Jesus as Saviour and Healer

Witnessing to Christ often means moving away from our theological language and expression - eg  Jesus died on the cross for you. I like this explanation of Jesus as Savior given by Fr. Laurence Freeman, Spiritual Director for the World Community of Christian Meditation. Enjoy!

For some people, those whom Jesus calls to be disciples, the
experience of His message enters into us and we move to another level of relationship with Him. This is where, you might say, we begin to experience Jesus as Savior. The word Savior means healer. The early Christians spoke of Jesus very often as the Divine Physician.

He heals us of the wounds of sin, of the wounds of our suffering, the wounds of humanity. No one gets very far in life without being wounded, without being hurt, without having their self-esteem damaged or their hope disappointed, or their love rejected, or without the experience of betrayal. Being let down. No one gets very far without being hurt.  And those hurts that life give us can run very deep into our psyche.  And then to deal with those wounds, we often build walls to protect ourselves: ‘This isn’t going to happen to me again. I’m not going to put myself in that position again.’ So we start to get hardened hearts; we start to build up resistance to love, resistance to other people. We become more isolated, less trusting. Then we wonder why we’re sad. This is where we need healing.

For some people, who we could call the disciples of Jesus, the experience of His teaching enters into us and begins to heal us of those wounds. It may be through any number of ways; maybe through scripture, maybe through friends, maybe through an inspired spiritual teacher, maybe through the sacraments. 

Different ways for different people. He gets in in all sorts of different ways. He’ll find a way under the door, even if we’ve locked the door. When we begin to sense that we are feeling better as a result of this relationship with Jesus, we begin to feel more self-acceptance and wholeness. We begin to see how we can relate to other people more lovingly. We’re capable of forgiving the hurts that people have put upon us, and letting them go. We’re capable of more compassion. We’re capable of being more patient with ourselves even though we have lots of problems and lots of faults, but we don’t beat ourselves up all the time.

These are the ways in which we begin to experience the saving and healing work of Jesus. It’s gradual. There may be dramatic moments, but it’s gradual and it is irreversible. It’s not like the pills you take when you’ve got a toothache, a temporary relief of pain. It’s a curing, it’s a healing. 

In the gospels, Jesus is often shown as a miraculous healer, but again, he didn’t want his disciples advertising him as ‘Jesus the miraculous healer’.  He told them not to promote Him like that. In many of those healing stories, He heals by touching; and He still heals us by touching us. There is an interior touch, a spiritual touch which heals when his power comes into us.

As we begin to recognize Jesus in this way, as our Savior, as one who heals in our life, our relationship with Him has moved to a much deeper and more personal and intimate one. He’s no longer just a great spiritual teacher of humanity but we now have a personal, mysterious, experience of Him, and it will be expressed in different ways by different people.

Fr. Laurence Freeman 

Spiritual Director for World Community of Christian Meditation