Following Jesus in Healing

        Most Christians want to live the way Christ Jesus outlined for his followers.  And this has to include divine healing as well.  After all, Jesus is our complete Saviour and Examplar, and to truly be in accord with his teachings, we must rely on God's power as he did when we're faced with bodily or mental challenges.

        "Christians claim to  be his followers, but do they follow him in the way that he commanded? Hear these imperative commands:  'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect!'  'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature!'  'Heal the sick!'"  (Mary Baker Eddy writing in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, page 37)

        It logically follows that in order to do this, we need to have the understanding our Master had of God's laws governing man.  And it is here that the teachings of Christian Science are invaluable.  The book I just quoted from will help any one obtain this knowledge that heals.  Science and Health brings to light God's goodness, power, and love, illustrating how the Bible's promises of God's ever-present help are fulfilled.  It can show you how a change in your concept of God and man--of yourself--can bring healing and freedom from fear of sickness.

        The teachings contained in this unique volume stress that Christ Jesus' life purpose was not only to inspire, but to show how to be free from every form of material  bondage, physical suffering included.  He promised, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."  (John 14:12)

        As thousands upon thousands of readers of Science and Health have found to their great joy, when the divine facts that Jesus illustrated and practiced are brought into contact with one's fears, beliefs, and attitudes about disease, the result is a change of thought, a spiritualization of thought, a removing of the mental state causing the physical difficulty.  Science and Health explains:  "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation.  Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural supremely natural."  (p. xi)

        Through the understanding that Christian Science affords, anyone may gain a correct, spiritual view of man as the image of God.  One comes to realize that disease is not any part of our real and only selfhood as made in God's likeness.  This spiritual concept of man is basic to scientific Christian healing, and this is why it is helpful to go back time and again to the Bible record that man is made in God's own image (see Genesis 1:26).  Accepting the premise that God is perfect Spirit, as the Scriptures teach, one recognizes the fact that the creations of Spirit can only be spiritual, perfect.  And this is the reality of man's being, despite appearances to the contrary.

        The need in healing is always for a change of mental standpoint.  Christ Jesus emphasized that what we entertain in thought has its effect.  He said, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man."  (Matthew 15:11)

        The discovery that Mary Baker Eddy made, that matter is really a mental phenomenon, was and is revolutionary.  Though you may never have considered it in this way before, both the image of disease and its expression in the body are false beliefs about you and me--not actual conditions.  The understanding of this fact is a potent force in destroying disease.

        It is by turning thought from an inharmonious physical condition and turning to God, contemplating man's real, spiritual selfhood as God's idea, that one is restored to health and well-being.  We can thank God for the eternal fact that we are His reflection, the expression of infinite, harmonious Spirit.  Being His offspring, we include only those qualities that Spirit imparts--peace, joy, wholeness, dominion.  By abiding in this true consciousness, we see that the fear and suffering which seemed to real have no actual power.  Disease is seen for what it is:  a misconception, a false state of mortal thought; it has no God-created reality.  Since we are inseparable from our heavenly Father, God, our well-being as God's reflection has never been interrupted.

        Christ-healing is dependent on the removal of disease beliefs and fears.  And it is the activity of Christ in human consciousness that removes these false beliefs.  As the divine facts of existence displace mortality's lie in our thought, a more normal, harmonious sense of being inevitably appears. As our great Master's healing works proved for all time, intact within man, within you and me right now, are unimpaired well-being, unchanging God-given harmony and freedom.