Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁷ Therefore, my Brethren, since we too are born of him, and as the Apostle says, “In Adam all die;” for we were all at first two persons if we were loth to obey the physician, that we might not be sick; let us obey Him now, that we may be delivered from sickness. The physician gave us precepts, when we were whole; He gave us precepts that we might not need a physician. “They that are whole,” He says, “need not a physician, but they that are sick.” When whole we despised these precepts, and by experience have felt how to our own destruction we despised His precepts.

Now we are sick, we are in distress, we are on the bed of weakness; yet let us not despair. For because we could not come to the Physician, He has vouchsafed to come Himself to us. Though despised by man when he was whole, He did not despise him when he was stricken. He did not leave off to give other precepts to the weak, who would not keep the first precepts, that he might not be weak; as though He would say, “Assuredly you have by experience felt that I spoke the truth when I said, Touch not this.

Be healed then now at length, and recover the life you have lost. Lo, I am bearing your infirmity; drink the bitter cup. For you have of your own self made those my so sweet precepts which were given to you when whole, so toilsome. They were despised and so your distress began; cured you can not be, except you drink the bitter cup, the cup of temptations, wherein this life abounds, the cup of tribulation, anguish, and sufferings. Drink then,” He says, “drink, that you may live.”

And that the sick man may not make answer, “I cannot, I cannot bear it, I will not drink;” the Physician, all whole though he be, drinks first, that the sick man may not hesitate to drink. For what bitterness is there in this cup, which He has not drunk? If it be contumely; He heard it first when He drove out the devils, “He has a devil, and by Beelzebub He casts out devils.” Whereupon in order to comfort the sick, He says, “If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household?” If pains are this bitter cup, He was bound and scourged and crucified.

If death be this bitter cup, He died also. If infirmity shrink with horror from any particular kind of death, none was at that time more ignominious than the death of the cross. For it was not in vain that the Apostle, when setting forth His obedience, added, “Made obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”