God Is Interested in Our Health
By William S. Sadler
God Is Interested in Our Health.
"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." 3 John 2. THE Creator takes a personal interest in our physical prosperity as well as in our moral well-being. Physical health and spiritual happiness are both precious in the sight of Him in whom "we live and move and have our being." Acts 17:28. There is altogether too great a tendency to-day on the part of people to turn their bodies over to the doctors and their souls to ministers, expecting the former to care for their physical health, and the latter to look after their spiritual needs. In either case, men are unconsciously depending upon their fellow men to do for them that which only God can perform; for He is the only true source of health and healing for soul and body. No human intermediary should be allowed to come between the soul and its Maker, between the sinner and the Saviour. While there are conditions in which the help of the godly physician and the consecrated minister may be necessary to physical or spiritual recovery, we should see to it that the afflicted one is taught to look to God as the Giver of both physical and spiritual life, as the only source of healing for soul and body. For every truth that comes from above, there is sure to proceed a counterfeit from beneath; and not infrequently this counterfeit proves to be but an ingenious perversion of the truth itself. So it is with reference to health and disease. Upon careful examination we find that many of the erroneous teachings along this line are peculiarly deceptive. It has ever been Satan's plan and studied aim to cover his most dangerous error with sufficient truth to make it acceptable to those whom he seeks to deceive and ultimately destroy. It is not singular that our enemy has chosen this particular point in the great controversy between truth and error, to accomplish his most cunning work of perversion and deception, for it is in the sphere of our physical and spiritual health that he can bring to the race the greatest amount of misery, suffering, and anguish, if, by his deception, he can lead them into the transgression of either physical or spiritual law. We have to contend with an adversary of long experience and one highly practised in the art of deception; one even who led angels astray; and to-day the Christian's only safety lies in having the "mind of Christ," that He may be able to discern and detect the delusions and deceptions of the bogus healers now so abundant in the land. Without such divine illumination, many are sure to be borne from their anchorage, only to find themselves adrift on a dangerous sea of plausible theory and fascinating error. When hanging upon the cross, the Master said, "It is finished," and the utterance of those words was the last act in the completion of the plan of salvation for a fallen world. Christ became the "complete Saviour" of a sinful and suffering race. Jesus died to affect the forgiveness and healing of physical sin as well as for the atonement of moral guilt. The plan of salvation was designed to give man power over physical as well as spiritual transgression. And so there is a gospel of health for the body, as well as a gospel of grace for the soul. Christ Jesus has become the Redeemer of the whole man,—body, soul, and spirit; so, by faith in His name, there is overcoming and keeping power for the physical as for the spiritual man. While the soul may be the inner sanctuary of the Spirit of God, it is expressly stated that our bodies are "the temple of the Holy Spirit." 1 Cor. 6:19. Christ is "within you, the hope of glory;" and to-day He seeks pure hearts and clean bodies in which to dwell, and through which He may manifest Himself to a fallen world, and show forth His glory, "the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14. Physical law is one of the laws of God; its transgression is sin. "The wages of sin is death,"—spiritual and physical death. Christ lived and died to save us from the penalty of both physical and spiritual transgression; and to provide the human race with grace and power whereby they might yield obedience to all the divine requirements. Therefore, as ministers of the grace of life to a fallen world, every preacher of the Gospel, every Christian worker, every Christian, should interest himself in the physical good of the human race as well as in its moral welfare. Some may say that it detracts from the divine dignity and sacredness of spiritual things to thus place them alongside the physical. To such we would say, Bring not down your spiritual life to a lower level, but rather raise the physical higher. Let things material be divested of their garb of carnality, and permit the mind of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus to manage the deeds of the flesh, thus experiencing the scripture, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:1. W. S. SADLER, M. D.