What a Marvelous Way is This of The Healing of Our Souls

"With His stripes we are healed." -Isaiah 53:5 [KJV]

A great professor once said to me, “I can never conceive how one man can be made righteous, by the righteousness of another.” Thus his carnal reason led him to object against Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us. I replied, Why then do you profess to believe, that your sins can be washed away by the blood of another? He was silent. “Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness.” 

Too great a mystery for human reason to comprehend: but not too great for divine faith to receive, to the joy of godliness. Sin is a malignant and mortal disease. The soul must die eternally of it, unless healed. This healing the soul, is the pardoning of sin. This is obtained by the stripes of Christ. You feel the evil of sin; you mourn over the guilt of sin; you groan under the burden of indwelling sin, from day to day. 

The Spirit of truth, the Comforter, here holds forth a blessed remedy for you to look to, for pardon of sin, peace of conscience, and healing of soul: The Stripes of Jesus (that is, His wounds). Just as though the Lord proclaimed to a world of diseased sinners, “This is your only remedy, so sure as you are sinners, and feel sin in your nature; so truly did the Son of God take upon him the same nature—had all your sins laid upon, and imputed to Him, and in that nature was cursed by the law as a malefactor, wounded, bruised, and put to death by divine justice, as the greatest sinner by imputation, that ever lived: that hereby your sins, all your sins, might be fully pardoned, and your souls as perfectly healed of the disease of sin, as though it had never infected you. 

Look to any thing but the stripes of Christ, and you will be miserable. Look to these, only and alone, and you shall find health, joy, and salvation.” Sin-sick soul, What sayest thou to this? “Lord, increase my faith.” This is a precious prayer. That dear Lord Who suffered stripes for thy sin, that thou mightest be healed: that dear Spirit, Who convinced thee of sin, and made thee sick of sin, will surely answer the prayer of faith, and give thee the joy of faith, and thou shalt say, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases” (Psalm 103:2, 3.) 

O what a marvellous way is this of healing our souls! It is God’s way. Unconvinced sinners care not about it. Proud, self-righteous souls reject it. Licentious spirits abuse it. Believing, humble hearts rejoice in it, give Christ the glory of it, and walk worthy of the Lord, to all pleasing (see Colossians 1:10.) 

 

Strict justice, Christ hath satisfied, 

By pains, and stripes, and death: 

By these our souls are justified, 

And comforted in faith. 

This is the faith which works by love 

Of our dear suff’ring Lord: 

It lifts our souls to joys above, 

While it believes His word.

 

-preacher Wm. Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)

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