Each Christian doctor in watching for souls as one who "must give an account" is concerned and is under the most solemn obligation to provide two kinds of diagnoses on behalf of each patient that comes under his care, saint and sinner alike. (I) He should provide a most careful, accurate, conscientious diagnosis of physical disease. (2) He should give just as careful, accurate, conscientious diagnosis of spiritual disease.
Conscientious physical diagnosis should, and often does, lead to spiritual diagnosis. Few come to the doctor, knowing the actual nature and extent of their difficulties. They come to learn this, though often with much fearful apprehension, for at times the doctor must needs speak that fearful word malignancy.
The earnest desire of the physician to make a right physical diagnosis and honestly to announce his findings is attested to by his use of the microscope, the X-ray, the various laboratory procedures, and all visual and manual methods known to medical science. Besides this, he is constantly alert to discover and create new and better means of ascertaining the exact nature and extent of disease.
All this is done at best merely to extend or prolong for a few years, more or less, the mortal life of his patient that sooner or later, in spite of all efforts, must end in death. The doctor's work is always eventually defeated by the certainty of death.
The most prevalent and malignant disease in the world is the disease of sin. This disease requires divine diagnosis, and God gives to His servants power to make it. The prophet Isaiah was given this power. Here is his diagnosis under the figure of the physical:
"The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores : they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." Isa. 1:5, 6.
To diagnose properly and fully the diseases of a head that is wholly sick would require a throat specialist ; an eye specialist ; an ear specialist; a specialist for the nose, the sinuses, the teeth, the brain, the skull, the scalp, and the hair. These specialists would consider the possibilities of brain tumor, throat cancer, sinus infection, hemorrhage, cataracts, destruction of vital nerves in the eye, and every other possible head disease.
If from the sole of the patient's foot to the top of his head, no soundness whatever could be found in any organ, and in addition there were wounds and bruises and long-neglected putrifying, infecting sores, having had no care whatever, what would be the only possible prognosis the doctor could honestly make? If the heart were strong and the digestive organs in good condition, the lungs and skin and kidneys functioning, and the nerves capable of sustaining the proper reactions, there might be some possible hope of continued life. But, with no soundness whatever in any organ or part, doubtless there could be but one speedy and certain conclusion. Should the doctor perchance have one ray of hope for such a patient, he would wish himself a competent specialist on every physical disease, or at least that he might have immediate consultation with the greatest physician on earth.
It should be remembered, however, that all this is but a figurative illustration of the spiritual. The Christian physician, under divine obligation to be as efficient in spiritual diagnosis as he must be in physical diagnosis, will recognize this to be the actual spiritual condition of the unsaved person who comes to him for diagnosis, and in his own helplessness will turn instinctively to the Great Physician, as consultant, for "sin, when [and if] it is finished, bringeth forth death." James 1:15.
The counsel of the Great Physician on spiritual disease is understood readily by the doctor, because in his daily practice he is accustomed to think God's thoughts after Him in those physical things that have to do with the masterpiece of God's creation, man.
When the Christian doctor diagnoses soul-destroying spiritual disease as accurately as he does physical disease, the malignancy of the spiritual condition of his unsaved patient will cause him to evaluate properly the relative comparison between the lesser needs of the body and the one great need of the soul. Once seen clearly, it will cause him more and deeper concern for the welfare of the soul than he could possibly have for the body, no matter how serious the nature of the disease or in what stage of advancement the patient's physical condition might be. Such concern as this gives the doctor a true perspective of his sacred work.
The work of the Great Physician was based on this very perspective. In His healing of the palsied man He saw the soul's disease as in greater need of a potent remedy than the disease of the body, and said to him, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee."
After this first and most important healing He healed his body of the lesser disease. In healing this lesser disease He illustrated His own power to forgive sins. (Verse 6.) And any physician who fails to recognize and connect the power of God to forgive sins with the healing of the body, fails utterly in the great privilege that is his as a Christian physician.
The doctor's first responsibility may be for the healing of the body, because he cannot with authority say, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." But his most important responsibility is the healing of the soul. After relieving a man of his suffering, however, and thus gaining his confidence and establishing prestige in his mind, the doctor can point him to the One who says with all authority, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." If the patient accepts this spiritual healing, the doctor's work in this line does not end in the defeat of death. On the contrary, he has actually saved a life and a soul for eternity, not merely prolonged a human life. There will be no disappointment in this but everlasting joy for both doctor and patient.
The Christian doctor may never stand and preach to congregations of thousands or even hundreds; but in the course of each year, if he contacts in his office and at their bedside an average of twenty patients a day for three hundred days, he will have had precious opportunity to represent Jesus six thousand times, or in ten years sixty thousand opportunities. This is equal to a good-sized city all contacted in a personal way. Opportunities for spiritual diagnosis and the application of spiritual remedies are almost as limitless to the Christian doctor as are his opportunities for ministration to physical needs.
The application of the necessary spiritual remedies will require much more time and tact and patient endeavor on the part of the doctor than is required for the application of physical remedies. Spiritual remedies must be prayerfully and fully taught and explained. They must be understood and willingly received by the patient, whereas certain physical remedies need be known and understood by the doctor only.
How does the doctor diagnose a soul spiritually? To diagnose physically, he observes and then asks questions about the patient's aches and pains and habits. To diagnose spiritually, he does the same concerning the heart's aches and worries and perplexities.
It is natural for a doctor to diagnose spiritually, because the patient has come to him expecting to answer questions, anxious to impart information concerning himself. The doctor may even discover that some who come to him are not in need of physical remedies, but only of a spiritual remedy. He will easily discern whether his patient is in need of both physical and spiritual healing, or whether because of having already given his heart to God he is in need of physical healing only. Also, he will learn quickly whether his patient has faith in God, or whether his faith is all centered in the doctor.
If the patient does rest all his faith in the doctor, then the doctor will need to decide whether he will capitalize on that faith for his own prestige, in his practice, or whether he will direct that faith to the Great Physician who alone can heal the disease of the soul. So valuable and effective did Jesus esteem the physical in healing to the spiritual that where an actual physical condition did not exist, He employed a simile suitable to illustrate the truth He wished to teach. Jesus employed the simile of childbirth to diagnose the undone spiritual condition of Nicodemus. Note the divine diagnosis and the remedy prescribed in John 3 :3-6.
Evidently Nicodemus had no thought that Jesus was employing a simile, for he asked, "How can a nian be born when he is old?" Nicodemus well knew that even the newest-born babe could not be born again; much less a full-grown man.
In turning the mind of Nicodemus from the physical to the spiritual, Jesus recognized the validity of his argument when He said; "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," as much as to say, "You are quite right, Nicodemus; nothing can be done to change a fleshly birth. But your trouble and the disease and defects that require you to be born again are spiritual. And so I repeat. 'Except a man be born [even] of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'" In pointing him to the rebirth Jesus made Him understand that he was in a lost condition, and that without this new birth he would perish if sin were allowed to finish its work in him. Note His words in verses 14 and 15.
And then follows the divine specific for the death-dealing malignancy of his soul disease—the so-oft-quoted John 3 :16. (See also verses 17-21.) How fully and carefully the remedy is explained, and how plainly is Nicodemus made to see why he himself came to Jesus by night instead of by day.
In this story of Nicodemus we have a divine diagnosis of the soul by the Great Physician, and the sure and wholly potent spiritual medicine that saves completely from the infection of deadly sin. To be truly efficient scientifically, the doctor must learn the application of the many diagnostic facilities that are available for discerning physical diseases. To be efficient spiritually, the doctor need but learn the application of the one great facility provided for discerning spiritual disease, namely, the Holy Spirit. ( John 16 :7-9.)
Thus, through the Holy Spirit, Christ's personal representative, the Christian doctor always has the Great Physician present to make diagnosis, to explain and apply the remedy and to save the soul.
