Why The Sword and the Scalpel?

Why are The Sword and the Scalpel so similar?

Answer: The sword of the Word of God is quick, sharp and powerful) and removes spiritual disease. The Scalpel is the surgeon’s knife is the scalpel that allows him to operate on the physical body and remove diseased tissue.

It seems a tad prideful to equate a tool of man (a physical scalpel) with the eternal Word of God (the spiritual sword). But in the life that we now live, it seems that God uses the things around us, the language that we use, the situations that arise, and all other manner of things, to teach us eternal perspectives and life principles.

But I will unabashedly state that I am a Christian first and a surgeon second. Christ is all the world to me. In the course of my “long” career, I have seen all manner of ways in which Christ has revealed Himself to me in the medical world. Almost every day brought new insights and discovery.To my shame, I often missed the messages that God had for me, because of my busyness and inability (or refusal) to spend time thinking about what was happening.

The practice of meditation and relating what was happening to the Word of God (a kind of forthtelling prophetic thinking) was not in my early training. In fact, I had to learn it on my own, nearly twenty years later. But through the years, I have kept records and journals of my thoughts, and my purpose in putting them down in print is twofold:

1. to share how God can teach us principles through study of the human body, and secondly,
   
2. to show how God reveals Himself clearly in his ultimate creation, man.

Only man was created in His (God's) image. Have you ever pondered that? What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

Well, the surgeon’s knife (a scalpel) does the following:

It incises the skin, to reveal what is underneath. Often, the skin looked healthy, but just under, we can have infected or diseased tissue. Cancers can be removed, though as in spiritula things, cancers often are incompletely excised and recur often.

The sharpness of the knife allows incision of tougher tissue like tendons and cartilage. A blunt knife is the bane of a surgeon. The operation is often difficult and mistakes can occur.The knife can separate different layers of tissue. I use the scalpel to regular tease off the scar like tissue of tendon from the red muscle tissue. I also use the knife to separate the periosteum (tissue covering the bone) from the bone itself.

Have you wondered about the Word of God? Why is it like a knife?

Hebrews 4:12
says“For the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the
heart”.

Join me in my blogs, as I ponder the similarities between the surgeon’s knife and the spiritual knife that the Holy Spirit uses.

The former is necessary to begin surgery on the body, to cure physical ailments. The latter is necessary to begin surgery on the “heart”, to cure spirtual disease.

The former removes diseased body tissue. The latter removes the dross that sin has put on our heart.

The former removes malignant tissue that can kill the organism. The latter removes the sin that condemns the souls to eternal separation.

Amen.

+Dr. Joshua Raj


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