Let there be confession of all known faults; let there be humble prayer for light on any hindrance to healing that obedience can remove; let faith be strengthened by the promises of the word of God and the testimonies of those Divinely healed; but let all this be done in love. And all the time beware of the wiles of the “accuser of the brethren,” (Rev. 12:10), knowing that Satan will add affliction upon a child of God unless he is resisted by the truth as it is in Jesus. If no apparent reasons for failure to receive supernatural healing are made clear to the conscience or mind of the sufferer we have no recourse but to leave the case in the hands of our Heavenly Father—without condemnation of ourselves or others. Let our “Trophimus” be held blameless, though left sick, until we know as we are known.
Trophimus was sick. That simple fact is stated without comment. The Bible is a salutary remedy for morbid or extreme doctrines that refuse to see life clearly and as a whole. When it records the miraculous there is a restraint and simplicity that constitutes a hallmark of veracity. It is we who in the heat of our controversies, or our mere carelessness in reading, frequently miss the consistent and solid background of the normal in the Bible. And the background of the early Christians was perfectly normal as far as universal human experience is concerned.
Something tremendous had happened in their souls, and they knew it. It had all been made possible for them through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. They were born from above, and their bodies had become the temples of the Spirit of God. Their preaching of Christ was confirmed with signs following, and their meetings were marked by supernatural manifestations of the Holy Ghost. They confessed themselves strangers and pilgrims with a citizenship in heaven. But their teachers exhorted them to be diligent it fulfilling all the regular and normal duties of home and family life, of social and business life, of earthly citizenship and moral obligation (E.g.—Col. 3:17 – 4:1). They knew our common human laughter and tears, strength and weakness, poverty and plenty, labour and rest, sunshine and shadow. They married and were given in marriage. They bore children, and knew the pang of bereavement when those they loved died—only they were taught to regard that as falling asleep in Jesus, and they were given a blessed Hope (I Thess. 4:13-18).
It may seem ridiculous to have to assert the plain fact that sooner or later all those early Christians of whom we read in the New Testament died. The miracle by which Peter restored Dorcas to life (Acts 9:40) was not repeated indiscriminately, if at all. Loved ones were not continually being raised from the dead, however deep the sorrow and great the loss to the local church.
We may, if we choose, imagine that the vast majority who did not become martyrs simply died in their sleep, or faded away through sheer old age, or in some other dreamy way just slipped painlessly out of this life into the life which is to come. Perhaps it was so. The idea is attractive. Only, if it is true, those early Christians had an abnormal experience in dying that they did not have in living. To most ordinary men and women death comes in the end through some physical failure from which they do not recover—a sickness proves fatal, because of impaired powers of physical resistance through advanced years. It is a strain upon credulity which the New Testament is not in the habit of imposing upon us to imagine that it was quite otherwise with the early Christians just because they were Christians.
pages 13&14
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