March 24

Christ the Great Healer

"This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. — Luke 4:21

The words had been written seven hundred years before. Now Jesus reads them and says, “I am the One to whom these golden sentences refer. This scripture is fulfilled before your eyes. I am the Anointed One and this is the mission on which I came to this world.”

The whole Old Testament was full of Christ. There were a thousand fingers along its pages, every one pointing to Him. All its types and prophecies and promises were fulfilled when He came, and lived, and died, and was raised up and glorified. It is very interesting to take up Christ’s whole public life and ministry, and show how perfectly He lived out the wonderful mission which the prophet here outlined for Him centuries before He came. He preached the gospel to the poor; He was the friend of the poor. He healed the broken-hearted. Wherever He went the sorrowing and the troubled came flocking around Him. As a magnet draws steel-filings to itself from the heap of rubbish, so there was something in Him that drew the sad to Him.

There are two classes always of the broken-hearted. There are those whose hearts are broken because of sin. There are those who are crushed by affliction. Both these classes came to Christ. Sinners came, and found in Him not a stern, censorious Judge, but a tender, compassionate Saviour. The afflicted came and found true comfort.

He loved all men and sympathized with them, and was able to help them. Then He also brought deliverance to sin’s captives, setting them free, breaking their chains. He opened blind eyes; not only the natural eyes to see the beautiful things of this world, but the spiritual eyes as well, to behold the things of heaven and everlasting life. Then He lifted the yoke of the crushed or oppressed, inviting all the weary to Himself to find rest to their souls. Thus His whole life was simply the filling up of this outline sketch.