Episode Transcript  

One

Those who are “well” have no need of a physician 

The comedy news site, The Onion, once did a skit with the title, “Heroic man refuses to believe he has cancer.” 

During the satirical news interview, the main character – a guy who clearly has advanced cancer – talks about his resolve in refusing to listen to doctors, or look at the x-ray scans. He kept repeating that he was perfectly healthy, and so what did he need with doctors or their diagnoses?

And then, before the interviewers even have a chance to wrap up, the guy dies of cancer, right there on camera. 

Now this kind of tragic denial is exactly what Christ warns us about: the denial of our grave spiritual illness. And the scary thing is, it’s not just non-Christians who refuse to admit that they’re seriously sick – it’s also those of us who claim to be members of the Church.

And if we don’t wake up to our condition really quickly, we’ll die – and we’ll die in our sins.

Two

Christ did not come to save the Righteous

Jesus explicitly uses the medical metaphor when he’s talking to the Pharisees. 

He says, “No one who is healthy has need of a doctor, but the sick do.” Then the Lord delivers this frightening conclusion: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).

What does that mean? It should surprise us, because on the surface is looks like Jesus is saying that there’s a certain group of people that He didn’t come to save.

And that demographic is: the righteous. 

Or, more precisely, those who think they’re righteous. Who do not realize – not really – that they’re sinners in desperate need of Jesus.

If that’s us, then the Divine Physician can’t heal us. If that’s us, then the Savior Himself won’t be able to save us.

Three

Those who don’t Realize they’re sinners

So, am I someone who is spiritually complacent? Someone who thinks I am a morally good person, who is spiritually okay? Am I someone who would have a hard time listing 

My dominant deadly sins, my primary vices, 

the main sins I regret, 

the main kinds of spiritual healing I hope Christ will save me from before it’s too late?

Because if that’s who I am, then I am someone it’s going to be hard to save. You’re like someone with cancer who won’t let a doctor anywhere near them. Which means I am in the most dangerous spiritual position of anyone.

Self-righteousness comes in lots of varieties

You can be a self-righteous liberal or a self-righteous conservative; a self-righteous progressive or a self-righteous traditionalist; a self-righteous authority figure or a self-righteous subordinate; a self-righteous rich person or a self-righteous poor person.  You can be loud and self-righteous or quiet and self-righteous. There’s all kinds.

But one of the main marks of our self-righteousness is that we’ll always be more upset by other people’s sins than by our own. And, ironically, we’ll always be complaining about other people’s self-righteousness. 

Self-righteousness is death. It’s the most urgent spiritual affliction there is. That’s why Christ was so desperate to wake up the pharisees to a sense of their own sins – because He knew that unless He didn’t, they couldn’t be saved.

So, what can we do to wake ourselves up to our own sins? What can we do to avoid the complete spiritual destruction that comes from self-righteousness?

Four

Reflect on the Standard

The only way to really come to awareness of our own sins is by continually reflecting on the standard that we are called to.

Only when we are constantly reminding ourselves of what God has commanded us to be – what He made us to be – will we be able to realize how badly we’ve fallen short.

Only then will we really feel how sick we are, and how much we need the doctor named Jesus.

So where do we find the standard that will convict us of your own sins? By daily meditation on the perfection Christ has called us to.

We can meditate on the life of Christ, since He is the standard we’ve been called to live up to.

Or we can meditate on the lives of the saints, who show us that it’s not just Jesus – it’s all his disciples – who can live heroic virtue.

Or we can meditate on the lists God has given us in Scripture, by which to measure ourselves

The ten commandments

The fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5

The characteristics of love in I Corinthians 13

Or the Beatitudes in Matthew 5

Never forget: recognizing our own sinfulness is a necessary precondition for salvation. That’s why daily meditation is essential—not just to reflect on holy things, but to examine where we fall short and resolve to live more faithfully. Only then can we truly open our hearts to receive Christ as our Savior.

Five

Acknowledge Your Sins – Confession

It’s not enough to recognize our sins: we have to acknowledge them, and ask the Doctor for Healing. 

That is why Christ gave us the gift of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where we go to Christ, in the person of the Priest, and tell Him how we are sick, and that we want to be healed.

Confession is the sacrament that saves us from lying to ourselves, that saves us from quiet self-righteousness.

Where we say, not only to Christ, but to another regular human being sitting right there in the flesh: “I’m a mess. Help me.”

And it’s a fascinating paradox that the less frequently I go to confession, the fewer sins I think I need to confess.

Whereas the more often I go, the clearer the light shines on my sickness, the more areas of my soul I will find that need to be healed. 

Our equipment for scanning for signs of spiritual cancer will get more and more sophisticated

And every time we find a new area, a new set of sins that we can present to the divine physician, the more reason we will have to be hopeful – because if we know we are sick, and we are asking to be saved, then Christ will be able to make us well.

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