The Universal Remedy

"With his stripes (or wounds) we are healed." Isaiah 53:5

I received, one day this week, a short communication worded in this way: "Wanted, a cure for a weak and doubting faith, especially when Satan disinclines to pray." Anxiously desirous to prescribe cures for such maladies, and for any others which may vex the Lord's people, I began to turn over in my mind what were the sacred remedies for such a case, and I could only remember one, "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." Our Lord Jesus is to us a tree of life, and by the leaves I suppose the Holy Spirit means the acts, words, promises, and lesser griefs of Jesus, all of which are for the healing of his people. Then my mind reverted to this kindred text: "With his stripes we are healed." Not merely his bleeding wounds, but even those blue bruises of his flesh help to heal us; not alone the work of the nails and the spear, but the cruel handiwork of the rod and the scourge. Out of all this throng of believers, there are none quite free from spiritual diseases. One may be saying, "Mine is a weak faith;" another may confess, "Mine is distracted thoughts;" another may exclaim, "Mine is coldness of love;" and a fourth may have to lament his powerlessness in prayer. One remedy in natural things will not suffice for all diseases; and the moment that the quack begins to cry up his medicine as healing all, you shrewdly surmise that it heals none; but in spiritual things it is not so: there is a universal remedy, provided in the word of God for all spiritual sicknesses to which man can be subject, and that remedy is contained in the few words of my text- "With his stripes we are healed."

I. I shall invite you, then, first of all, this morning, to consider THE MEDICINE ITSELF WHICH IS HERE PRESCRIBED--the stripes of our Savior; not stripes laid upon our own back, nor tortures inflicted upon our own minds, but the grief which Jesus has endured for those who trust in him. By the term "stripes," no doubt the prophet understood here, first, literally, those actual stripes which fell upon our Lord's shoulders when he was beaten of the Jews, and afterwards scourged of the Roman soldiery. But the words intend far more than this. No doubt with his prophetic eye Isaiah saw the stripes from that unseen scourge held in the Father's hand which fell not upon the flesh of Jesus, but upon his nobler inner nature when his soul was scourged for sin, when eternal justice was the plower, and made deep furrows upon his spirit; when the lash fell with awful force again, and again, and again, upon the blessed soul of him who was made a curse for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. I take the term "stripes" to comprehend all the physical and spiritual sufferings of our Lord, with especial reference to those chastisements of our peace which preceded rather than actually caused his sin-atoning death: it is by these that our souls are healed.

"But why?" say you. First, then, because our Lord, as a sufferer, was not a private person, but suffered as a public individual, and an appointed representative. Your sins, in a certain sense, end with yourself; but the sins of Adam could not do so, for Adam stood before God as the representative of the human race, and everything that he did brought its dire effects upon all his descendants. Now, our Savior is the second Adam, the second federal head and representative of men, and all that he did, and all that he suffered, goes to the behalf of all those whom he represented. His holy life is the inheritance of his people, and his suffering death, with all its pangs and grief's, belongs to those whom he represented, for they did in effect suffer in him, and offer in him a vindication to divine justice. Our Lord was appointed of God to stand in the stead of his people. A divine decree had gone forth sanctioning his substitution, so that when he stood forward as the representative of guilty men God accepted him, having foreordained him to that very end.

So then, let us never forget that all which Jesus endured came upon him not as a private individual, but fell upon him as the great public representative of those who believe in him. Hence the effects of his griefs are applied to us, and with his stripes we are healed. His blood, his passions, and his death, make atonement for us, and deliver us from the curse, while his bruises, smarts, and stripes, make up a matchless medicine to allay our sicknesses. "Behold how every wound of his A precious balm distills, Which heals the scars that sin had made, And cures all mortal ills."

Be it never forgotten, too, that our Lord was not merely man, or else his sufferings could not have availed for the multitude who now are healed thereby. He was God as well as man; and it is the most mysterious and marvelous of all facts that God should be manifest in the flesh, and seen of angels, and that in the flesh the Son of God should most really and certainly die, and be buried, and lie for three days in the tomb. The incarnationwith its after train of humiliation is to be believed, and accepted as an ever memorable display of condescension- from the highest throne of glory to the cross of deepest woe the Savior stoops! Neither cherubim nor seraphim can measure the mighty distance. Imagination wearies its wing in attempting the tremendous flight. In every stripe that falls upon our Emanuel you are to consider that it falls not merely upon a man, but upon one who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.

Though the Deity suffered not, yet was it in so intimate a connection with the humanity, that it infused supernatural power into the human frame, and no doubt added wondrous merit to all his bitter human foes. Oh! what a rock have we to rest upon--a substitute covered with stripes- a substitute appointed and accepted of God, and that substitute himself God over all blessed forever, and therefore able to bear for us what we could never have borne except by lying forever in the lowest pit of Hell. Brethren, we all believe that our Savior's sufferings heal us of the curse by being presented before God as a substitute for what we owe to his divine law.

But healing is a work that is carried on within, and the text rather leads me to speak of the effect of the stripes of Christ upon our characters and natures than upon the result produced in our position before God. We know that the Lord has pardoned and justified us through the precious blood of Jesus, but the question of this morning rather is how these griefs and pangs help to deliver us from the disease of sin which aforetime reigned within us. It was necessary however, that I should mention first, the justifying power of Jesus' blood, because apart from our belief in Jesus as a substitute, and as divine, there is no power in his example to heal us of sin.

Men have studied that example and admired it, but have remained as vile as before. They have 'admired' his beauty, but have not been enamored of his person. It is only when they have rested in him as divine that they have afterwards come to feel the potency of those wondrous cords of lovewhich his example always casts around forgiven spirits. They have learned to love Jesus, and then their admiration has become a practical thing, butmere admiration, apart from love to him and faith in him, is a cold barren moonlight which ripens no fruit of holiness. Beloved, the stripes of Jesus operate upon our character, principally because we see in him a perfect man suffering for offenses that were not his own; we see in him a glorious Lord, who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor; we behold in him the paragon of perfect impassioned affection; we see in him a fidelity never to be excelled when through the pangs of death he followed on to work out the purpose of his heart, the salvation of his people.

And as we look at him and study his character as it is revealed by his griefs, we become moved thereby, and the spiritual evils which had rule over us are dethroned, and through the power of the Spirit the image of Jesus Christ is stamped upon our natures. Jesus dying justifies us; Jesus smittensanctifies us. His cruel flagellations are our refinings; his buffetings are blows at our sins; his bruises mortify our lusts! Thus much then upon the medicine that heals us, it is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, as understood in our intellects and beloved in our hearts, and especially those incidents of ignominy and cruelty which surrounded that death with deeper gloom, and revealed the patience and love of the substitute.

II. I shall ask you now for a brief moment to behold THE MATCHLESS CURES WROUGHT BY THIS REMARKABLE MEDICINE. Look at two pictures. Look at man without the stricken Savior; and then behold man with the Savior, healed by his stripes. I say, look at man originally and apart from the Savior. Naked, he is driven out of Eden's garden, the inheritor of the curse. Within him lies concealed the deadly cancer of sin. If you would see that evil which dwells in every one of us from our very birth developing itself upon the surface, you might soon behold it in all its horror near at home- a street or two would conduct you to sin's carnival; but perhaps it were better that you should not gaze upon

a scene so polluting. In the gambling hells, in the haunts where drunkards congregate, where thieves assemble, amid oaths and blasphemies, and language lewd, and acts lascivious- it is there that sin stalks forth as a full grown monster!

In the moral and educated natural man, sin apparently sleeps like a viper coiled up; a thing in appearance little to be dreaded, quiet and powerless as a poor worm; but when man is allowed to have his own way, before long he feels the viper's tooth, the poisoned fang envenoms all his blood, and you see the proof of its deadly poison in overt and abundant sin. Men become covered with the visible blotches of iniquity, so that the spiritual eyecan see in their character the leprosy fully upon them, and all manner of abominations, worse than the rottenness of the deadliest of fleshly diseases, constantly exuding from their souls. If we could see sin as it appears to the all-discerning eye of the Eternal, we should be more shocked at the sight of sin than by a vision of Hell; for there is in hell something which purity approves, it is the vindication of righteousness,

it is justice triumphant; but in sin itself there is abomination, and only abomination; it is a something out of joint with the whole system of the universe; it is a miasma dangerous to all spiritual life; a plague, a pest full of dangers to everything that breathes. Sin is a monster, a hideous thing, a thing which God will not look upon, and which pure eyes cannot behold but with the utmost detestation. A flood of tears is the proper medium through which a Christian should look at sin.

If you would see what sin can do, you have but to look into your own heart with an illuminated eye. Ah, what mischief lurks there! You hate sin, my brother, I know you do, since Christ has visited you with the day spring from on high; but with all your hatred of sin you must acknowledge that it still lurks within you. You find yourself envious, you who hate envy; you find yourself thinking hard thoughts of God, you who yet love him and would lay down your lives for him; you find yourself provoked to anger on a sudden against the very friend to whose call you would cheerfully yield your all. Yes, we do the thing we don't want to do, through the power of sin.

Sin degrades and debases us- we cannot look within without being shocked at the lowliness to which our mind in secret descends. If you anxiously desire to see sin at the full, come hither, and gaze down the fathomless abyss. Listen to those blasphemous execrations. If you have the courage, hearken to those mingled cries of misery and passion, which come up from Tophet, from the abodes of lost spirits. Sin is there ripe; here it is green.

Here we see its darkness as the shadows of evening, but there it is tenfold night. Here it scatters firebrands, but there its quenchless conflagrations flame on forever and ever. Oh! if we have but grace to be rid of sin now, the riddance will save us from the wrath to come. Sin, indeed, is Hell, Hell in embryo, Hell in essence, Hell kindling, Hell emerging from the shell. Hell is but sin when it has manifested and developed itself to the full. Stand at the gates of Tophet and understand how fell the disease for which heaven's remedy is provided in the stripes of the Only Begotten.

Now, beloved, I said I would show you the cure, and I have but feebly talked of the disease itself to let you see the greatness of the change by contrast. Observe, beloved, you who have believed in Jesus, observe already what a change the stripes of Christ have made in you, since the dear hour that brought you to his feet, what different men have you been! Indeed, in your case instead of the thorn has come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier has come up the myrtle tree. You who were once the blind slaves of Satan are now the rejoicing children of God. The things which you once loved, though God abhorred them, you now also detest right heartily.

God's mind and yours are now agreed as to darkness and light; you no longer put the one for the other. How changed are you! You are a new creature; alive from the dead. And what has done it? what indeed but faith in the Crucified and contemplation of his wounds? Yet in you, dear friend,the healing is very far from being perfect; if you would behold perfect spiritual health, look you yonder to those white-robed hosts who jubilantly stand without fault before the throne of God. Search them through and through, and they are undefiled; let even the all-seeing eye rest upon them, and they are without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. How is this? Where washed they these snow-white garments, once so much defiled? They answer with joyful music, "We have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Ask them where their victory came over indwelling sin- "They with united breath Ascribe their victories to the Lamb Their conquests to his death."

They will all tell you that the perfect healing which they have received, and which today they enjoy before the throne of God, is the result of the Savior's passion. "With his stripes," say the ten thousand times ten thousand, with a voice that is loud as thunder and as sweet as harpers harping with their harps- "with his stripes we are healed."

III. I want now for you to note, dear brethren, in detail, and yet so briefly as not to weary you, THE MALADIES WHICH THIS WONDROUS MEDICINE REMOVES. I shall not attempt to read you a full list, for they are more than I can count, but be they ever so many, there is not one which the stripes of Jesus cannot heal.

I would remind you, first, that the great root of all this mischief--the curse which fell on man through Adam's sin is already effectually removed. Jesus took it upon himself, and was made a curse for us, and now there can fall no curse upon any of those for whom Jesus died as a substitute. They are the blessed of the Lord, yes, and they shall be blessed, let Hell curse them as it may. The curse has spent its fury. Like a thunder-storm which once threatened to sweep all before it, but is now lulled to calm; divine wrath has passed away, and showers of mercy are now following it, making glad the thirsty heart. Brethren, Christ has cured us already, most effectually, of the curse of God upon us. But I am now to speak of diseases, which we have felt and bemoaned, and which still trouble the family of God. One of the first which was healed by the stripes of Christ was the mania of despair.

Ah, well do I recollect when I thought there was no hope for me. How was it possible, my heart asked, that my sins could be forgiven consistently with the justice of God? That question I propounded to my soul again, and again, and again, but no answer could I find from within; and even when I read the word I perceived not- though it be most clearly there- the answer to that great question. But, beloved, when I first understood that Jesus Christ stood in the place of all those that believe in him, and that, if I trusted him my sins were all forgiven, because they had been already punished in the person of my blessed substitute, then I had no longer occasion for despair; then I listened to the word of the gospel, feeling, "There is hope for me, even for me." When I understood that there was nothing expected from me in order to be saved, but that all must come from Jesus; that I was not to be wounded, nor to be made to hurt, but that he had been smitten and had been made to bleed on my behalf; and that my life must be found in his death, and my healing in his wounds, then hope sprung up- bright-eyed hope -and my soul turned unto her Father and her God with loving expectations.

Was it not so with you? Beloved, did you ever have a comfortable confidence in God until you had seen the stripes of Jesus? If you are wrapped up in a peace that did not come from Christ's stripes, I implore you be rid of it, for it is a presumption which will surely destroy you. The only sure, solid, everlasting peace that can ever come to a palpitating human bosom, heaving painfully under the pressure of sin, is that which springs from looking at that blessed Son of God who on the tree poured out his life-floods that we might be saved by him. For the mania of despair the stripes of Christ are the true remedy.

Then if we suffer afterwards from any hardness of heart, and there is a complaint of the soul well-known as the stony heart, there is no obtaining tenderness except by standing long, yes, remaining always at the cross-foot. When I feel myself insensible to spiritual things (and I blush to say that it is no unusual feeling), when I would but cannot pray, when I would but cannot repent, when, "If anything be felt it is only pain to find I cannot feel," I have always found that I cannot flog myself into feeling by the threatenings of God, nor by the terrors of the law; but when I can come to the cross, just as I did years ago, a poor guilty one, and believe that the Redeemer has put all my sins away, black as I am; and that God neither can, nor will condemn me, hardened as I feel myself to be, ah! then, the sense of blood-bought pardon soon dissolves a heart of stone! I do not believe there is anything that can so effectually make the ice within us melt, and so speedily thaw the great glaciers of our inner nature, as the love of Jesus Christ. Oh! but that will touch you, man. It will create a soul within the ribs of death. There is a secret spring within the heart upon which the finger of the crucified hand is placed, and the soul arises from its deadly slumbers! Christ has the key of the house of David, and he can open the door so that neither man nor devil can shut it; and out of that opened heart shall proceed godly thoughts, heavenly aspirations, sacred passions, and Heaven-born resolves.

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