Jesus' Comfort for Sinners

Scripture teaches us that God comforts His people. The principal manner in which God's comfort is displayed, is that He takes away our sin, He pardons our iniquities, He clothes us in His righteousness, and He thereby makes peace with us forever.

Jesus healed many helpless people, and even raised some from the dead. But in all that, the healing was but a foretaste of the full comfort of God for us!

Christ intended far greater things: the saving of His people from their sins!

Ultimately, that would fix everything. Our sins are the ultimate source of all our troubles, and sicknesses, and heartaches, and death itself.

But Christ paid the penalty of justice for His people's sins, so that He might raise us up one day at the resurrection. Then, all our sinning and sighing will be over forever.

Jesus described a far deeper problem for His lost people: they were faint, and lost, like sheep without a shepherd. This too moved Him to compassion for them. What was needed, from a human perspective, was more faithful believers to preach the Gospel of salvation by Christ to these lost people.

In this observation, Jesus was redirecting His disciples away from a focus on mere physical sickness, to the root of the problem: spiritual lostness, and the wandering of sinful men away from God through disobedience. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way!

No amount of mere physical miracles can save the Lord's lost people, because it is sin that is our root problem. "He was despised, and we esteemed Him not."

So as Jesus was performing great physical miracles of healing, He intended to do far greater then healing the sick.