Editorial December 5, 2016 Issue

Principle, Love, and Christian healing

Barbara Vining

Christ Jesus, the Son of God, set the high standard for a Christian healer: Let God—the divine Principle, Love—correct and govern one’s own thought and conduct; and let that Love be reflected in oneself when others need correcting. That’s a very high standard indeed! And we can learn from Jesus’ example how to adhere to it.

Jesus loved what was right in the eyes of God. In other words, he loved holiness—whatever expressed the nature of God, good. He kept himself free of sin—whatever was unlike the nature of God, good—through his own obedience to God. And he saved others from their sins—their departures from holiness—by loving them the way God loves all His children, in their true identity as God’s pure, spiritual reflection.

Jesus’ sinless, unconditional love for others was an expression of the divine Principle, Love, that redeems human character from impurity and disease to purity and health. But when the Pharisees saw publicans and sinners eating with Jesus and his disciples, they asked, “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” Jesus responded, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.… I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (see Matthew 9:10–13). Jesus’ willingness to have sinners join him while he was dining was an expression of that Love alone that can open a person’s heart for repentance and reform.

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Bible Lens—December 5–11, 2016