The Good Physician

John Newton is best known the author of the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. After his dramatic conversion he abandoned his life as a slave trader and became an Anglican clergyman and outspoken advocate for the abolition of slavery. A few weeks ago, I was delighted to discover another of Newton’s poems – that has also been sung as a hymn.

How lost was my condition
Till Jesus made me whole!
There is but one Physician
Can cure a sin-sick soul.
Next door to death he found me,
And snatched me from the grave,
To tell to all around me,
His wondrous pow’r to save.

The worst of all diseases
Is light, compared with sin;
On every part it seizes,
But rages most within:
‘Tis palsy, plague, and fever,
And madness — all combined;
And none but a believer
The least relief can find.
Newton reminds us that Jesus is ‘The Good Physician’. This morning I read of Jesus setting a man free from many demons, healing Jairus’ daughter, and a woman who had suffered from a haemorrhage for many years. Jesus’ healing miracles are a vital part of the gospel narrative – in Jesus’ day, in Newton’s eighteenth century, and today.

From men great skill professing
I thought a cure to gain;
But this proved more distressing,
And added to my pain:
Some said that nothing ailed me,
Some gave me up for lost;
Thus every refuge failed me,
And all my hopes were crossed.

At length this great Physician,
How matchless is his grace!
Accepted my petition,
And undertook my case:
First gave me sight to view him,
For sin my eyes had sealed;
Then bid me look unto him,
I looked, and I was healed.
This is intensely personal. Newton’s describing his own personal story. Jesus doesn’t just heal the body and mind, he forgives, redeems and heals the soul – his soul. Just as Newton said that amazing grace ‘saved a wretch like me’, it’s his experience of Jesus’ grace, that healed him of from the power of sin, and transformed his life.

A dying, risen Jesus,
Seen by the eye of faith;
At once from danger frees us,
And saves the soul from death:
Come then to this Physician,
His help he’ll freely give;
He makes no hard condition,
‘Tis only — look and live.

In the final verse Newton changes the emphasis. He invites us, the readers, two-hundred-and-fifty years later, to come to the Good Physician for healing. This isn’t theory to be discussed or philosophy to be considered, it’s a gospel to respond to.