Luke 8:43-48 And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living on physicians, neither could be healed of any,… How many feel the reality of a personal relation to Jesus? How many consciously recognize that their lives are implicated with His life? 1. Of some, of many, it may be said that they touch Jesus with their respect. No doubt the religion of Christ is respected. Christianity is at least a respectable institution, Nevertheless, all this respect is not like that touch which was given in the earnest purpose of faith and need. II. There are those who touch Jesus with their opinions. But, held as mere opinions, their intellectual validity gives us no real contact with the Saviour. We may actually be what we claim to be, exclusive possessors and vigilant guardians of orthodoxy, and yet be far from Him. The essential thing is not what we think about Him, but what He Himself, in His personal relations, in His healing, life-giving power, is to us. III. Again, there are those who seek to touch Jesus through sacraments and ceremonies. The idea of the woman appears to have been of this kind. She thought, "If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole"; whereas we know that the virtue went out of Him. IV. There are those who touch Jesus timidly and fitfully. Their communion with Him is felt only in impulses of intermittent enthusiasm or seasons of excitement, or it is held as a secret of which they are ashamed. We must, indeed, respect the modesty of sincere faith, the sacred reticence that guards the deepest and truest feelings of the heart. We know that religious emotion may evaporate in words, and that sterling principle may be less demonstrative than the noisy ring of cant. But, notwithstanding all imperfections, he who has really touched Jesus will in memo way make the secret manifest, not in the mere profession of the lips, but in the confession of the life. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, |
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