Bella Vista Church of Christ
LIFELINES
April 10, 2002 Jared Dockery
More Than Enough
Jesus had just returned from healing a demon-possessed man on the far side of the Sea of Galilee, and was now on His way to heal Jairus's daughter when it happened. A woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years made her way through the crowd, touched His cloak, and was healed.
Mark tells us that this woman had gone to see the doctors of her day. I imagine that she must have traveled up and down the region, searching out specialist after human specialist; I imagine she tried all kinds of ancient folk remedies, superstitious medicines and "modern" treatments. Nothing worked. In fact, in Mark 5.26 we read that she "had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse." (Luke, a physician himself, omits much of these unhappy details from his account; he simply says in Luke 8.43 that she "could not be healed by anyone.")
After suffering for so long, after enduring so many worthless cures, after suffering at the hands of human expertise, she finally came to the One who could heal her. And He did.
But notice how this happened: Jesus did not set up an appointment; He did not take her to an operating room with the latest medical equipment; He did not sit her down and consciously focus all His healing powers on her; He did not prepare Himself by fasting and prayer; He did not summon the help of angels or His apostles. In fact, it seems that He was not even aware that He was about to heal this lady until He had already done so. What the best human doctors of the day could not do no matter how hard they tried, Jesus did without even trying! Whereas man was utterly incompetent, Jesus was more than enough.
The parallels between this woman and ourselves as sinners are striking. She had a disease which made her ceremonially unclean; sin is a disease which makes us spiritually unclean. Human doctors could not heal her disease; human goodness cannot remove our sin. But just as Christ proved to be more than enough to cure her of disease, so too He is more than able to remove our sins.
Sometimes we grow desperate when we focus on our own inability to save ourselves. Grimly we conclude that if we are to be saved, it is going to be barely, by the skin of our teeth, with no room to spare. Jesus may be adequate, we think, but only just.
This is so wrong! How dare we suggest that Jesus is some mediocre, barely competent Savior? Surely it is this image of the more-than-adequate Savior that Paul had in mind when He wrote these words in Romans 8.38-39: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
The sick woman reached out and touched the fringe of Jesus' garment. Through the waters of baptism, we too may come into contact with the healing touch of the all-sufficient Christ--the Savior who is more than enough to save.
Jared Dockery
Bella Vista, Arkansas
