God’s Word Hurts Us To Heal Us

The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
–Hebrews 4:12

This week, we have seen that God’s Word has the power to save us and to guide us. Third, God’s Word also possesses the power to heal us. Do you remember the story of the Gordian knot? The legend went that whoever was able to untie this complex knot would rule over Asia. One day Alexander the Great came to town. Instead of unraveling the knot, he took out his sword and sliced it in two.

I think of that story every time I think about Hebrews 4:12: “The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

You see, the Bible says all of us are enslaved by sin. Sin is like a cord that wraps itself around our lives and strangles the life out of us. “By what a man is overcome,” 2 Peter 2:19 says, “by this he is enslaved.” You know what you are enslaved by today–it is whatever sin you cannot say no to in your life. And all sin begins with wrong thinking. Wrong thinking leads to sin, and sin leads to slavery.

Let me show you how that works. We think we are responsible for our well-being; therefore, we are bound up in worry. Or we think money is the answer to everything we need in life, so we are bound up in greed. Or we think sexual purity leads to boredom in life, so we are bound up in immorality. Or we think revenge is the best way to deal with mistreatment, so we are bound up in bitterness. We are bound up in all these sins that stem from wrong thinking, and we try everything we can to break loose. And nothing helps.

Just like Alexander the Great’s sword sliced through that Gordian knot, we need the Word of God to slice through those wrong thoughts that lead to the wrong actions that enslave us. God’s Word does not open us up physically; it opens us up spiritually. It exposes the true motives and intensions of our hearts. And that is exactly what it takes to break free from sin. Think about a doctor operating on a malignant tumor. The doctor slices you open not to inflict as much pain as possible but to heal you. That is exactly what the Great Physician does. He said in Deuteronomy 32:39, “I have wounded and it is I who heal.” God hurts us by exposing us with His scalpel, the Word of God, so that He might bring healing to our lives.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “How To Take A Spiritual Bath” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2011.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.