive, a continual interchange of care for peace. I saw some of your friends in London; we hoped to see … but it seems to have been a false report that she was coming to London. Oh! reality, reality, how immense all before us, yet how we shrink from apprehended evil, though we know Him too well to take one single want out of his hand. His will, nothing but his will … We have a wonderful advertisement of a physician, from the Spirit of truth, "who healeth all thy diseases;" we who know something of the plague of a human heart, can understand in a measure how great the undertaking. He says himself "come unto me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He must have foreseen every weight his people ever should be burdened with, when he undertakes to give rest to all, and truly he does, for he himself carried all our sicknesses. Can he heal hearts wounded with guilt and care? wounded with rebellious murmuring at his dispensations, and coveting what he has withheld, delighting in broken cisterns, as though they were the fountain of living waters? Can he heal hearts of wandering and distracted maniacs; maniacs ever engaged in taking poison? Can He heal the bruises of our falls, the dislocations of our backslidings, wounds corrupt through foolishness? It is written, "who healeth all thy diseases;" it made little difference in the days of his flesh, what the disease was, that was brought to him, palsied, maimed, blind, deaf, possessed, dying, dead. Then let us come in the simplicity of sickness, in the helplessness of want; to trust is to be healed, to touch the hem of his garment is to be whole; but let us keep touching him, for virtue is ever coming from him; he waits to apply all the virtues of heaven's dispensary to our case whatever it be; he is master of that disease, we have all his promise, all his skill, all his power, all his love; his skill is infinite, his compassion boundless; though ascended to heaven, he has left his heart on earth; he gives US all his attention, as if there was none else to think of on earth. He requires but one thing, to take all he has prescribed, BITTER as well as SWEET. Dear … let us put a blank into his hand for time, and for every thing, confident that with him he has freely given us all things. Is there one thing we would keep back? Let that be just the thing to commit with most anxiety; we need the substance of things hoped for, to be put in the scale of judgment and conscience, against the things of time; then as surely as substance outweighs shadow, so surely must we judge of things accurately, till all our sorrows shall be left behind; and from the Jerusalem above, we shall be able to trace his hand leading us by ways we knew not, to the manifesting and magnifying of his faithfulness and grace. Then shall we see how contemptible were all our fears, when omniscience which foresaw, omnipresence that prevented, and omnipotence that laughed them to scorn, were on our side. Let us get well acquainted with our physician; let us take lodgings in his neighbourhood; let us see him every day; let us hide nothing, but open to him our whole case, and say as David when under his care, "let me hear what God the Lord will say to me;" and let us venture on his testimony, who declares him to be our peace, for "he forgiveth all our sins, and healeth all our diseases." Mr. Howels said one day, speaking of this beloved physician, where was Jesus educated? where did he graduate? He was educated in the Lazar-house of human suffering, and he took his degree in the infirmary of the human heart — whenever he visits a patient He says, this sickness is not unto death; He is not only the physician, but he is also the medicine of the soul. History tells us of a queen who, when her husband was wounded by a poisoned arrow, extracted the venom with her own lips, at the risk of her life. Our physician has done more — He has extracted the poison of sin, which the bite of the serpent infused into our constitution, at the expense of his life. He has carried all his human sympathies into heaven, and He never ceases to exercise them; we can sometimes look back upon a scene of suffering, or of trial which was exquisitely painful at the time, but there was no diminution of sympathy in the breast of our physician. The trial was appointed or permitted in Love; and we shall soon see that it formed part of a merciful design which was superintended and tempered by the physician himself. Dear … how well you know him, since he is just suited to our need. Have we not cause to glory in our need then?

The Christian should surely be cast upon the Lord in his sicknesses, and be exercised as to why they are sent or allowed, though doubtless he may use the means, without trusting to them apart from the blessing of God upon them. Jehovah Himself was the physician of His people Israel, ready at all times to heal and restore them. Jer. 8:22. Job, in the bitterness of his soul, found his friends to be physicians of no value. They did not understand his case, and only added to his misery. Job 13:4.

And how would God have us count on Him now, when weakness, fears, murmurs, heresies, etc., abound in the Church? Are we to think that He has forgotten us? The very difficulties of the way become a means of learning the Lord now, that will strengthen the soul in dependence and obedience. So with Israel: they had cried to the Lord and He had answered them, saying, "I am the Lord that healeth thee." Thenceforward they need fear for nothing whatever. Why should His people doubt the Lord for the way, any more than for the end? Let us be always confident. It is not the habit of faith to be looking down at what is painful in the wilderness; but to reckon on the mercy of God according to His own mercy. He would have us to know the blessed secret of grace which brings in His power to heal. Let us then be steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that our labour is not in vain in the Lord.

There will be no occasion to display this grace in heaven; there, the absence of sorrow, suffering, and death will mark that scene, just as their presence here marks this poor world. What a sight to faith! God turning the sorrows and afflictions of this poor world to His own account, and displaying in them a tenderness and compassion that overlooks none. He delights to show how He can heal a broken heart, as well as sustain a weak body. The first is not beyond Him, the second is not beneath Him.