Monday Reflection – October 13, 2025 The Great Physician

This is what the Lord says: “Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing. But I will
restore you to health and heal your wounds.” Jeremiah 30: 12, 17

It hurts to heal. Cuts need peroxide. Serious wounds need to be dug into and cleaned out. Severe
internal issues require a surgery, being opened up with a surgical knife, in order to get the body
in a position to heal itself. This is the daily reality in the medical field. The prophet Jeremiah
utilizes this analogy and describes Judah’s sin in medical terms. Jeremiah declares that Judah’s
spiritual condition is terminal. From the human standpoint, there is no remedy for the condition
of Judah. They have an incurable sickness. They are mortally wounded. There is no medicine
available.

If that’s the prognosis, what about the diagnosis? What mortal wound, what infectious disease
lays the people of God on their deathbed? The answer, of course, is sin. Moreover, the cause of
the illness is no mystery. Sickness, sickness leading to death is the outcome of sin, disobedience,
and flagrant disregard of God. Judah is caught in a deep disease of its own making, the disease of unfaithfulness and self-sufficiency.

Yet, we too suffer from this incurable malady. We too are in captivity to sin, and we cannot
recover on our own. It will take more than a couple days in bed and a few bowls of chicken soup
to put us back on our feet. Sin is a chronic illness. It is like a vicious strain of bacteria that has
grown resistant even to the most powerful antibiotic. It is a restless evil at work in us day and
night, even while we sleep. It always endeavours to move us away from God and make us self-
absorbed. It has the potential to spread in the soul until it carries the sinner to the grave. 

While we cannot get rid of sin, God can. He is the Great Physician, as Jeremiah promised: “I will
restore you to health and heal your wounds”. First God says we have a wound that is incurable;
then he promises to cure it. He declares that our injury cannot be healed, then he vows to heal it.
How can that be? Is that a contradiction? No! God promises to do the impossible. He promises to
cure what is incurable and to heal what is beyond healing. The promise of healing is a promise to
create new hearts and make new flesh grow. God is the great Physician of his people. God never
wants to leave us alone in sin and wretchedness. God cannot ignore sin and evil. So, he desires to
restore us, to heal us. God is always seeking to redeem and restore that which is so corrupted.
Our restoration can only come about by God healing us.

There is only one cure for iniquity, only one remedy for guilt, only one atonement for sin, and
that is the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross. We ourselves cannot overcome evil, but Jesus
Christ won the victory over sin through his death and resurrection. The work of Christ on the
cross was done to cure the incurable wound of sin. So, God heals us. He gives us medicine.
When that medicine is been applied, the disease is halted, and it grows weaker. The cure for our
sin is available to us every day, what will we do? Shall we continue in sin and decay? Or shall
we take hold of the cure – the gift of salvation- and live a transformed life? This is the most
critical decision for us to make in this life, for it determines the quality of our life here, and what
will become of us in the next. Amen.

Jermaine Gibson