“My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes: Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh.” (Prov. 4:20-22)

What promise of physical healing could be more all-inclusive than that? “Health to all their flesh.” Every part of our physical frame is included in this phrase. Nothing is omitted. Furthermore, in the margin of the 1611 edition of the King James Version, the alternative reading for “health” is “medicine.” The same Hebrew word includes both shades of meaning. Thus God has committed Himself to providing complete physical healing and health.

Notice the introductory phrase at the beginning of verse 20: “My son.” This indicates that God is speaking to His own believing children. When a Syro-Phoenician woman came to Christ to plead for the healing of her daughter, Christ replied to her request by saying:

“It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” (Matt. 15:26)

By these words Christ indicated that healing is the children’s bread; in other words, it is part of God’s appointed daily portion for all His children. It is not a luxury for which they have to make special pleas and which may or may not be granted them. No, it is their “bread,” part of their daily provision from their heavenly Father. This agrees exactly with the passage we read in Proverbs 4, where God’s promise of perfect healing and health is addressed to every believing child of God. Both in Psalm 107 and in Proverbs 4 the means by which God provides healing is His Word. This is one further example of the vital truth which we stressed earlier in this series: that God Himself is in His Word and that it is through His Word that He comes into our lives.

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We have said that the new birth through God’s Word produces within the soul a completely new nature – a new kind of life. This leads us to consider the next main effect which God’s Word produces.

In every realm of life there is one unchanging law: As soon as a new life is born, the first and greatest need of that new life is nourishment to sustain it. For example, when a human baby is born, that baby may be sound and healthy in every respect; but unless it quickly receives nourishment, it will pine away and die.

The same is true in the spiritual realm. When a person is born again, the new spiritual nature produced within that person immediately requires spiritual nourishment, both to maintain life and to promote growth. The spiritual nourishment which God has provided for all His born-again children is found in His own Word. God’s Word is so rich and varied that it contains nourishment adapted to every stage of spiritual development.

God’s provision for the first stages of spiritual growth is described in the first epistle of Peter. Immediately after Peter has spoken in chapter 1 about being born again of the incorruptible seed of God’s Word, he goes on to say in chapter 2:

“Therefore, laying aside all malice, all guile, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as new-born babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.” (1 Pet. 2:1-2)

For new-born spiritual babes in Christ, G

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