Going to the Good Doctor

This week I have been thinking a great deal about Jesus and his love for those who are sick and in need of a doctor. Primarily my thoughts have centered on learning to confess that I am one of Jesus’ patients.

In Luke chapter 5, we get a good picture of Jesus’ purpose statement as he tells the Pharisees, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” In the 20’s class we talked about how this statement of Jesus challenges our notions of evangelism today. We often speak of evangelism as something we do to others – they need to repent, to believe, to find freedom. Yet, my thinking has been transformed to see that the primary act of evangelism is our confession, not someone else’s.

Isn’t it we who have repented, believed and found freedom? If so, why do we find it so terribly difficult to let others in on these wonderful acts of grace in our lives? These intimate acts of grace applied specifically to us form the essence of our evangelistic speech. The word testimony comes from the legal system that requires us to speak only of what we know and have experienced in a personal way. Yet, when we talk to others about God, we are quickly tempted to depersonalize our experience of grace into theological truths that others must believe.

Therefore, I am trying to learn to be one of Jesus’ patients again. I want to speak well of what I know about Jesus’ healing touch. I want to cultivate a confession of need for Jesus, and I want my evangelism to start from a confession of an intimate understanding of his work in my own life. Pray with me that our community would identify with Jesus’ mission so that we would be willing confessors of his work in our lives.