Series: Healing For Damaged Emotions
#8 The Wounded Healer
Mar 29, 2009
As a teenager I read a story about a young nurse who was taking care of a teenage boy. Because of an accident, one of his legs had to be amputated. Thinking his life now ruined, the young teen fell deeper and deeper into depression, distraught over his fortunes. He was angry at the world and angry at God. As a Christian, the young nurse attempted to treat both his leg wounds as well as his heart wounds. She would remind him that God loved him and that He would work even this tragedy out for good. Her words of hope and promise only made him more sullen. Her cheerful disposition only deepened his bitterness. One day as she was attending to him, he seemed especially agitated. His words were angry and full of self-pity. Her attempts to reassure him only made him angrier.
Finally this calm and collected young nurse lost her cool and lit into him with everything she had, castigating him for his self-pity, berating him for his anger, and giving it to him for his ‘poor-me’ attitude. This only added more fuel to his anger. Enraged, he grabbed a sharp object from his bed stand, and drove it into her leg. In confusion and utter shock, this young amputee discovered that her leg was not made of flesh and blood, but was actually a prosthesis. His anger drained quickly as he realized that she too, was an amputee, who knew and understood from personal experience his pain and brokenness. That was the beginning of the healing of this young man’s damaged emotions.
There is no one better suited for God to use than a wounded healer. Someone who has been there, who knows the agony, the loss, the depth of despair, the hurt and bitterness, the fear and loneliness of being wounded. Who can better be Jesus to a woman who has gone through an abortion, but one whom Jesus has healed of her own brokenness from an abortion. Who can better be Jesus to one caught up in the devastation of sexual abuse than one who has himself been abused, and to whom God has been brought healing and wholeness? Who better to be an instrument of God’s love to one who has lost a spouse than one who has been through that loss and whom God has healed? And the list goes on and on.
We, who are wounded, can be God’s wounded healers only because He Himself is a wounded healer. Last week we looked at Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah, the Christ who would be “wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,” and “by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53)
The book of Hebrews talks of Jesus being our wounded healer. We most often think of the cross in terms of judgment of sin and Jesus taking our sins upon Himself, to pay the penalty of our sin, which He most certainly did. It is because of the cross that we can be saved both now and for eternity.
The cross is not limited solely to spiritual healing. Note that both Isaiah and Hebrews state that Jesus took our infirmities upon Himself. In the Old Testament infirmities were blemishes of imperfection, a defect. No infirmed animal could be offered as a sacrifice to God. Why? Because he knows us and knows that we would naturally give him our leftovers, the worst we have, rather than giving Him our best.
In the New Testament infirmity comes from the Greek word that means “a lack of strength, a weakness, a crippling.” Our English word ‘anesthesia’ comes from this same Greek word. In the New Testament infirmity refers to mental, moral, and emotional weakness. In and of themselves they are not sins, but rather are weaknesses. The problem with infirmities is that they undermine our resistance to temptation. There is a similarity between an herniated muscle or herniated spinal disk and an infirmity. One are infirmities or weaknesses to the physical body and the other is a weakness to the mind and spirit.
In our Scripture we read that though Jesus was tempted in every way as we are He was without sin. So what’s the big deal—if Jesus was tempted but didn’t sin, how does that relate to us in that we are tempted and we do sin! Look at verse 15 from a positive writing, “We have a High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because He was tempted in every way like us.” To understand the fact about our infirmities is one thing, but in Jesus, our High Priest, we have somebody who understands the feelings of our infirmities. To a certain extent I can understand the fact of an abortion, but I cannot understand the feelings of an abortion because I have never had one! I can understand the feelings of losing both parents, but I cannot understand the feelings of losing a child because I have never lost a child.
Look at Hebrews 5:7, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death.” In this way Jesus understands our fears, anxieties, frustration, depression, hurts, abandonment, loneliness, rejection, and all the other garbage we feel so deeply. When Jesus was at Gethsemane, the Bible tells us that He sweat drops of blood, so deep was his agony and pain. Listen to His words, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Think about this for a minute. Jesus was so overwhelmed with such depth of emotion that He wanted to die!
Back at Christmas time we were told that the greatest name for Jesus was Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.” We know that He came in the flesh, but that name means more than just God coming in the flesh. It means that He shares in our weakness, He knows our infirmities, and that He experiences our brokenness. If Jesus were God only, then He could save us from our pit, but He doesn’t understand our pit and the dilemma we are in. If Jesus were human only, then He most certainly understands the dilemma of our pit, but he would have no ability to save us from our pit. The good news is that Jesus is both a man who knows our pit, and God who is able to save us from our pit.
What’s the worst picture in your memory? When your mother slapped you across your face? When the teacher pulled down your pants in front of the whole class and paddled you? When your boyfriend told his friends what happened that night up on Lover’s Hill? When your classmates laughed and mocked you as the nerd? When your girlfriend “sex-ted” your photo to the boys in your school? When…something worse than all these things combined happened to you?
Jesus knows what that is like. He was wounded and mocked and scorned and laughed at. They pointed at Him and giggled. They spit in His face. They ripped His back open with the cat of nine tails whip. He was falsely accused. They placed a crown of thorns on His head and pushed down hard and then mocked him as their king. “He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was despised.” Jesus knows what you are going through.
Joni Eareckson was about to graduate high school. One day at the lake she dove into what she thought was deep water. All too quickly she struck her head on the bottom breaking her neck. Today she is a quadriplegic. She is also an artist using her teeth to paint. She is a vocalist with several recordings. She has a national radio program. She has shared her story and testimony during Billy Graham’s crusades. She is married and drives her specially built van. But she cannot feed herself. She cannot comb her hair or change her clothes.
Her road to recovery was long, hard, and deeply painful. One desperate night she begged a friend to give her pills so she could die. When her friend refused and walked out of her hospital room, Joni angrily thought, “I’m so helpless, I can’t even kill myself.” Her life was hell. She knew all to deeply the emotional pain of bitterness, rage, depression, hopelessness, and the whole gamut of emotions that anyone could experience.
While she could feel no physical pain, for 3 long years piercing sensations racked her nerves as they coursed through her body. One night God used her best friend, Cindy, to spark a dramatic change in Joni’s heart. Sitting at Joni’s beside she searched desperately for some way to encourage her best friend. The words came. “Joni, Jesus knows how you feel. You’re not the only one who’s been paralyzed. He was paralyzed too.” Joni only glared at her in anger. Cindy continued, “Remember how Jesus was nailed to the cross. His back was raw from beatings like your back sometimes gets raw. Oh how He must have longed to move, to change positions to get relief. But He couldn’t move. Joni, He knows how your feel.”
That was the beginning of Joni’s inner healing. She had never thought about that before. God’s Son had felt those piercing sensations that racked her own body. Jesus knew the helplessness she suffered. Later in her testimony, Joni told how God became incredibly close to her. “I had seen what a difference the love shown me by friends and family had made. I began to realize that God also loved me.”
Jesus not only bore our sins upon the cross, He also bore the feelings of our infirmities that we would not have to bear them alone.
“For we have a high priest, Jesus, who is able to sympathize and know our infirmities, our weaknesses.” (Hebrews 4:15) God not only knows and cares, He also completely understands our deepest pain and damaged emotions. Jesus was wounded deeply and was healed by the resurrection. He now is our wounded healer who takes our brokenness upon Himself and brings healing to you and me.
That’s why we praise Him. That’s why we glory in the cross of Jesus. That’s why we celebrate the hideous crucifixion of Jesus because through it we are healed. There is hope. Jesus is our wounded healer.