The work of a physician is to preserve life and prevent death. Inasmuch as the wages of sin is death and the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, the work of the minister of the gospel is closely associated with that of the physician. In fact, every owner of a Bible is to be in a sense a pharmacist distributing spiritual remedies that tend to life and health and happiness. The prescriptions of the Bible are God's prescriptions of life. It is the sacred privilege of every preacher of the gospel, as a spiritual physician, to seek the physical, mental, and spiritual health of his people. Where there is no evidence of the Christian characteristics and attitudes that are the fruit of the Spirit—"love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance"—the true pastor will diligently seek to bring these graces into the living experience of his parishioners. The life of the church, the progress of the cause of God, and the fellowship of the believers depend upon the manifestation of these graces in the lives of the members.
Our heavenly Father provides us, without money and without price, free remedies for mental and spiritual healing, but it is the responsibility of the pastor, the spiritual physician, to seek to administer the appropriate medicine for whatever difficulties and problems may arise. The pastor must not only know the pasture where his flocks are to feed but he must also know his flock individually and be aware of their spiritual condition. He will not be content with mere appearances. Often conversation betrays the inner spiritual needs of an individual member, "for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matt. 12:34). As a tree is known by its fruits, so the heart is known by its words. Idle and vain words, like microbes under the microscope of a physician, reveal to the pastor that all is not well.
Often the members of the church themselves do not know what is actually happening in their lives. The pastor as their spiritual physician is responsible to God for doing all in his power to help them attain spiritual health. Difficult as it may seem, the divine counsel to the ministers is: "Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds" (Prov. 27:23). Pastors who are unconcerned will ever be surprised at the tragic failures experienced by some of their members. It was not so with Jesus. He watched Peter and knew aforehand what would happen to him. Jesus was not therefore surprised or angry when it happened, but was prepared to help him. Already He had been praying for Peter's faith not to fail in the hour of crisis (Luke 22:32-34). A physician studiously observes his patients, ever searching for symptoms that can help him understand each individual's special case. He distinguishes between the symptoms and the causes of the sickness. He seeks to remove the cause of the disease.
Only truly converted pastors can be true spiritual healers. This is paramount, for "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man" (Prov. 27:19). Such reflection is possible only in clean, clear water, and in sunshine; likewise, only a clean, converted heart can reflect the light of the gospel, the sunshine of God's love, and thus meet the need of the hearts of men and women in trouble.
A pastor-physician will endeavor to make every sermon or address a healing agency. He will watch diligently the countenances of his hearers and will listen attentively to the remarks that may follow. He will carefully weigh the reactions of his people to revealed truth. As a physician of the soul he will take his findings to the laboratory of prayer and the X-ray of God's Word. On his knees in his prayer office he will seek Heaven's light until he finds the solution and the remedy. He must always remember that the purpose of all his investigations, observations, and findings is not that he might sit as a judge, but that he might administer a remedy.
His one aim is that Jesus should heal them (Matt. 13:15). He ever confronts his member-patients with the healing power of the Great Physician, Jesus Christ.
The Spiritual Doctor's Helpers
The true pastor will know both how to ignore gossiping rumormongers and how to accept the reports of other church members who are motivated by a desire to help, even as a physician receives the reports of his nurses and assistants. He may not always draw the same conclusions as they do, but the pastor-physician may educate members of integrity who merit confidence to assist him in praying, and watching for souls. They may, by some special service of love or manifestation of confidence, give encouragement to the one in distress. Such loving service, when not expected, often changes the situation for the better. The spirit of sympathetic love and service transforms the church from a courthouse into a spiritual hospital or sanitarium. Co-workers have to be trained and tried before they are able to administer "shots or injections" themselves, even under the supervision of the pastor (I Tim. 3:10). As a healthy body from head to toe in all its joints and functions ministers to the welfare of the whole and comes to the aid of a sick member, so a healthy church in time of need and sickness supplieth by the effectual working of every part, the healing of the body in love (Eph. 4:15, 16).
Problems of Spiritual Diagnosis
One of the greatest lessons church members need to learn is in the matter of judging the spiritual life of others, "for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself" (Rom. 2:1). When Peter thought that the other disciples did not love Jesus as much as he did (John 21:15) and that maybe they all could, and possibly would, be offended except him (Mark 14:29), he failed to see that he was the one most concerned in this problem.
In dealing with his spiritual patients the pastor-physician must appeal to the conscience of his subject. Jesus ever addressed Himself to the conscience, "and they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one" (John 8:9). The work of the conscience is an individual work. After preaching to the group the pastor-physician will seek out the person whose conscience has responded. When a man's conscience is convicting or persuading him, he usually reveals it by words or acts that give outward expression to the inner thoughts that are accusing or excusing him, as the case may be (Rom. 2:15).
A superficial observer could easily form wrong conclusions concerning such a man. His promises may not appear dependable. He may be critical of others. He may backslide or withdraw from God's service even as Peter once did (John 21:3). How important it is to understand this process at work in the soul of a man chosen of the Lord. How vital it is for such a man to have a pastor-physician who understands this process and not a pharisee-judge who criticizes and condemns such a struggling soul.
Jesus did not come "to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32). It will take courage, as well as consecration, for the pastor-physician to follow in His steps, to meet persons like Zacchaeus or the sinful woman, in his work, and to seek their salvation. There will be Pharisees inside and outside the church, speaking within themselves or even wondering aloud and saying as they did of their Lord, "This man," if he were a true worker for God or a consecrated preacher, "would have known who and what manner of woman [or man] this is that toucheth him: for she [or he] is a sinner" (Luke 7:39).- The answer will ever have to be given, perhaps even more frequently as we approach the end of a morally chaotic world, "for the Son of man," and with Him the Seventh-day Adventist pastor-physicians, is "come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). God needs good men and women to befriend publicans and sinners (Matt. 11:19). Self-righteous Pharisees will doubtless continue to believe themselves to be too good to be baptized and immersed into such a society (Luke 7:30). Human wisdom, unfortunately, avoids souls tempted and overcome by Satan, and like the priest and Levite, passes by on the other side. The pastor-physician, however, will deal as the good Samaritan did, and seek to emulate Christ, the only true Physician.
Essential Qualifications of the Pastor- Physician
The spiritual physician must know himself to be a co-worker with Jesus. He must be true to the principles of righteousness and yet approachable by those who have fallen into sin. He must pursue his work of saving sinners regardless of criticism. Like David he may have to say, "For my love they are my adversaries" (Ps. 109:4). With Paul he may declare, "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self" (1 Cor. 4:3). He knows that "he that judgeth me is the Lord" (verse 4), and he seeks ever to govern his conduct accordingly. A worker has to be strong in the strength of justification by the Lord, just as a physician is justified and backed by his diploma of authority granted to him by his university and his government.
As the physician interferes in the life of the patient, and not the patient in the life of the physician; as the physician's hands hold the temporal fate of a man for life or death, so the spiritual physician holds in his hands, under God, the eternal fate of his people. What he by God's grace looses on earth will have even the acknowledgment of heaven (Matt. 18:18).
Only those workers who know by experience the truth of righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ can be the spiritual agencies of the healing power of the Great Physician. Many years ago the Lord's servant warned that whole churches were perishing for lack of this truth. Only as the church is clothed in His righteousness will she enter into the final victory. A pastor-physician has to be sure of such a personal experience.
The knowledge of man's dependence upon God is essential to the success of the pastor-physician, for "a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven" (John 3:27). The members of the church are not able to heal themselves, just as a patient seeking the professional help of the physician cannot heal himself. Man of himself is impotent when it comes to attaining spiritual maturity. Doubless there are many members with longing souls and hungry hearts who have continued long with us, who have not been fed the needed words of life by their pastors, and have not as yet experienced the healing Jesus offers. Some are Adventist in doctrine and in name, and yet remain unhealed even as did the young man whom Jesus' disciples failed to cure. His father's report to Jesus was, "And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him" (Matt. 17:16). It was a simple matter for Jesus to cure him. But are we not today often as faithless and prayer-less as were Christ's early disciples on that occasion? Pastor-physicians might well today ask a question similar to that asked by those disciples of old, "Why could not we cast him out?" The answer may still be the same, "Because of your unbelief."
Many church problems arise because of our "unbelief." Unfortunately, all too frequently we have too little time for one another—no time to "weep with them that weep" (Rom. 12:15), to bear the burdens of the weak, and edify one another in Christian tenderness and love. There is far too little real Christian fellowhip in the church. The fellowship of Christian brotherhood was a reality in Paul's day. An elder was entreated as a father, and the elder women as mothers (1 Tim. 5:1). The hearts of those early workers yearned for the spiritual welfare of the members. Paul exclaimed, "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4:19). Such fellowship and travail for others appear to some as being too old-fashioned and pietistical. Apostasies, however, are encouraged by the cool, aloof attitude of busy-minded leaders. On the other hand, "Loving favour" is rather to be chosen "than silver and gold" (Prov. 22:1).
(To be continued)