SOUL MEDICINE

“These are two things: sin and repentance. Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine. Just as there are for the body wounds and medicines, so for the soul are sins and repentance.” John Chrysostom (349-407 AD, early church father).

Our souls are often wounded and sometimes we know why and sometimes we don’t. The soul is something like a spiritual heart. As the theologian Gustav Oehler (1812-1872) said, “Man is not spirit, but has it: he is soul… In the soul, which sprang from the spirit, and exists continually through it, lies the individuality, in the case of man, his personality, his self, his ego.”

Our personality, our inner self and ego are the very areas that can be wounded by rejection, abuse, fear, loneliness, abandonment, self-chosen sin and disobedience. The good news is the Father of grace can hear our repentance, cleanse us, forgive us and give us a fresh start and a new heart. Soul medicine is repentance. There is no short cut.

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Jesus