The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. PeterLumby, J. Rawson (Joseph Rawson)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Peter
Lumby, J. Rawson (Joseph Rawson)
Bible. Peter -- Commentaries
that He was conscious in Himself of a demand on His power when such
cures were wrought. Thus we are told, at the cure of the woman with
the issue, that Jesus perceived in Himself that the power proceeding
from Him had gone forth (Mark v. 30); and again when many were cured,
that "power came forth from Him and healed them all" (Luke vi. 19). Of
the woman Jesus says expressly, "Thy faith hath made thee whole"; and
the manifestation of eagerness to touch Jesus is a sign of the faith
of the others whom the Divine power blessed with health.
The Bible recognises everywhere the analogy between sin and sickness.
May we not trace some analogy between the Lord's works of healing and
that mightier deliverance from sin won by Christ upon the cross, an
analogy which may help, if but a little, to give meaning to the
bearing by Christ of human sins? A power went forth when the sick were
healed; and through that imparted power they were restored to health,
faith being the pathway which brought the Divine virtue to their aid.
Thus Jesus bore their diseases and took them away. Look through this
figure on the work of our redemption. Christ has borne the burden of
sin. He has died for sin that men may die from sin, that sin may be
slain in us, the fell disease healed by the power of His suffering. We
cannot comprehend what was done for the sick when Christ was on earth,
nor what is wrought for sinners by His grace in heaven. Those alone
who reap the blessing know its certainty; and they can but say, as the
blind man whose sight was restored, "One thing I know: that, whereas I
was blind, now I see" (John ix. 25).
To this teaching, that Christ's suffering wrought man's rescue, St.
Peter adds emphasis by another quotation from that chapter of Isaiah
which he has so much in mind: _by whose stripes ye were healed_.
Christ was stricken, and God grants to His sufferings a power to heal
the souls of those whom He loves because they strive to love Him.
Healing through wounds! Soundness through that which speaks only of
injury! Mysterious dispensation! But long ago it had been
foreshadowed, and shown also how little connexion there was to be,
except through faith, between the remedy and the disease. Those who
were bitten of the serpents in the wilderness gazed on the brazen
serpent, and were healed. In the dead brass was no virtue, but God was
pleased to make of it a speaking sacrament; so has it pleased Him to
give healing of sins to those who by faith appropriate the sacrifice
on Calvary. Christ has claimed the type for Himself: "I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself" (John xii.
32).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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