When we hear the preaching of the gospel we ask, ‘May I approach him? Can I approach him? Will it result in what these preachers are talking about – conversion, becoming a new creature, finding Christ, knowing him? Yes, I’ve sinned away my years. I've ignored him. I've even slandered him. I am against him. I haven’t wanted him. Can I approach him?’ Well, you may; you can. The only hold-up is on your side. You may touch his garment; you may put your faith in him. He's promised that anyone who approaches him will be blessed. He's even urged us to approach him. He's gone further: he's warned us what will happen to us eternally if we fail to approach him. The hold-up is on our side. It’s our pride. ‘I can't grovel before God and tell him I am a wretched sinner, and my life is useless, and I do not deserve heaven or acceptance. I can't do that’, we say. It's our unbelief. We have been so brainwashed by this world, we are secularists, materialists. We have got to break out of that and pray to God for help.: ‘Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. I am saturated with doubts and unbelief; help me Lord.’ I have got to appreciate who he is. I won’t be blessed by the one I approach if I don't realise he is God; he is the Son of God who came to suffer and die to purchase salvation for us.
What is a touch? There is no power in a touch; there's no capacity in a touch to draw healing virtue from Christ the Lord. A touch can't do anything. What a picture of faith a touch is. Salvation is by faith. Faith doesn't deserve heaven. Faith isn't any kind of an accomplishment. Faith isn't a good work. Faith hasn't got any power. It's just a touch. But it's the way we obtain the blessing of God. We trust him. We say, ‘Lord, I believe that you are the eternal Son of God with power to save. You suffered and died to take the punishment of sinners on their behalf, all who would trust you. I trust you and I handover my life.’ If you come thinking, ‘I’m quite a good person. I've done this; I’ve done that ‘, you ruin it all. That’s not a touch. That’s, ‘God, give me salvation; I deserve it.’ Faith trusts in the grace of God. Grace means he blesses us when we deserve nothing: unearned, undeserved favour.
What exactly do we want when we come to Christ? A better life? To pass our exams? To get better from a sickness? What do we want? We will get nothing unless the first thing we want is to be saved. You need to be saved first, forgiven your sin, given a new life. Your life is a new creation, and then you can pray for other things if it be the Lord's will for you. That's what we learn from this woman. She wanted her sins forgiven first.
Our translators say, ‘I shall be whole.’ Modern translations go even further. They say, ‘I shall be healed.’ That is not what the woman said. In the Greek what she says is, ‘If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be saved.’ The translators have decided that it means saved from this sickness, but they use the word ‘whole’ just in case it doesn’t. The modern versions go too far: ‘healed’. No, ‘saved’. This woman wanted her sins forgiven, as well as healing. She saw the most important thing – ‘He is Messiah. He preaches about repenting and having remission of sin.’ Remission means sin taken away. ‘I need that and I need healing. I can't come to him just for healing, when his main purpose is to give me forgiveness. I must come first of all, for forgiveness. I need to be saved from my sin, and from the condemnation that I'm under.’ If you go down to verse 34, Christ's words are, ‘Daughter, thy faith saved thee’ – same word. Then, ‘Go in peace and be whole’, and only there does the Saviour say ‘healed’. So ‘whole’ would be right in that place. ‘Daughter, thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace and be healed of thy plague.’ The Greek has both ‘saved’ and ‘healed’ in that verse. She came first of all to be saved, as well as healed.