Now, this is noteworthy. He didn't walk across to her and heal her. He called her to come to him. That is part of the lesson. ‘Do you remember how he did that?’, the disciples would say later, ‘That was a picture of conversion.’ Christ calls us to himself. If you are beginning to be aware that you are a sinner under condemnation; if you are concerned about this and you begin to need the Lord, he is calling us to himself. He called her and she came. There is no record of her exercising faith. There is no record of her asking him anything. But she answers his call, and she comes, and that is as good as everything. She came to him because she trusted him.
‘Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.’ Loosed – what a wonderful word! That is exactly how it is with us. We come to Jesus Christ, believing that because he suffered and died on Calvary's cross, he has borne the punishment of sin for all who believe in him. You understand that God cannot just forgive you your sin. God is perfect and holy. He cannot lust let you off all your sin. But in his amazing kindness, the second person of the Godhead, Jesus Christ the Lord, has come into the world in human form, assuming a human body, and allowed himself to be nailed to a cross where he would say to the Father, ‘Punish me instead of them – all the redeemed, all who would ever be saved in the history of the world. Take the sum total of their punishment and invisibly punish me and I will bear it away.’ God, the Son, entered into a human body to take the punishment of sin. That is how God forgives. That is what enables him to forgive. If you come to Christ believing that, and you hear his call, ‘Come to me’, and you run to him, ‘I come Lord, forgive me my sin, give me spiritual life, restore me’, he will. And he will do so instantly. If you are sincere, if you mean it, he will heal you and restore you and give you life in the soul.
By nature we are deformed spiritually, we have no life, no knowledge. You may have a bit of knowledge; you may have heard of Jesus Christ; you may know a little bit about Calvary's cross, how the Bible teaches he died for sinners, but you don't know much, and you don't know him personally. It is like being in prison. There's just a slit of a cell window, and that's all you can see of the world. You may be a prisoner of war and there are small slits to look through, and you can see the snow-capped mountain, but that's all you can see of the world, and you think, ‘If I could only see more.’ Your knowledge of spiritual things and your understanding is so limited. But when you come to Christ, you are loosed, set free. Spiritual life just surges into your heart. You are given a new nature, and loosed from condemnation. You enter into communion with him, you are set free from the dominion of sin over you. You can still sin, but sin loses so much of its power, and it becomes your enemy rather than your friend, and God gives you power to resist sin. You are set free from the inevitability of death and hell. No wonder Charles Wesley, when he was converted, wrote those words, ‘My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee.’
We think that we are loosed or free by not being religious. ‘Surely to be a Christian is to be tied and limited and restricted. Thou shalt not …, thou shalt not … – bound by rules, bound by the will of God under the rule of life that is set out in the Bible. I don't want that. I want to be unrestricted.’ But in reality it is the other way around. We think independence from God is being free, loosed. But no, to be independent from God is to be bound and limited and restricted. This poor lady illustrates that in her illness from which she was to be set free. If I am not converted and I do not live under the help of God, then I am morally restricted. I can avoid murdering people if I'm unconverted; I can sometimes avoid quite a few sins by dint of effort. I can perhaps avoid violence and so on. But there's a whole lot of things I cannot do anything about. I can't control pride. I can't very often control lies. I can't very often control temper. I cannot control selfishness and meanness. I am subject to all kinds of temptations and sins, and I am weak. I am pictured by that woman bent double, unable to do all sorts of things. I cannot live the life God commands me to live; I cannot ever go to heaven. Also, I cannot pray. I cannot sense anything about God. I have no spiritual life in me. I have a soul, but it's dormant. It doesn't work because I'm cut off from God, and have no relationship with him: that is the most terrible limitation imaginable. I have no meaning without God. I have no eternal destiny. I have no ultimate purpose. What a tragic situation. Just eat, drink and be merry.
Don't expect the church to change you through its rituals and ceremonies. The doctor cannot change you. He can help you with physical things, but he cannot help you with spiritual things. He cannot get you forgiveness; he cannot bring your spirit to life so that you know the Lord and walk with him. Only Christ can do it. He can release you from condemnation for your sin, and make you clean. You are released from all that pride and selfishness and deceitfulness, all those sins that drove your character. Only Jesus Christ can do such a wonderful thing.