James Nisbet Commentary - Matthew 9:35 - 9:35

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James Nisbet Commentary - Matthew 9:35 - 9:35


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THE GREAT PHYSICIAN

‘And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.’

Mat_9:35

This feature of our Lord’s ministry was neither accidental or inevitable. Nothing in His work was accident; all was deliberate; all had an object. Nothing in His work was inevitable, except so far as it was freely dictated by His wisdom and His mercy.

I. Teacher and physician.—We may infer with reverence and certainty that Christ’s first object was to show Himself as the Deliverer and Restorer of human nature as a whole; not of the reason and conscience merely, without the imagination and the affections; not of the spiritual side of men’s nature, without the bodily; and therefore He was not only Teacher, but also Physician.

II. The present function of the human body.—We see in it at once a tabernacle and an instrument; it is the tabernacle of the soul and the temple of the Holy Ghost. And thus the human body is, in our idea, itself precious and sacred; it is an object of true reverence, if only by reason of Him Whom it is thus permitted to house and to serve.

III. The destiny of the body.—As we Christians gaze at it we know that there awaits it the humiliation of death and decay; we know also that it has a future beyond; the hour of death is the hour of resurrection. It is the Lord who ‘shall change our vile body.’

—
Canon Liddon.

Illustration

‘To suppose that this union of prophet and physician was determined by the necessity of some rude civilization, such as that of certain tribes in Central Africa and elsewhere, or certain periods and places in mediæval Europe, when knowledge was scanty, when it was easy and needful for a single person at each social centre to master all that was known on two or three great subjects—this is to make a supposition which does not apply to Palestine at the time of our Lord’s appearance.’