We have each one a part in the flagellation: we wounded him, for certain; is it as certain that "with his stripes we are healed"?

Sin is a great deal more than a disease, it is a willful crime; but the mercy of our God leads him to consider it under that aspect, in order that he may deal with it in grace.

Sin is a disease which is hereditary, universal, contagious, defiling, incurable, mortal. No human physician can deal with it. Death, which ends all bodily pain, cannot cure this disease: it displays its utmost power in eternity, after the seal of perpetuity has been set upon it by the mandate: "He that is filthy, let him be filthy still."

1. Behold the heavenly medicine: the stripes of Jesus in body and in soul. Singular surgery, the Healer is himself wounded, and this is the means of our cure!
2. Remember that these stripes were vicarious: he suffered in our stead.
3. Accept this atonement, and you are saved by it.

• Prayer begs for the divine surgery.


• Belief is the linen cloth which binds on the plaster.


• Trust is the hand which secures it to the wound.


• Repentance is the first symptom of healing.

4.Let nothing of your own interfere with the one medicine. You see the proper places of prayer, faith, and repentance; do not misuse them, and make them rivals of the "stripes?' By the stripes of Jesus we are healed, and by these alone.

But those of us who have believed in the stripes of Jesus are witnesses to the instant and perfect efficacy of the medicine, for we can speak from experience, since "We are healed?'

1. Our conscience is healed of its smart: eased but not deadened.
2. Our heart is healed of its love of sin. We hate the evil which scourged our Well- Beloved.
3. Our life is healed of its rebellion. We are zealous of good works.
4. Our consciousness assures us that we are healed. We know it, and rejoice in it. None can dispute us out of it.

• You do not think so: this disease affects the mind, and breeds delusions.


• You ridicule such teaching: your disease leads to madness.


• You oppose it. Thus do the sick refuse medicine, and the insane hate their friends.

• Do you not know which is your condition?


• You ought to know. You may know.

• There is power in the remedy, for you, for you now.

• Quit diseased company.


• Do a healthy man's work.


• Praise the Physician, and his singular surgery.


• Publish abroad his praises.

The Balsam-tree sheds its balm to heal the wounds of those that cut it; and did not our blessed Savior do the like? They mock him, and he prays for them; they shed his blood, and he makes it a medicine for their healing; they pierce his heart, and he opens therein a fountain for their sin and uncleanness. Was it ever heard, before or since, that a physician should bleed, and thus heal his patient; or that an offended prince should die to expiate the treasons of his rebellious subjects?

Our heavenly Balsam is a cure for all diseases. If you complain that no sins are like yours, remember that there is no salvation like Christ's. If you have run the complete round of sin, remember that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. No man ever perished for being a great sinner, unless he was also an unbelieving sinner. Never did a patient fail of a cure who accepted from the great Physician the balm of his atoning blood.

The Hebrew word here, and the Greek word the Apostle Peter uses in his quotation of this passage which we render "stripes" (1 Pet. 2:24), denote properly the marks which stripes or wounds leave upon the body, or as we say, scars. The scars in his hands, feet, and side, and perhaps other marks of his many wounds, remained after his resurrection. And John saw him, in vision, before the throne, as "a Lamb as it had been slain." All these expressions and representations, I apprehend, are designed to intimate to us that, though the death of the Messiah is an event long since past, yet the effects and benefits are ever new, and to the eye of faith are ever present. How admirable is this expedient, that the wounds of one, yea, of millions, should be healed by beholding the wounds of another! Yet, this is the language of the gospel:"Look, and live!""Look unto me, and be ye saved!" Three great wounds are ours, guilt, sin, and sorrow; but by contemplating his weals, or scars, with an enlightened eye, and by rightly understanding who was thus wounded, and why, all these wounds are healed.

You who live by this medicine, speak well of it. Tell to others, as you have opportunity, what a Savior you have found. It is usual for those who have been relieved, in dangerous and complicated diseases, by a skillful physician, to commend him to others who are laboring under the like maladies. We often see public acknowledgments to this purpose. If all the persons who have felt the efficacy of a dying Savior's wounds, apprehended by faith, were to publish their cases, how greatly would his power and grace be displayed! — John Newton

He cures the mind of its blindness, the heart of its hardness, the nature of its perverseness, the will of its backwardness, the memory of its slipperiness, the conscience of its benumbedness, and the affections of their disorder, all according to his gracious promises (Ezek. 36:26-27). — John Willison

Trajan, it is said, rent his clothes to bind up his soldiers' wounds. Christ poured out his blood to heal his saints' wounds, and tears his flesh to bind them up. — Gurnall

Dr. Cheyne was an eminent as well as a pious physician; but he was supposed to be severe in his regimen. When he had prescribed, and the patient began to object to the treatment, he would say,"I see you are not bad enough for me yet." Some are not bad enough for Christ yet — we mean, in their own apprehension; but when they find and feel that they are entirely lost, and have no other help or hope, they will cordially acquiesce in his recommendations, however mysterious, however humbling, however trying. — Jay

Four travelers, not very well acquainted with the cross-road over which they were journeying, began to look out for a finger-post. Soon after this, one of them cried out," I think I can see one yonder in the distance"; and "I believe that I can see it too, about half-a-mile off," rejoined another; and "I am almost certain that I can see it," added a third, "it stands up higher than the hedges." "Well, well;' said the fourth, "you may be right, or you may be wrong; but we had better make the best of our way to it, for while we keep at such a distance, whether it be a finger-post or not, it will be of little use to us.

Now I want you all to draw near to the Savior of sinners, and not to be satisfied with "thinking;' or "believing," or being "almost certain," that he is your Redeemer; I want you to see him as your Savior, as distinctly as you can see the sun in the skies, and to break out with all the conviction and fervency of Thomas, the Apostle,"My Lord, and my God!" — George Mogridge