Healthy People Don’t Need A Doctor

Healthy People Don’t Need A Doctor

As Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?” Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.” Luke 5:27-32

As a family care physician, I often do annual physical exams on my healthy patients. Sometimes they just want to make sure everything is okay. Other times, they need a physical for sports, school, a new job, or to qualify for insurance. If I declare them free of illness, they walk away happy—and I’m happy for them; but I find these encounters to be less fulfilling than working with patients who are sick or dying. My job, training, and experience are all about helping the sick and suffering. The more time I spend with my well patients or my worried-they-might-not-be-well patients, the less time I have to spend with those who truly need to see a doctor.

Before we can determine a treatment in modern medicine, we must first diagnose the underlying illness. Likewise, when we seek treatment for our souls, we must first understand that we have a spiritual sickness. We need to know that we are sinners in need of a Savior. If we self-righteously think that we have it all together, in effect we’re saying that we don’t need Jesus. But if we know we’re sick and dying, and we want treatment, then we will come to Jesus to be healed.

Jesus didn’t come to celebrate the righteous; he came to bring healing and redemption to sinners in need of forgiveness. That includes all of us. We need Jesus to cure our sin problem.

TODAY’S RX

If you recognize your soul’s sickness, spend time today in the presence of the Healer.

Jesus, thank you for leaving your perfect place in heaven to dwell among the sinful and the sick. Thank you for bringing healing to this world and for showing me my need for you. Help me to learn from my past mistakes and follow you.