Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Matthew 9:12
But when Jesus heard [that,] he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
12. They that be whole, &c.] There is a touch of irony in the words. They that are “whole” are they who think themselves whole. So below, the “righteous” are those who are righteous in their own eyes.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
They that be whole … – Jesus, in reply, said that the whole needed not a physician. Sick persons only needed his aid. A physician would not commonly be found with those that were in health. His proper place was among the sick. So, says he, If you Pharisees are such as you think yourselves – already pure and holy – you do not need my aid. It would be of no use to you, and you would not thank me for it. With those persons who feel that they are sinners I may be useful, and there is my proper place. Or the expression may mean, I came on purpose to save sinners: my business is with them. There are none righteous; and as a physician is in his proper place with the sick, so am I with guilty and miserable sinners.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Mat 9:12
They that be whole need not a physician.
The heavenly physician
I. Who neglect the heavenly physician?
1. Those who depend for salvation upon their own good lives.
2. Those who depend for salvation upon their religious duties.
3. Those who depend for salvation upon their correct notions.
II. Those who value the heavenly physician-They that are sick. A general invitation to this Physician. Reasons why some of you are still uncured. How will His medicine affect you? Think of His love. (C. Clayton, M. A.)
I. There is a moral disease in the heart and character of man,
1. Depraved mental appetite.
2. The faculty of moral vision is impaired.
3. Moral stupor and lethargic disposition of mind.
4. Feverish excitement of disposition.
5. Moral weakness and want of activity.
II. The peculiar characteristics by which this moral disease is distinguished.
1. Universal in extent.
2. Disastrous in results.
3. Incurable by anything less than Divine energy.
III. The remedy proposed.
1. Universally adapted.
2. Absolutely free.
3. Infallably efficacious. (The Pulpit.)
Jesus the Physician
I. We are all sick. Many are our ailments. Sin the great malady. We need a Physician. The world has no medicines.
II. What a physician he is.
1. He is appointed of God (Isa 61:1).
2. He is adapted for it. Understands all cases. Neglects none.
III. The remedy. He makes use of many means of recovery.
1. Sometimes he makes use of the affections as a means of restoring health. How many have to trace that recovery to loss of a dear object!
2. Sometimes He makes use of a reproving conscience.
3. The main remedy is His own precious blood:
(1) it is no small mercy to feel our spiritual malady;
(2) the remedy must be received or our souls sickness cannot be healed;
(3) beware of false, superficial healing;
(4) beware of losing the healing;
(5) take heed of expecting a more perfect cure than scripture warrants;
(6) admire the costliness of the remedy, its freeness, universality, and, above all, the Giver. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)
Christ the great Physician
I. That sin is the disease of the soul.
1. Sickness destroys our power of action.
2. It deprives a man of rest.
3. It frequently occasions delirium.
4. It deforms the body.
5. It is the forerunner of death.
II. That Jesus Christ is the great physician.
III. That men are generally too insensible of their sins to apply to Christ.
IV. Those who know their true condition are very desirous of his help, (G. Burder.)
The Physician and His patients
I. A defence, complete and unanswerable. Christ did not come despising the people, but as a Healer of the sick.
II. A direction to His followers.
1. Christianity is remedial.
2. Christianity is hopeful. (D. Fraser, D. D.)
The healing work healthy
A physician once told us that he kept himself in health by going to see patients. Whenever he discontinued this, and insisted on patients coming to him, or when he tried to go out of practice altogether, he fell into lethargy, and lost both physical and mental power; but so soon as he resumed active efforts to heal others, his own healthy returned. Let servants and handmaids of Christ take the hint. He who desires sound, strong, spiritual life and health in himself should go and try to heal others, showing patience, sympathy, and hopefulness. This is to walk as Christ walked. (D. Fraser, D. D.)
The characteristics of the whole and sick, in a spiritual sense, considered and contrasted
There are none of the sons of men who are really whole. The whole and sick in contrast are these:
1. He that is whole has never had a clear affecting sight and sense of sin; but he that is sick is fully convicted, and deeply sensible of it.
2. They that are whole are generally easy and serene, and unapprehensive of danger; but the sick soul is alarmed and anxious, and cant be easy till it perceives some appearances of recovery.
3. They that are whole are unwilling to apply to a physician, or to follow his prescriptions; but to the sick a physician is welcome, and they will submit to his directions, however self-denying. (S. Davies, M. A.)
Christ no specialist
Properly we have amongst ourselves now special studies of special cases. One man undertakes the brain, another the heart, another the blood, it may be, another the bones and joints. This is right, amongst ourselves; for probably hardly any one man has the time, even if he had the capacity, to master with sufficient adequateness all the details and necessities of our wondrous bodily frame. But Jesus Christ said to the leper, Be thou clean, to the man sick of the palsy, grievously tormented, I will come and heal him. When he went into Peters house and saw his wifes mother laid and sick of the fever, he touched her hand and the fever left her, he put out the fire with his touch. He is no specialist, he has not a necromancers power over any one department of human life or human suffering. His healing was fundamental and all-inclusive. He made the well-head pure, and the flowing stream was as pure as the fountain whence it flowed. It is so in spiritual matters. There is not in the Church a doctor who cures lying, and another who makes a special study of drunkenness, and a third who is gifted with peculiar ability in dealing with persons of felonious disposition. There is one Mediator between God and man: he makes the heart right, and then all the accidental local diseases, with all their train of ever-varying symptoms, are cleansed and utterly expelled. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Jesus Christ can attend to all who come to Him at the same moment
I once went with a friend who wanted to see a great physician. But there were ever so many other people waiting to see him, and they went in by turns one by one, and we had to wait a whole hour before our turn came. The physician could not attend to more than one person at a time. But if all you dear children were to pray to the Saviour this evening at the same moment, and tell Him all your wants, He could listen to you all at the same time, and help each of you according to your need. (W. Harris.)
Jesus is always at home
If your little sister was taken very ill and you were sent for the doctor, you would run with all your speed; yet when you came to his house he might be just gone out, and your sister might die before he came home. But this is never the case with Jesus. Whenever you call upon Him, you will find Him. He is always where people can find Him directly they want Him, and you know he can heal people without coming to them in His bodily presence. (W. Harris.)
Unconscious of danger
Sometimes people are in a very dangerous state, and yet they do not feel pain. In a sad railway accident which happened some time ago, a young lady was taken out of one of the carriages, and she said she was not hurt at all, she felt no pain. She stood up and tried to walk and then fell back dead. She had received a very serious injury, and yet she did not feel it at the moment. So it was with these Pharisees, they had a sin within their hearts which would ruin them if it was not taken away. That sin was pride. This sin is so dangerous, because it keeps people from feeling how sinful they are, and so keeps them from coming to Jesus Christ to be healed. (W. Harris.)
Christ the Physician of souls
I. Sin is the sickness of the soul. It is the disease of the soul that makes the sinner a sick man.
1. Sickness brings pain and torment to the body, so does sin to the soul.
2. Sickness takes away the beauty of the body. Sin spoils the beauty of the soul.
3. Diseases are deaths carols which are sent; before it to bind the prisoner. Sin tends to spiritual and eternal deeds, and will bring it on if it be not cured,
II. What is in sin that sickens the soul?
1. The guilt of it the obligation to punishment.
2. The stain. It brings a blot with it, that defiles the soul.
3. The reigning power of it. Sin keeps its throne. It commands and receives obedience.
4. The indwelling power of it.
III. What are the properties of soul sickness?
1. It is spiritual. They are the most dangerous disorders that affect the vital parts.
2. It is an universal sickness, spreading itself through the whole man. All the faculties of the soul are injured and disordered by it. It darkens the mind, wounds the conscience, pollutes the heart, disorders the affections, and weakens the memory for good.
3. It is an infectious sickness.
4. It is hereditary, natural to us. We are born with it.
5. It is a growing disease.
6. It is mortal disease.
IV. Is sin the sickness of your soul?
1. Go quickly to the Physician for the cure of the disease of the soul which you labour under, Delay no longer.
2. Time is flying. No medicine will cure that wound, no argument will persuade it to return. Yesterday has taken its eternal farewell. The candle burnt to the snuff will not light again. Your only time is the present.
3. Death is approaching. If death take us away raider the power of that sickness, there is no cure for it hereafter, if.
4. Make frequent application to Christ. Such people as can take little food at once, had need to take it frequently, Alas! the few addresses which we make to the throne of grace, look like as we thought ourselves whole, little needing the Physician. (Thomas Boston.)
Christs way of caring souls
Three things concur to the care of the soul.
I. The blood of Christ.
II. The spirit of Christ.
III. The word of Christ.
1. He sent His word and healed them.
2. The waters of the sanctuary are healing waters. (Thomas Boston.)
Christ cures all who come to Him
Why does He undertake and perform the cure of souls?
I. Because he has his fathers commission for that effect.
II. Because of his love and pity to men. Love provided the remedy and applies it also.
III. Because he hath been at vast expense to prepare the remedy and medicine for their souls.
IV. For his own glory.
1. The glory of the Mediator is highly exalted by His curing sick souls.
2. The glory of God is displayed in the cure.
3. Had the sick been left to be swallowed up by death, justice would have been exalted, but now justice, mercy, grace, and truth, are all glorified in their salvation through Christ. (Thomas Boston.)
Christ the Physician of souls
Come to Him for the cure of your spiritual diseases.
I. You have need of him. Let necessity drive you to Him. The less you see your need, the more need you have of Him. Some diseases are very common among us.
1. Blindness of the eyes of the mind.
2. Spiritual dumbness.
3. Hardness of heart.
4. Falling evil of backsliding.
5. Pride and self-conceit.
6. Decay of grace.
II. Christ is skilful.
1. He knows what will suit your disease.
2. He is successful. Seine diseases are the reproach of medicine; none can baffle Him.
III. He cures freely.
1. Other physicians are enriched by their patients, but He enricheth His making them heirs of glory.
2. He is the only physician.
3. Either you must die or come to film. (Thomas Boston.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 12. They that be whole need not a physician] A common proverb, which none could either misunderstand or misapply. Of it the reader may make the following use:-
1. Jesus Christ represents himself here as the sovereign Physician of souls.
2. That all stand in need of his healing power.
3. That men must acknowledge their spiritual maladies, and the need they have of his mercy, in order to be healed by him.
4. That it is the most inveterate and dangerous disease the soul can be afflicted with to imagine itself whole, when the sting of death, which is sin, has pierced it through in every part, infusing its poison every where.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Mark and Luke, in the places before mentioned, have the same answer, only leaving out these words, Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, quoted from Hos 6:6. Our Saviours reply to the Pharisees, to him that duly considers it, will appear very smart.
1. They were a generation that laid all religion upon rituals, sacrifice, and traditions.
2. That justified themselves, Luk 16:15, and thought they needed no repentance.
Saith our Saviour, I am the spiritual Physician. With him would they have the physician to converse, but with such as are sick? Those that are whole (as the Pharisees account themselves) think they have no need of my coming amongst them. By their peevishness at the acts of mercy which I do (and those of the highest mercy too, healing souls) they show that they do not understand what Hosea (a prophet acknowledged by themselves) long since taught them, that the Lord desired mercy before sacrifice; for that appeareth to be the sense of not sacrifice in that text, both by the next words, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings, and by the many precepts by which God declared that he did desire sacrifices.
For I am not come to call the righteous, that is, those who are swelled in an opinion of their own righteousness but (sensible) sinners to repentance: first to repentance, then to the receiving remission of sins through me, and eternal life.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
12. But when Jesus heard that,he said unto themto the Pharisees and scribes; addressingHimself to them, though they had shrunk from addressing Him.
They that be whole need not aphysician, but they that are sickthat is, “Ye deemyourselves whole; My mission, therefore, is not to you: Thephysician’s business is with the sick; therefore eat I with publicansand sinners.” Oh, what myriads of broken hearts, of sin-sicksouls, have been bound up by this matchless saying!
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
But when Jesus heard that,…. The charge the Pharisees brought against him, and the insinuations they had made of him to his disciples; which he either overheard himself, or his disciples related to him,
he said unto them; the Pharisees, with an audible voice, not only to confute and convince them, but chiefly to establish his disciples, they were endeavouring to draw away from him:
they that be whole need not a physician; by which he would signify that he was a “physician”: and so he is in a spiritual sense, and that a very skilful one: he knows the nature of all the diseases of the soul, without being told them by the patient; what are the true causes of them; what is proper to apply; when is the best time, and what the best manner: he is an universal one, with regard both to diseases and to persons, that apply to him; he heals all sorts of persons, and all sorts of diseases; such as are blind from their birth, are as deaf as the deaf adder, the halt, and the lame, such as have broken hearts, yea the plague in their hearts, and have stony ones, and all the relapses of his people; which he does by his stripes and wounds, by the application of his blood, by his word and Gospel, through sinners looking to him, and touching him: he is an infallible one, none ever went from him without a cure; none ever perished under his hands; the disease he heals never returns more to prevail, so as to bring on death and destruction; and he does all freely, without money, and without price. So Philo the Jew calls the Logos, or word, , “an healer of diseases” x, and God our legislator, , “the best physician of the diseases of the soul” y. Now Christ argues from this his character, in vindication of himself; as that he was with these persons, not as a companion of their’s, but as a physician to them; and as it is not unlawful, but highly proper and commendable, that a physician should be with the sick; so it was very lawful, fit, and proper, yea praiseworthy in him, to be among these publicans and sinners, for their spiritual good. He suggests indeed, that “they that be whole”, in perfect health and strength, as the Pharisees thought themselves to be, even free from all the maladies and diseases of sin, were strong, robust, and able to do anything, and everything of themselves; these truly stood in no “need of” him, as a physician, in their own apprehension; they saw no need of him; in principle they had no need of him, and in practice did not make use of him; and therefore it was to no purpose to attend them, but converse with others, who had need of him:
but they that are sick; who are not only diseased and disordered in all the powers and faculties of their souls, as all Adam’s posterity are, whether sensible of it or not; but who know themselves to be so, these see their need of Christ as a physician, apply to him as such, and to them he is exceeding precious, a physician of value; and such were these “publicans” and sinners. These words seem to be a proverbial expression, and there is something like it in the z Talmud, , “he that is afflicted with any pain goes”, or “let him go to the physician’s house”; that is, he that is attended with any sickness, or disease, does, or he ought to, consult a physician.
x Allegor. l. 2. p. 93. y Quod Deus sit immutab. p. 303. z T. Bab. Bava Kama, fol. 46. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
But they that are sick ( ). Probably a current proverb about the physician. As a physician of body and soul Jesus was bound to come in close touch with the social outcasts.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them,” (ho de akousas lipen) “Then when Jesus heard it he said;” He received word of their ungracious, backhanded criticism, their deeds of darkness, Joh 3:19-21. He addressed the murmuring Pharisees and Scribes directly, though they had shrunk from addressing Him .
2) “They that be whole need not a physician,” (ou cherian echousin hoi ischuontes iatrou) “Those who are strong do not need a physician; a physician goes where he is needed. If you are whole (holy), as righteous as you claim, you do not need me; my mission is not to you, or to satisfy you. This is a touch of irony. The Physician’s business is not to minister to well people is it? He “came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” Luk 5:32; Luk 19:10,
3) “But they that are sick.” (all’ hoi kakos echontes) “But it is those who are ill who have such a need,” isn’t it? And they were spiritually ill, Mat 5:20; Rom 10:1-3. It is the physician’s job to diagnose the ill, lay it bare, and prescribe a remedy. The publicans were more responsive to our Lord’s compassion toward them in their sins, than the snake-hearted, hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, Mr 2:17; 12:35,37-40.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
12. Not they who are in health need a physician It is evident from Christ’s reply that the scribes erred in two ways: they did not take into account the office of Christ; and, while they spared their own vices, they proudly despised all others. This deserves our particular attention, for it is a disease which has been always very general. Hypocrites, being satisfied and intoxicated with a foolish confidence in their own righteousness, do not consider the purpose for which Christ was sent into the world, and do not acknowledge the depth of evils in which the human race is plunged, or the dreadful wrath and curse of God which lies on all, or the accumulated load of vices which weighs them down.
The consequence is, that they are too stupid to feel the miseries of men, or to think of a remedy. While they flatter themselves, they cannot endure to be placed in their own rank, and think that injustice is done them, when they are classed with transgressors. Our Lord glances at this second error by replying, that they who are in health have no need of a physician It is an ironical admission, (520) and is intended to show that they are offended when they see sinners, because they claim righteousness for themselves. Because you are in health, (he says,) you despise the sick, are offended at them, and cannot endure the sight of them: but a physician ought to be affected in a very different manner. He afterwards points out that he must discharge the duties of a physician, because he has been sent by the Father to call sinners
Though Christ begins with reproof, yet if we desire to make progress in his doctrine, what he has put in the second place must receive our first consideration. He came to quicken the dead, to justify the guilty and condemned, to wash those who were polluted and full of uncleanness, to rescue the lost from hell, to clothe with his glory those who were covered with shame, to renew to a blessed immortality those who were debased by disgusting vices. If we consider that this was his office and the end of his coming, — if we remember that this was the reason why he took upon him our flesh, why he shed his blood, why he offered the sacrifice of his death, why he descended even to hell, we will never think it strange that he should gather to salvation those who have been the worst of men, and who have been covered with a mass of crimes.
He whom you detest appears to you to be unworthy of the grace of Christ. Why then was Christ himself made a sacrifice and a curse, but that he might stretch out his hand to accursed sinners? Now, if we feel disgust at being associated by Baptism and the Lord’s Supper with vile men, and regard our connection with them as a sort of stain upon us, we ought immediately to descend into ourselves, and to search without flattery our own evils. Such an examination will make us willingly allow ourselves to be washed in the same fountain with the most impure, and will hinder us from rejecting the righteousness which he offers indiscriminately to all the ungodly, the life which he offers to the dead, and the salvation which he offers to the lost.
(520) “ C’est une concession par ironie, (c’est a dire, moquerie;”)—”it is an admission made in irony, (that is, in ridicule.”)
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(12) They that be whole.Literally, They that are strong. St. Luke gives, with a more professional precision, They that are in health. That, speaking from the thoughts and standpoint of those addressed (which in another than our Lord we might term grave irony), which enters so largely into our Lords teaching, appears here in its most transparent form. Those of whom He speaks were, we know, suffering from the worst form of spiritual disease, but in their own estimation they were without spot or taint, and as such. therefore, He speaks to them. On their own showing, they ought not to object to His carrying on that work where there was most need of it. The proverb cited by Him in Luk. 4:23 shows that it was not the first time that He had referred to His own work as that of the Great Physician.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
12. Whole need not a physician Here is the fundamental principle of benevolence on which he proceeded. He asked not, Where shall I find the wealthy, the honourable, or the learned? Such had their comforts, and would despise his offers. He visited not Herod or Caesar. He condescended to those whom all acknowledged to be miserable and lost. He thus visibly declared that the Saviour of man is emphatically a Saviour of the lost.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are whole have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” ’
When Jesus heard what was being said He patiently explained His position to the Pharisees. He pointed out that a doctor did not go to those who were well. He went to those who were ill. It was the ill who needed a doctor. And thus as He was Himself a physician of souls it was necessary for Him mix with those who needed His help. It was after all those who were ‘smitten of God’ whom He had promised to heal (Hos 6:1).
His claim that He Himself was a doctor of the spiritually sick was, of course, of considerable significance. While the Pharisees considered that their most important aim must be to avoid defilement, Jesus was saying that, like a doctor, it was necessary for Him to risk defilement in order to help others. Furthermore He was also setting Himself up as fulfilling God’s own ministry. For it was God Who had offered Himself as the Doctor of souls (Hos 6:1; Hos 7:1). He was thus claiming a unique position with God.
He wanted both the Pharisees and the world to know that He had not come simply to mingle with ‘those who are whole’, that is, ‘the righteous’, that is those who strove to keep the Law and thought that they could do so (who would not be many in number). He had come rather to help those who were sick of soul and in need. He had come to save and restore. Those who were in health and whole did not need a doctor. It was only those who were sick who did so. Thus He was here to be a spiritual doctor to sinners and to all in need. He was here to call them to turn to God in repentance. And in order to achieve that He had to go where they were.
It is probable that He had mind here the words in Jer 8:22, ‘Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?’ That expressed why He had come. He had come for the purpose of meeting that lack, that is, to provide a balm in Gilead, and to be that physician. In a sense there were some who did not need a physician. There were the godly in Israel. They had already become right with God. But He was not suggesting that the Pharisees did not need a physician. He knew that in fact, on the whole, they desperately needed one, for their righteousness was not sufficient for entry under the Kingly Rule of Heaven (Mat 5:20). Rather He was pointing out that the recovery of God’s people in these last days did require a physician like Himself, and that He had therefore come for all who recognised their need and admitted their spiritual ill-health. Those who thought themselves already righteous would not, of course, come to Him. Thus He would not be able to help them. But for all who did recognise their need, whoever they were, He was available.
His claim to be God’s physician must be seen for what it is. He is setting Himself up as having a certain level of uniqueness. The point is that He is able to restore sinners because he is not a sinner. An ailing and sick doctor would be of little use to his patients. And He is calling them to repentance, to turn to God with all their hearts, which is something that He can do because He Himself needs no repentance. Here then as the only Son He was acting on behalf of His Father. We may compare Jesus’ willingness to be a healer here with the man in Isa 3:7, who was not prepared to be a healer because it would be too costly and demanding. Jesus minded neither the cost nor the demand. The Father had sought a physician and He was here.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Christ’s defense:
v. 12. But when Jesus heard that, He said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
v. 13. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. Jesus heard the murmuring and took the fault-finders to task. He quotes a proverb in explanation of His own conduct, implying, at the same time, a criticism of their position. A physician naturally finds his field of activity among the sick, such as feel the need of his services. Those that are well, or deceive themselves into the belief that they are in perfect health, resent the suggestion of a physician in their case. Christ is the true Physician of the soul. He that is spiritually well, that is righteous and perfect, without sin, feels no need of the Savior of sinners. Though there are no just persons in the world that would honestly belong to this class, the great majority claim perfection, a complete righteousness, for themselves. They want nothing of Jesus, the Redeemer. Only the meek and lowly in heart, that feel their sin and the curse of sin, they come to the Friend of sinners and accept healing at His hands. Jesus reminds the Pharisees, who might have felt the inference, of the word of the prophet, Hos 6:6. Mercy goes before sacrifice. All service of the lips and sacrifices of the hands, all mere outward worship, all dead orthodoxy, is an abomination before the Lord. A merciful heart manifesting its sympathy in deeds of mercy pleases Him. But the Pharisees of all times have never felt the need of the mercy of God, and therefore have never tasted its sublime sweetness. For that reason they feel no mercy towards their fellow-creatures. All those that are called after the name of Christ must be filled with the enthusiasm of the mission of Jesus.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Mat 9:12 . The whole and the sick of the proverb are figurative expressions for the and the , Mat 9:13 . In the application the Pharisees are included among the former, not on account of their comparatively greater (de Wette), but because of their fancied , righteousness, as is evident from the sentiments of Jesus regarding this class of men expressed elsewhere, and likewise from Mat 9:13 . The thought, then, is this: “the righteous (among whom you reckon yourselves) do not need the deliverer, but the sinners.” This contains an “ ironica concessio ” to the Pharisees, “in qua ideo offendi eos docet peccatorum intuitu, quia justitiam sibi arrogant,” Calvin. The objection, that in point of fact Jesus is come to call the self-righteous as well, is only apparent, seeing that He could not direct His call to these, as such (Joh 9:39 ff.), so long as they did not relinquish their pretensions, and were themselves without receptivity for healing.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
12 But when Jesus heard that , he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
Ver. 12. But when Jesus heard that, he said ] Hence we learn, that although it be a servile business, as Plato calleth it, and an endless piece of work, to make answer and apology to all slanders ( ); yet where God’s glory is interested, and the salvation of other men’s souls hazarded, we must endeavour the clearing of our names, and the righting of our injuries and indignities cast upon us. But let this be done with meekness of wisdom, with weight of reason, not heat of passion, and rather in God’s words than in our own, as here.
They that be whole ] There are none such, but in conceit only. The civil justiciary ails nothing, complains of nothing, is as sound as a rock; but no such sound heart can come to heaven; as, in another sense, none but sound can come there. Only sensible sinners are capable of cure and comfort, such as see themselves Christless creatures.
Need not the physician ] And the physician needs them as little; he came not, cares not, for them, they have as much help from him as they seek. Presumption is as a chain to their neck, and they believe their interest in Christ, when it is no such thing. They make a bridge of their own shadow, and so fall into the brook; they perish by catching at their own catch, hanging on their own fancy, which they falsely call and count faith.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
12. . . ] Both words, in the application of the saying, must be understood subjectively (‘ironica concessio,’ Calvin, Meyer): as referring to their respective opinions of themselves; as also and , Mat 9:13 : not as though the Pharisees were objectively either or , however much objective truth and may have had as applied to the publicans and sinners.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Mat 9:12 . . : to whom? Were the fault-finders present to hear? , etc.: something similar can be cited from classic authors, vide instances in Grotius, Elsner, and Wetstein. The originality lies in the application = the physician goes where he is needed, therefore, I am here among the people you contemptuously designate publicans and sinners. The first instalment, this, of Christ’s noble apology for associating with the reprobates a great word.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
They that be, &c. Figure of speech Paroemia (App-6).
whole = strong. Eng. “whole” is from Anglo-Saxon hael = our “hale”, healthy or strong.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
12. . .] Both words, in the application of the saying, must be understood subjectively (ironica concessio, Calvin, Meyer): as referring to their respective opinions of themselves; as also and , Mat 9:13 :-not as though the Pharisees were objectively either or , however much objective truth and may have had as applied to the publicans and sinners.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Mat 9:12.[406] , need) , needs, are to be seen everywhere.-[407], ill) Such is indeed the case with sinners.[408]
[406] Jesus, as a faithful master, brings help to his disciples.-V. g.
[407] Dost thou feel infirmity ( ), as opposed to strength ( )? In that case betake thyself to the Physician, and seek His help.-V. g.
[408] In the original, Sic sane habent peccatores. There is a play here on the word habent, sc. – .-(I. B.)
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
The Physician
They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.Mat 9:12.
1. One of the best known scenes in the gospel story is here placed before our eyes, and the same picture, in all essentials, meets us more than once in the Gospels. On the one side stands Jesus, who sat at meat with publicans and sinners as their friend; and on the other side the Pharisees, who murmured and found fault with our Lord for so doing. On another day Jesus replied to the murmuring of the Pharisees by the three parables of the Lost Piece of Silver, the Lost Sheep, and the Lost Son. The same opposition was manifested when He sat at meat as the guest of Simon the Pharisee, and, to the astonishment of those who were eating with Him, allowed a woman that was a sinner to wash His feet with her tears, and to wipe them with her hair. To all sorts of people Jesus cried, Follow Me. There were the honest fishermen by the Lake of Gennesaret; there was the faithful son who wanted first to go and bury his father; and to-day it is a publican who is sitting at the receipt of custom at Capernaum. He is named Matthew, and he is the Apostle whose name stands at the head of the Gospel from which the text is taken. The publican must not be missing from the inner circle of Jesus disciples, from those whom He invited to give up their former calling and become His fellow-workers. He was not only tolerated but even drawn by Jesus to Himself, and brought forward by Him that all might know why Jesus came into the world.
If we ask in amazement how it was that a publican could immediately respond to such a call, and give up the whole course of his life, a satisfactory answer will occur to each of us. The publican Matthew, like many more of his order, must have heard Jesus preaching more than once, and possibly he may even have listened secretly to the preaching of John the Baptist. This powerful preaching had opened a new world to him, the very opposite of the world in which he had hitherto lived; a world of righteousness, of grace, and of peace. Hence sprang his implicit trust in the Man who offered Himself to him as a guide to a new life and a new life-work. He celebrated with a feast the hour in which Jesus made him a sharer in His own work. On the same day he invited many of his own class to a meal in his house. And as they felt drawn to Jesus, so Jesus also seems to have felt at ease in their company. But what a company that was! Even those who know but little of the conditions of the Holy Land at that time, of the fearful pressure of taxation under which the Jewish people had long groaned, of the habitual embezzlements and extortions of those who farmed out the taxes and of the officials under them, can understand that publicans and sinners were almost interchangeable words. Jesus Himself did not speak of them in any other way. The publicans were branded as sinners; for they were solemnly excommunicated from the synagogue as traitors and renegades, and most of them were, according to Jewish law, beaten with forty stripes save one, before they were cast out, by order of the rulers of the synagogue. Thus branded as traitors and sinners, they were shut out from all decent society, and were compelled to herd together, corrupt and corrupting. Despised, they became despicable, extortionate, base. We cannot wonder that the Pharisees sneered and shook their heads when they asked the disciples of Jesus, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?
There was nothing in Roman tax-gathering which made vice in that calling a necessary thing. In point of fact, the vice came from the outside. The master-publicans were men of rank and credit; but they put their work into the hands of subordinates who were often taken from the slums. The vices these exhibited in their profession were brought with them into their profession; they came from the previous corruptions of human nature, and no trade is chargeable with them. We cannot morally label Matthew by calling him Matthew the Publican. The truth is, the obloquy with which Matthew was regarded by his countrymen did not proceed from the fear that he was a bad man, but from the certainty that he was a bad Jew. The most galling fact to the Israel of later days was the fact that she paid tribute to another land. Ideally she claimed to be the mistress of the worldthe nation into whose treasury all tribute should flow. That such a nation should pay taxes to a foreign people, a Gentile people, was an awful thought. It was a pain worse than laceration, more cruel than a blow. But there was the possibility of a pain more poignant still. It was bad enough that the tribute of homage from Israel should be collected by a Roman. But what if the man who gathered it should be a son of Israel herself! What if the man who taunted her with her misfortunes should be one born within her pale, bred within her precincts, sheltered within her privilegesone from whom was due the veneration for her sanctuary and the reverence for her God! Now, this often happened; and it happened in the case of Matthew. Here was a Jew who had lost the last shred of patriotism. He had forgotten the traditions of his ancestors! He had not only accepted without a blush the domination by the stranger; he had taken part with the stranger in his domination! He had attached himself to the enemies of his countryhad become a collector of their tribute from his own conquered land! The man who acted thus was bound to be execrated by his race. He was execrated on that ground alone. No amount of personal vices would in the eyes of his countrymen have added to the enormity of his sin, and no amount of personal virtues would in the slightest degree have minimized that sin. His deed was itself to them the acme of all iniquity, from which nothing could detract and which nothing could intensify. The blackness of Matthews character in the eyes of the Jew was the fact of his apostasy.1 [Note: G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the New Testament, 188.]
2. It seems as though the disciples of those times were embarrassed by the question. Jesus Himself was obliged to give the answer in their stead. He replied with the proverb: They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. He sheltered His work as a healer of mens souls behind the example of those who healed mens bodies. Physicians go where they are needed (so ran His argument). They do not haunt the houses of the healthy. They go where the disease is, and you honour them for their devotion to duty. Even so I also go where I am needed. And if there be any cases specially serious, specially hopeless, specially friendless, there, above all, must I go. There My work calls Me, and there My heart leads Me. It was a great argument, simple as the common speech of men, yet deep as the Everlasting Love.
In 1842, when Dr. Hutchison Stirling was a young man and uncertain whether to follow medicine or literature as a profession, he wrote to Carlyle, who, in course of his reply, said: Practically, my advice were very decidedly that you kept by medicine; that you resolved faithfully to learn it, on all sides of it, and make yourself in actual fact an , a man that could heal disease. I am very serious in this. A steady course of professional industry has ever been held the usefullest support for mind as well as body: I heartily agree with that. And often I have said, What profession is there equal in true nobleness to medicine? He that can abolish pain, relieve his fellow-mortal from sickness, he is the indisputably usefullest of all men. Him savage and civilized will honour. He is in the right, be in the wrong who may. As a Lord Chancellor, under ones horse-hair wig, there might be misgivings; still more perhaps as a Lord Primate, under ones cauliflower; but if I could heal disease, I should say to all men and angels without fear, En ecce! 1 [Note: James Hutchison Stirling: His Life and Work, 57.]
3. The proverb Christ employed was in common use both by the Hebrew Rabbis and by the heathen historians and poets. We find it in the Talmud, and in Greek and Roman authors. It was one of that kind of sayingsthe gnomicwhich the Rabbis spent their lives in making, learning, repeating. And on our Lords lips, as they would instantly feel, it took a tone of rebuke. They professed to be healers in Israel. They professed to have a vast store of medicinal words with which they could minister to the mind diseased, and give saving health to the distempered soul. But what kind of healers were those who administered their remedies only to the hale and robust, who shrank from the sick lest they should expose themselves to infection? Yet this was precisely what these professed healers were doing. They had wisdom for the wise, but none for the foolish. They would explain the secrets of righteousness to the devout, but not to the sinful. They taught the spiritually healthy how health might be preserved, but left the sick multitude, the people altogether born in sin, to languish and perish in their iniquities.
That was not Christs conception of the Healers art and duty. The true Healer was he who dreaded no infection, who went fearlessly among the diseased, and sought to make them whole; who gave eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, feet to the lame, vigour to the decrepit, life to the dying. The Healers duty lay, not with the few strong and hale, but with the great multitude lying sick unto death, no man caring for their souls.
In this proverb, therefore, Jesus virtually announced Himself as the true Healer, the Good Physician, as caring for the weak more than for the strong, for the sick more than for the whole. And, if in that announcement there was rebuke for the Rabbis and doctors of the law as untrue to their vocation, unfaithful to their professed art of healing, there was plainly comfort and hope for the weak and sick who reclined at Matthews table.
Natural Religion is based upon the sense of sin; it recognizes the disease, but it cannot find, it does not look out for the remedy. That remedy, both for guilt and for moral impotence, is found in the central doctrine of Revelation, the Mediation of Christ. Thus it is that Christianity has been able from the first to occupy the world and gain a hold on every class of human society to which its preachers reached; this is why the Roman power and the multitude of religions which it embraced could not stand against it; this is the secret of its sustained energy, and its never-flagging martyrdoms; this is how at present it is so mysteriously potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries which beset its path. It has with it that gift of staunching and healing the one deep wound of human nature, which avails more for its success than a full encyclopedia of scientific knowledge and a whole library of controversy, and therefore it must last while human nature lasts.1 [Note: J. H. Newman, The Grammar of Assent, 480.]
I
Christ the Healer of the Body
They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. This saying serves two purposesan immediate apologetic purpose, and a permanent didactic one. Viewing it first in the former aspect, we remark that the point of the saying lies not in what is stated, but in what is impliedin the suggestion that Christ was a Physician. That understood, all becomes plain. For no one is surprised that a physician visits the sick rather than the healthy, and visits most frequently those that are most grievously afflicted with disease. Nor does any one dream of making it an occasion of reproach to a physician that he shrinks not from visiting those whose maladies are of a loathsome or dangerous nature, offensive to his senses, involving peril to his life. That he so acts is regarded simply as the display of a praiseworthy enthusiasm in his profession, the want of which would be reckoned a true ground of reproach. Regard Christ as a physician, and He at once gets the benefit of these universally prevalent sentiments as to what is becoming in one who practises the healing art.
1. Jesus Christ is the Good Physician as well as the Good Shepherd. His public ministry proves that He recognized two deadly enemies of mankind. The arch-enemy is sinthe dread evil that afflicts mans soul, against which He directed the whole forces of the spiritual world. But there was another enemy against whom also He waged a hearty and persistent warfaredisease, which afflicts mans body. He thus proved His love for mans nature as a whole, and laid down the redemption of the race on that double basis, without recognizing which the world can never be fully saved. For mans life is a unity with two essential sides; he is a compound of matter and spirit, clay and divinity, perishable body and immortal soul. Salvation means restored health; and the old proverb, Mens sana in corpore sano, is thus the condition of that perfect well-being which it is the will of God that we should all normally enjoy. In our actual experience we seldom attain to this happy condition; but that we were meant for it, and that we should strive hard for it, is shown beautifully and convincingly in the attitude which Jesus took towards sin and disease throughout His public ministry. He treated them as enemies, and He recognized their close connexion; He did what He could in forgiving mens sins to heal their sicknesses; and in healing their sicknesses He never failed to emphasize the darker evil of which disease is fundamentally one of the most persistent symbols. But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house.
Memory and imagination linger lovingly over the external ministry of healing which filled the land with the name of Jesus. He was not the only healer: in these words there is an evident reference to physicians in general, men who embodied such skill and knowledge as were then possible. Luke is called the beloved physician, and no doubt there were many beloved for their own sakes and honoured for their works sake. But of exact science there was, of course, little or none, and every chance for quackery, for empiricism, for superstition. That is a terribly suggestive phrase in the story of the woman who touched the hem of Christs garment: she had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. So is the proverb quoted by our Lord: Physician, heal thyself. So also is another ancient Jewish proverb: Even the best of doctors deserves Gehenna. And all who have seen anything of native medicine among primitive tribes know how often the cure is truly worse than the disease. It was into all that chaos and crudity that the Son of Man came with Divine power flowing from Him. Surely there never was a more beautiful story more exquisitely told! The main incidents are written on all our hearts. Yet perhaps we do not estimate largely enough the amount of His work in this direction, nor the physical and nervous strain it caused Himself as virtue went forth from Him in His manifold acts of healing. Whithersoever he entered, into villages, or city, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.1 [Note: J. M. E. Ross, The Self-Portraiture of Jesus, 8.]
Christs healing of the sick can in no way be termed against nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed was against the nature of man, that it is sickness which is abnormal, and not health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order. We should see in the miracle not the infraction of a law, but the neutralizing of a lower law, the suspension of it for a time by a higher. Of this abundant analogous examples are evermore going forward before our eyes. Continually we behold in the world around us lower laws held in restraint by higher, mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral; yet we do not say, when the lower thus gives place in favour of the higher, that there was any violation of law, or that anything contrary to nature came to pass; rather we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swallowing up the law of a lesser.2 [Note: Archbishop Trench, Notes on the Miracles, 16.]
2. Now, this ministry of physical healing was in itself a revelation. De Quincey says that Jesus adopted this line of action chiefly as the best means of advertising His approach far and wide, and thus convoking the people to His instructions. But there was more in it than that, a whole world more, then and now! It is the Divine justification of all attempts to alleviate the external and physical conditions of human life. It is the Divine justification of medical missions, which have the unique glory of being not only Christs own work, but His own work done in His own way. It is a rebuke to the unreal and affected way in which we sometimes speak of physical pain as though it were nothing at all. Had pain and sickness not been great realities, Christ would not have spent so much time and strength in fighting against them. He stands for ever now in the sight of men as the goal towards which humanity is travelling. And His ministry of physical healing is a proof that pain and sickness are temporary and abnormal things: in Gods good time there shall be no more pain because the former things are passed away.
Within the lifetime of some of us a strange and wonderful thing happened on the earthsomething of which no prophet foretold, of which no seer dreamt, nor is it among the beatitudes of Christ Himself; only St. John seems to have had an inkling of it in that splendid chapter in which he describes the new heaven and the new earth, when the former things should pass away, when all tears should be wiped away, and there should be no more crying nor sorrow. On October 16, 1846, in the amphitheatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, a new Prometheus gave a gift [sulphuric ether as an ansthetic] as rich as that of fire, the greatest single gift ever made to suffering humanity. The prophecy was fulfilledneither shall there be any more pain; a mystery of the ages had been solved by a daring experiment by man on man in the introduction of ansthesia. As Weir Mitchell sings in his poem, The Death of Pain
Whatever triumphs still shall hold the mind,
Whatever gifts shall yet enrich mankind,
Ah! here, no hour shall strike through all the years,
No hour so sweet as when hope, doubt and fears,
Mid deepening silence watched one eager brain
With Godlike will decree the Death of Pain.
At a stroke the curse of Eve was removed, that multiplied sorrow of sorrows, representing in all ages the very apotheosis of pain. The knife has been robbed of its terrors, and the hospitals are no longer the scenes of those appalling tragedies that made the stoutest quail. To-day we take for granted the silence of the operating-room, but to reach this Elysium we had to travel the slow road of laborious research, which gave us first the chemical agents, and then brave hearts had to risk reputation, and even life itself, in experiments, the issue of which was for long doubtful. More widespread in its benediction, as embracing all races and all classes of society, is the relief of suffering, and the prevention of disease through the growth of modern sanitary science in which has been fought out the greatest victory in history. It is not simply that the prospect of recovery is enormously enhanced, but Listerian surgery has diminished suffering to an extraordinary degree. Mans redemption of man is nowhere so well known as in the abolition and prevention of the group of diseases which we speak of as the fevers, or the acute infections. This is the glory of the science of medicine, and nowhere in the world have its lessons been so thoroughly carried out as in this country. If, in the memorable phrase of the Greek philosopher Prodicus, That which benefits human life is God, we may see in this new gospel a link betwixt us and the crowning race of those who eye to eye shall look on knowledge, and in whose hand nature shall be an open book.1 [Note: Sir W. Osler, Mans Redemption of Man, 81.]
II
Christ the Healer of the Soul
But, after all, our Lords supreme purpose was to be a healer of souls. Had the critics of Jesus but accredited Him with the character of a Healer of spiritual maladies, they would not have been scandalized by His habit of associating with the morally and socially degraded. But that Jesus was a physician was just the thing that never occurred to their minds. And why? Because their own thoughts and ways went in a wholly different direction, and they judged Him by themselves. The Rabbis and their disciples were students of the law, and their feeling towards such as knew not the law was one of simple aversion and contempt. They expected Jesus to share this feeling. Men are ever apt to make themselves the standard of moral judgment. The Rabbi expects all who assume the function of a teacher to share his contempt for the multitude ignorant of legal technicalities and niceties; the philosophe, confining his sympathies to the cultivated few, regards with mild disdain the interest taken by philanthropists in popular movements; the mystagogue who invites select persons to initiation into religious mysteries adopts for himself, and expects all others belonging to the spiritual aristocracy of mankind to adopt along with him, the sentiment of the Roman poet: I hate and abhor the profane rabble. The mass of mankind have eternal reason for thankfulness that Jesus Christ came not as a Rabbi, or as a philosophe, or as a hierophant, with the proud, narrow contempt characteristic of men bearing these titles, but as a healer of souls, with the broad, warm sympathies and the enthusiasm of humanity congenial to such a vocation. The fact exposed Him to the censure of contemporaries, but by way of compensation it has earned for Him the gratitude of all after ages.
Thou speakest of thy sin and miseries, which do indeed make a barrier between God and us: but, if I know Jesus ever so little, I think, when I read or hear such complaints, of practised physicians, when they are confronted with a common disease: they are not unprovided, they have medicines for it that never fail. So say I now: Jesus knows plenty of means of healing, show Him all thy wounds with a weeping heart, ask in humility and confidence for His mighty healing, and that He may heal thee thoroughly; but this may not happen unless He, for a while, increases thy wounds by a deep sense of thy sin, misery, and darkness, which indeed is means in love that thou hereafter, yea, for ever, mayest feel no further need.1 [Note: Gerhardt Tersteegen.]
1. That Christ came into the world as a healer of souls is a fact full of didactic meaning. It means, first, that Christianity is before all things a religion of redemption. Its proper vocation is to find the lost, to lift the low, to teach the ignorant, to set free those in bonds, to wash the unclean, to heal the sick; and it must go where it can discover the proper subjects of its art, remembering that the whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
(1) There is in the natural heart of man an indifferent selfishness and a careless cruelty which make men always let the weak go to the wall, and very often trample savagely on the fallen. They are akin in this to the creatures of the field; to the hounds that bite their wounded brother in the kennel; to the sea-gulls that swoop down on the wounded bird as the wave is already beginning to be crimsoned with its blood. Among savage tribes the sick and the injured were killed or left to die. In polished Greece and Imperial Rome children were exposed and slaves were mercilessly tortured. Christ taught the world that this apathy of heart is earthly, sensual, devilish. He taught us once and for ever the sacredness, not of fine gifts and fair and brilliant intellects, but of man as man. It was not for the sake of the rich, the strong, the mighty, the noble, that He took our nature upon Him, but for poor men, for slaves, for carpenters, for tax-gatherers, for fishermen, for daily labourers, for peasant women, nay, even more, for the sake of the sinful, the outcast, the fallen, for all at whom men, who are in most respects the causes of their ruin, point the finger of cruel scorn. He saw the soul of beauty in things ugly, and the potentiality of goodness in things evil.
There is an Eastern legend about Christ so profound of meaning, so full of instruction, that we are half tempted to think that it must be true in fact as it is in feeling. On the high road, under the blistering sunlight, lay a poor, miserable dog that had died of starvation. Clouds of flies had begun to settle on the carcase, and the lazy, aimless wayfarers gathered round to look at it, scaring away for a moment the obscene vultures that hovered near; and all of them, one after another, expressed their idle disgust and their pitiless loathing of it. But at last they fell silent, for the Master approached, and for a moment He stood and cast His eye on that horrible object, on that dead creature which God had made, and there was silence, and at last He said, Its teeth are as white as pearls, and so He passed on. He who cared for the lilies and for the lions cared also for the little sparrows, and had His word of pity even for that dead dog. I think that he who could have invented such a legend must have seen very deeply into the heart of Christ.1 [Note: Dean Farrar.]
The late General Gordon, in one of his published letters, describes the remorse he long felt for a trivial act of cruelty into which he inadvertently fell. A lizard was climbing up the side of his house in the sunshine and he thoughtlessly flicked it with his cane and so cut short its life. He had often shed blood upon the battlefield without the slightest hesitation, and felt never a qualm of conscience afterwards. But this act troubled him more than the carnage in which he had taken his part as a soldier. He was haunted by the feeling that he had destroyed a life that was more meagre in capacity than his own, and much shorter in its span. In the regret to which he confessed there was a genuine ethical discernment, for every virtuous nature feels itself under special obligation to the weak. God thinks mercifully of us because, in comparison with His own rich, manifold, exhaustless and immortal blessedness, our lives are chequered, circumscribed, crippled, and poverty-stricken. We are mortal, blooms trembling to their fall, fading dreams, fabrics of exposed nerve, phantasms of alternating smiles and tears. We do not expiate our sins by that which we suffer, and God has no indulgent laxity for wilful, unwept, reiterated transgression; but our frailties woo the marvellous compassions of His Fatherhood. Perhaps if He had not made us out of the dust we could not have stood so near the sacred centre of His pitying love.1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The God of the Frail, 5.]
(2) The whole need not a physician. Are there any men, then, who are whole? Jesus did not directly deny it. The publicans and sinners were sick peoplesick in soul, sick in honour, sick in conscience. The Pharisees were whole in comparison with them. They had remained true to their nationality, they lived correctly according to the law of their fathers, they were held in honour by their nation as the guardians and teachers of the law. If they were of different minds amongst themselves on religious and moral questions, still they had and knew the law, and were well versed in expounding it. They had had great teachers, whose decisions were accounted by them as a gospel. They would also gladly have recognized a new Master, who in their own way, only more clearly and more intelligently than their former masters, would comment on the Word of God and teach the true wisdom of life. But they had no need of a Teacher who said, I am a Physician, because they did not feel ill.
In the great company of those who have been baptized in the name of Christ, we find many people like the Pharisees, who are unable to accept Jesus and to desire a closer relationship to Him, just because Jesus is a Physician and they feel well. The Gospel is a medicine: to one it tastes bitter, to another nauseously sweet. Who cares to take medicine when he feels perfectly well? A draught of fresh water from a natural or an artificial well, or a glass of wine at a joyful feast, tastes better and does more good to a man who is whole.
How are we to reply to this? Are we to prove to such people that they are sick, and that our whole nation is sick, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot? Are we to force ourselves upon them, and show that their imaginary health does not exist, and that they are sadly in need of the Physician? That would not be like unto the Master. Jesus did not say to the Pharisees, Come unto Me, He said, Go your way. Neither did He say, Come and learn to know Me better, but, Go and learn what is written in your Bible: I will have mercy and not sacrifice. If ye were compassionate, ye would not look down so contemptuously on degraded and inferior people, and so askance at those who take an interest in them; ye would not find the distance so great between them and yourselves, but would acknowledge them as your equals in all the essentials which make up the misery and the dignity of man. Go and learn better what ye yourselves acknowledge as the chief command of your God, the law of love. Then prove yourselves, and thus learn to know yourselves. Perhaps the day will come when ye will find yourselves destitute of love, and therefore destitute of all true life, when ye will feel sick in the innermost centre of your being. Remember then that there is a Physician who heals all diseases. Jesus still speaks thus to those who are whole, and who turn their backs upon Him; and He can scarcely speak in any other way to many of those who confess Him.1 [Note: T. Zahn, Bread, and Salt from the Word of God, 235.]
A minister, when he had done preaching in a country village, said to a farm-labourer who had been listening to him, Do you think Jesus Christ died to save good people, or bad people? Well, sir, said the man, I should say He died to save good people. But did He die to save bad people? No, sir; no, certainly not, sir. Well, then, what will become of you and me? Well, sir, I do not know. I dare say you be pretty good, sir; and I try to be as good as I can. That is just the common doctrine; and after all, though we think it has died out among us, that is the religion of ninety-nine English people out of every hundred who know nothing of Divine grace: we are to be as good as we can; we are to go to church or to chapel, and do all that we can, and then Jesus Christ died for us, and we shall be saved. Whereas the gospel is that He did not do anything at all for people who can rely on themselves, but gave Himself for lost and ruined ones. He did not come into the world to save self-righteous people; on their own showing, they do not want to be saved. He comes because we need Him, and therefore He comes only to those who need Him; and if we do not need Him, and are such good, respectable people, we must find our own way to heaven. Need, need alone, is that which quickens the physicians footsteps.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]
2. That Christs supreme purpose in coming was to heal mens souls means, further, that Christianity must be the universal religion. A religion which aims at the healing of spiritual disease, and which has confidence in its power to effect the cure, is entitled to supersede all other religions and to become the faith of all mankind; and it will be well for the world when it has become such in fact. The world everywhere needs this religion, for sin is universal.
It is not unlikely that the Pharisees had an instinctive perception that the new love for the sinful exhibited in the conduct of Jesus meant a religious revolution, the setting aside of Jewish exclusiveness, and the introduction of a new humanity, in which Jew and Gentile should be one. They might very easily arrive at this conclusion. They had but to reflect on the terms they employed to describe the objects of Christs special care. Publicans were to them as heathens, and sinners was in their dialect a synonym for Gentiles. It might, therefore, readily occur to them that the man who took such a warm interest in the publicans and sinners of Juda could have no objection, on principle, to fellowship with Gentiles, and that when His religion had time to develop its peculiar tendencies, it was likely to become the religion, not of the Jews alone, but of mankind.
Whether the men who found fault with the sinners Friend had so much penetration or not, it is certain at least that Jesus Himself was fully aware whither His line of action tended. He revealed the secret in the words, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. In describing His mission in these terms, He intimated in effect that in its ultimate scope that mission looked far beyond the bounds of Palestine, and was likely to have even more intimate relations with the outside world than with the chosen race. He knew too well how righteous his countrymen accounted themselves to cherish the hope of making a wide and deep impression upon them. He deemed it indeed a duty to try, and He did try faithfully and persistently, but always as one who knew that the result would be that described in the sad words of the fourth evangelist, He came unto his own, and his own received him not. And as He had an infinite longing to save, and was not content to waste His life, He turned His attention to more likely subjects; to such as were not puffed up with the conceit of righteousness, and would not take it as an offence to be called sinners. Such He found among the degraded classes of Jewish society; but there was no reason why they should be sought there alone. The world was full of sinners; why, then, limit the mission to the sinful in Juda? Shall we say because the Jews were lesser sinners than the Gentiles? But that would be to make the mission after all a mission to the righteous. If it is to be a mission to the sinful, let it be that out and out. Let Him who is intrusted with it say, The greater the sinner the greater his need of Me. That was just what Christ did say in effect when He uttered with significant emphasis the words, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. It is, therefore, a word on which all men everywhere can build their hopes, a word by which the Good Physician says to every son of Adam, Look unto me, and be saved.
Christs way with sinners was to love them, to believe in their recoverability. He tackled the outcasts as an object-lesson in the possibilities of a loved humanity. To preach His Gospel to men is to announce your faith in a Divine something in them which will respond to the Divine something you bring to them. It is this spirit which makes Christianity the most daring of optimisms; which puts it into magnificent contrast with the fatalism of the East and the fatalism of the West. While Schopenhauer declares you can no more change the character of a bad man than the character of a tiger; while Nietzsche sneers at the weak and exalts force and repression, the Gospel goes on hoping and goes on saving.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Religion and To-Day, 37.]
The Physician
Literature
Black (J.), The Pilgrim Ship, 199.
Bruce (A. B.), The Galilean Gospel, 73.
Campbell (W. M.), Foot-Prints of Christ, 92.
Cox (S.), A Day with Christ, 91.
Griffith-Jones (E.), Faith and Verification, 134.
Hall (R.), Works, iv. 421.
Kingsley (C.), The Water of Life, 213.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: St. Matthew ix.xvii., 18.
Ross (J. M. E.), The Self-Portraiture of Jesus, 1.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xi. (1865), No. 618.
Zahn (T.), Bread and Salt from the Word of God, 227.
Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 385 (F. W. Farrar).
Church of England Magazine, lii. 112 (C. Clayton).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
They that be whole: Psa 6:2, Psa 41:4, Psa 147:3, Jer 17:14, Jer 30:17, Jer 33:6, Hos 14:4, Mar 2:17, Luk 5:31, Luk 8:43, Luk 9:11, Luk 18:11-13, Rom 7:9-24, Rev 3:17, Rev 3:18
Reciprocal: 1Sa 22:2 – a captain 2Ch 16:12 – physicians Psa 26:5 – will Psa 42:11 – the health Isa 1:6 – they have Jer 8:22 – no physician Mat 18:11 – General Luk 7:39 – would Luk 19:10 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
9:12
Jesus does not admit that the Pharisees are as righteous as they claim, but if they are, they are inconsistent in criticizing Jesus for associating with sinners. These sinners are spiritually sick and are the very ones who need treatment. Incidently, the Lord made a declaration that condemns those who deny the good work of physicians. It is claimed that medicine is unnecessary, that it is not a good thing, and that sick people can be healed without a physician. And this in spite of the statement in Pro 17:22 that medicine “doeth good,” and that Jesus said that the sick need a physician.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Mat 9:12. Our Lord, in figurative language, lays down a principle, applicable to the case, on their own estimate of themselves, and the publicans and sinners.
They that are whole have no need of physician, but they that are sick. He is the Physician; the two classes are, the objectors and those objected to. Those thinking themselves whole (although really they are not) need not (or do not admit their need of) a physician, but those thinking themselves sick (which is really their case).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
As if our Lord had said “With whom should the physician converse, but with his sick patients? Now I am come into the world to do the office of a kind physician unto men: surely then I am to take all opportunities to help and heal them: they that are sick need the physician: but for you Pharisees, who are whole and well in your own opinion and swelled with a conceit of your own righteousness, I have no hopes of doing any good upon you; for such as think themselves whole desire no physician’s help.
Learn hence, 1. That sin is the soul’s malady, its spiritual disease and sickness.
2. That Christ is the physician appointed by God for the cure and healing of this disease and malady.
3. That there are multitudes spiritually sick, who yet think themselves sound and whole.
4. That only such as are sensible of their spiritual sickness, are subjects capable of cure, and the persons whom Christ is a healing physician to; They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Jesus Himself responded to the Pharisees’ question. He said that He went to the tax collectors and sinners because they were sinners. They had a spiritual illness and needed spiritual healing. Note that Jesus did not go to these people because they received Him warmly but because they needed Him greatly. In the Old Testament, God taught His people that He was their Physician who could heal their diseases (e.g., Exo 15:26; Deu 32:39; 2Ki 20:5; Psa 103:3). The prophets also predicted that Messiah would bring healing to the nation (Isa 19:22; Isa 30:26; Jer 30:17).
The phrase "go and learn" was a rabbinic one that indicated that the Pharisees needed to study the text further. [Note: Carson, "Matthew," p. 225.] Jesus referred them to Hos 6:6. God had revealed through Hosea that the apostates of his day had lost the heart of temple worship even though they continued to practice its rituals. Jesus implied that the Pharisees had done the same thing. They were preserving the external practices of worship carefully, but they had failed to maintain its essential heart. Their attitude toward the tax collectors and sinners showed this. God, on the other hand, cares more for the spiritual wholeness of people than He does about flawless worship.
Jesus did not mean that the tax collectors and sinners needed Him but the Pharisees did not. His quotation put the Pharisees in the same category as the apostates of Hosea’s day. They needed Him too even though they believed they were righteous enough.
The last part of Mat 9:13 defines Jesus’ ministry of preparing people for the coming kingdom. "Compassion" (NASB) or "mercy" (NIV, Heb. hesed) was what characterized His mission. He came to "call" (Gr. kalesai) or "invite" people to repentance and salvation. Paul’s used this Greek work in the sense of efficacious calling, but that is not how Jesus used it. If someone does not see himself or herself as a sinner, that person will have no part in the kingdom.
Disciples of Jesus should be need oriented, as Jesus was. Meeting the needs of needy individuals, regardless of who they may be, was very important to Jesus.