JUDGMENT AND MERCY
‘And when He had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, He saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.’
I. In this withered hand we behold the emblem of the moral withering of the soul of man.—The moment our first father stretched forth his hand to partake of the forbidden fruit, all his original righteousness, strength, and love withered, decayed, and dried up; and we, his posterity, are the spiritually paralysed and shrivelled limbs of a once stately tree God smote and destroyed.
II. What was the nature of this anger which our Lord here expressed?—We must acknowledge that never did He appear more unlike Himself than now, and yet never was He more truly so! Had He not exposed the hypocrisy and denounced the malevolence of these Pharisees, these whited sepulchres, with all the burning, withering, holy indignation of which He was master, then a cloud had shaded some of the brightest beams of His character. Christ was angry, but He did not sin. This could not be the case with us. Let us rebuke sin, let us chide the fall, the error, the inconsistency of a brother faithfully, tenderly, gently as we may, the infirmity and imperfection of our fallen humanity will yet taint and shade it. But Christ’s anger was holiness clad in its judicial vesture—it was the anger of holiness.
III. The healing of the withered hand, and its Gospel significance.—(a) The first step in the process was the separation of the man from the multitude, (b) The next step in the curative process was Christ’s command to the man, ‘Stretch forth thine hand.’ (c) With the command to extend the withered hand there went forth the Divine power to obey. ‘And he stretched it out.’ (d) We are thus conducted to—the cure. And now the Saviour appears truly Himself. Now He vindicates His proceedings from all suspicion of unsympathising trifling with the poor man’s infirmity, unveils His ineffable benevolence, and manifests His merciful design.
—Rev. Octavius Winslow, d.d.
Illustration
‘If Christ is grieved at unbelief, what must be the joy which faith gives Him! If our hardness of heart shades His countenance, how must that countenance gleam with holy delight over the soul subdued in penitent love at His feet! Think it not presumption, then, to travel to Jesus with the withered hand—with a chilled love, with declension of grace, with weakness of faith, with low frames, and with a tempted, tried, and wounded spirit. Jesus Christ maketh you whole.’