The Synonymity of Sin & Sickness- 2nd July 1996

Question:
Dear Teachers,
Regarding healing, what comes to mind is our knowledge of the initiates trained in the mystery schools to heal; also the witch doctors in primitive tribes and the medicine men in early civilizations. These people 'called down' the spiritual forces to enable the healings.
What was so different with Christ Jesus and His healings? He seemed to heal from within Himself and went on to say that all men have this 'individual ability'. He seemed surprised at His own power or energy when the woman touched His garment and He felt drained.
I have the impression that it was all new to Him also. It also appears that all the healings Jesus did were asked for: a one-to-one experience from the heart rather than the calling down of spiritual forces. What is the difference (as in end result) of their healings - if healed, why is one better than the other? When is a healing not good?
Thanks again,
Jocey

THE words sin and sickness are synonymous. Such synonymity, although heralding a confusion, brings also much to answer Christ's healing as opposed to that healing without Him.

"Blessed is he who is not offended by me" [Luke 7:23] - it is the sins that indignantly protest our Christ within and are offended by His Being and His Presence, not a man, who by mercy may be released from his sin and his sickness were he to relinquish them to Christ.

When is a healing not effective? Precisely when the wineskins are old, for should it be that a man is outwardly cured of his sickness, yet his sin lingers on within his soul then he shall continue in illness, whether it is seen or unseen.

Neither is new wine put into old wine-skins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.
Matthew 9:17

There is a power which is greater than an energy, a power which belongs alongside the essence of all Creation, rather than moves as an isolated element in amongst it. This power of powers, if you will, is our Christ. There is nothing which is not at His disposal, nor nothing above His command. He does not tire, nor does Man ever surprise Him. The very image of Christ being so, usurps our confidence most radically, and we should be cautioned as to regarding Him in such an ordinary fashion alike to the responses within an ordinary man.

However, and having said that, there were and still are, moments of long and drawn out suffering which He goes on to endure. That He is beyond this suffering, yet endures it, also brings us to the similar question as to why He must tolerate those who hold no faith in Him and keep their faith safe until such time as they shall turn to Him.

His Power, so named, is polarized. His dimension is this dimension, so that rather than by 'calling down', we may draw in; and by our faith, by our trust, this is effected. The energies of life and of deathly life assume rank one upon another. The laws entitle them to find their domains and rent their issue with mutual consideration. Christ holds the ribbons of energy as though they were streamers flying from a stick, but He has no use for them when it comes to the being of Man to rid him of his illness.

So we can ask why is it that a man is not so instantly good? Why can't we win perfection in just the moment of that desire? Yet to do this we must perfect that desire also. We must come to know what it is that we truly wish to be, and then how it is to be.

Christ answers the immediate, this is so. The affirmations of His Love must be maintained forever on and into the future - our proclamation of love for Him is not just a once-of utterance. We learn to revitalize our faith and diminish our sins in daily conquest. We learn also our differentiation in such matters that afford the heart and its determining, so that we become keen to respond to the need in the world, and not only to that of our own self's salvation.