Christ Our Healer – by Ed Dunn

How are we to discover God as God is? I recommend we look to Jesus for the answer to our question. What if the personality of God is identical to the personality of the man called Jesus of Nazareth portrayed in the Gospels? That is the good news – God is like Jesus! – Brian Zahnd

God is like Jesus. Exactly like Jesus. When the veil that obscured God was torn in two, what did it reveal? A Suffering Servant who hangs on the cross! Thus, every human conception we previously associated with ‘God’ is uprooted, root and branch! – Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God

God…reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19)

This month’s column is the last in a four-part series that has focused on the Hope, Comfort, Encouragement and Healing to Be Found in Christ Jesus. Central to our mission at Plain Truth Ministries, and to our belief in and teaching of All Jesus, All the Time and Faith Alone, Grace Alone and Christ Alone, our emphasis on the hope, comfort and encouragement we receive in Christ Jesus reminds us of God’s boundless love and grace towards all. Through the gifts Christ Jesus has given, we experience the goodness of God.

Our four-part series now concludes with the topic of Christ Our Healer. Christ Jesus came into the world through the incarnation to help us see God the Father, and ourselves as human, in a whole new light. Christ Our Healer came to do nothing less than to heal our spiritual sight. In being and bringing the true Gospel, the good news of God’s boundless love and grace, Christ Jesus gives us hope, comfort and encouragement. In giving us these spiritual gifts and living his resurrection life in us, Christ Jesus heals us.

Personally, I had, and still have, need of his healing. I grew up living my life in an honest tension. I grew up believing that the Bible taught that God the Father was a judge, a record-keeper of sorts, and a harsh dispenser of well-deserved punishment. High above all, I saw God the Father as distant, disapproving and quite often, disappointed. Like an all-powerful old man, huddled eagerly over an open ledger with a banker’s shade and green lamp to illuminate his work, God the Father (to me) was busy keeping track of the sins of the world. He was busy keeping track of my sins, as well.

The honest tension had two aspects to it: The first aspect was how I saw God the Father, as described above. The second, and far more personal aspect, was how I believed God the Father saw me. The God I had come to believe in was an angry God, full of wrath and demanded an accounting of and full payment for all of my sins. As a result, I internalized a deep sense of never being worthy, never being good enough, nor loved by God the Father. My sins had separated me from God the Father, leaving me outside of his love and in a perpetual state of unworthiness.

Living in the tension between wanting to be loved by God the Father, but feeling unworthy of his love, led to a deeply negative and destructive view of relationship with God. Add to that tension the teaching that God is Love, and I had absolutely no idea what to make of all of it. I felt lost emotionally and spiritually.   

I was not alone in my experience. In his book, Healing the Gospel, Derek Flood recounts similar feelings and experiences from his youth as he was taught (in his church) to share the good news of the Gospel: I was taught to tell people that they deserved to be punished by God forever…taught that we should see ourselves as worthless…taught that we are totally depraved and capable of nothing good apart from God. Lastly, I was taught that Jesus died because God demanded that someone suffer the penalty of my sin. Sharing the ‘good news’ with others felt more like sharing nothing but bad news. Does this experience sound familiar to you?

There is some comfort in knowing that we were  not alone in how we saw God the Father. Those closest to Jesus, the very disciples he hand-picked and lived his life among, had a hard time getting a clear picture of God the Father, and themselves, in relation to their conception of God. The Gospel of John tells of Philip asking Jesus to show us the Father. Jesus responded, sounding somewhat perplexed (as I read it, my emphasis) by asking Philip, don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:8-9). Somehow the disciples, led by Philip, had missed all that Jesus had been showing them all along. Jesus had been showing the disciples the Father.

The Jesus living among the disciples looked at the world with the eyes of compassion. Jesus wept for their troubled state. He wept for their ignorance. Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, raised the dead, taught his listeners and followers with a tender kindness and patience and included those who had been marginalized and abused by the Roman authorities and religious leadership of the day.

Yet, Jesus brought far more than just food and physical healing. Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor, freedom for the captives, recovery of sight for the blind, the end of oppression and his divine favor toward all (Luke 4). Jesus brought spiritual food and healing. Jesus brought a new way of seeing God the Father. And, he did so with the Father, by and through the Father (the Father’s work being done in him), as he was and is one with God the Father. Jesus’ response to his disciples is the same as his response to his followers today: Jesus and God the Father are one and the same. Jesus loved and loves. God the Father loved and loves. The personality of Christ Jesus is the personality of God the Father. God the Father is indeed love.

This love of God the Father and Christ Jesus heals us. In healing us, we see our humanity in a whole new light. Jesus dignified humanity by coming to the world in the flesh (the Incarnation). He lived his life on earth as fully God and fully human. Raised bodily after his crucifixion, Jesus is forever human, and forever divine. Seeing and believing this, our spiritual sight toward God the Father and toward one another as human is healed.

I give you a new command: love each other deeply and fully. Remember the ways that I have loved you, and demonstrate your love for others in those same ways. Everyone will know you are my followers if you demonstrate your love to others (John 13:34-35, The Voice translation).

Christ our Healer invites us into the love of God the Father. He invites us into his love. This divine love looks exactly the same. In coming to know this divine love, we then come to love each other. Christ heals our spiritual sight and reminds us that we are included, worthy in him and fully and deeply loved by God. To know this love is to experience the hope, comfort and encouragement to be found in Christ. To believe this is to be healed by Christ.

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