Why did Christ devote so much of his limited time to this one area of human need?
With only three years of public ministry before him we might have expected Christ to concentrate solely on teaching the people, especially his disciples. Instead, when the time came for him to go to Jerusalem and there to die, his disciples were still quite ignorant about the real identity of their Lord and the real purpose of his mission (see Mk. 9:30-37; Lu. 9:51-56; 18:31-34; 24:17-21, 25-26).
Yet despite an urgent need to teach his disciples, Jesus allowed himself to be constantly pressed by the crowd, and he gave himself unsparingly to the ministry of healing (Mk 3:10; 5:24; 6:30-34; 7:24).
If we can find out why Jesus poured so much of himself into his healing ministry we will then have a sound basis on which to decide whether he is still offering himself to the sick as the Great Physician.
I tremble before the very title of the great Book upon which this lesser study is based. How can anyone faithfully reveal the height and depth of the glorious revelation of Christ contained in those Spirit-inbreathed gospels and letters? I have read through the New Testament probably 40 times and devoted additional thousands of hours to meticulous study of almost every part of it.
Let us investigate further why Christ healed the sick.
