Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17
Gracious Jesus, I often read this text looking in the rear view mirror, as though I no longer need your medicinal care… as though I used to be a big sinner needing the great physician to heal me. How I wish that was the whole diagnosis.
In one glorious way, I already enjoy perfect health. You’ve already given me the perfect and permanent “health” of justification. I cannot and will never be more justified than I already am in you, Jesus. You’ve completely freed me from my cancerous and condemning guilt. The gospel is our declaration of a clean bill of righteousness-health. In that sense, I’m no longer a sick sinner… but only in that sense.
For the more I see of your beauty in the Scriptures, the more I realize I have congenital heart disease. I’m a sick man that needs a mighty and merciful Physician to transform me. So I come before you today acknowledging the heart disease you alone can heal.
As you’ve freed me from the guilt of my sin, please heal me more fully of its shame and power. Shame has the power to isolate and paralyze. We cannot love others well if we stay preoccupied with our failures and brokenness. I’m not asking for greater self-esteem, but greater esteem for you, Jesus. That’s where freedom to love well is found, and nowhere else. I’m not a victim making excuses, but a beloved child of God crying for greater gospel-health.
Heal my thinking from the ever-present disease of unbelief and second-guessing. Heal my emotions from the dark infection of self-interest and self-protection. I want godly anger, not destructive pouting. I want gospel joy, not circumstantial happiness. I want sadness born from a heart of mercy and kindness, not melancholy generated from not getting my way. Heal my choosing from the destructive diseases of selfishness, stubbornness and self-sufficiency.
Jesus, there is no other Physician like you—so gracious and powerful. We are as healthy as we love your name above every other name (including our own)… your glory above all earthly honors… and your everlasting kingdom above all our petty fiefdoms.
May your will be our bread, and your grace our potion, and your glory our portion. So very Amen, we pray, in your holy and healing name.