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THE IMPORTANCE OF A CORRECT DIAGNOSIS
Everyone recognizes the importance of a correct diagnosis when it comes to illness or injury. The prescription of an inadequate or incorrect medicine or other improper treatment for sickness or injury is not only useless, it can at times be harmful. No thinking person will disagree with that. Administering a band aid to a deep puncture wound is foolishness. Stitching up a wound that is filled with filth or rotten flesh is dangerous and can result in death. Cleansing and proper care of wounds is absolutely necessary and a correct diagnosis of the problem will dictate that such things be done. But what about spiritual matters? It is necessary to make a proper diagnosis in spiritual things? Or will any idea result in spiritual good being done to men in the area of their spiritual needs? Surely thinking people will agree that a correct diagnosis in eternal spiritual matters is of more importance than even a correct medical diagnosis in mere physical and therefore temporary matters. One more observation: sometimes hearing the doctor's words describing your diagnosis – even when it is a correct one – is unpleasant. Some people run from the doctor's diagnosis. Foolishly they think that by ignoring what ails them is a remedy and will eventually cure them. Imagine someone with gangrene in their body rejecting the doctor's diagnosis because they think their likely fatal medical condition will somehow go away. The Bible gives us a correct diagnosis of the human condition as it naturally occurs. Of the feet it says, “For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood,” (Proverbs 1:16). A diagnosis of the heart of man is given in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Matthew 15:19 records the words of Jesus Christ regarding the heart. He said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” The mind of man is likewise diagnosed in Romans 8:7: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” We could go on, but Paul gives a complete diagnosis in Romans 1:10-18 which says: “'As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes.” The only cure for man's terrible and hopeless spiritual condition is the Great Physician, the Lord Jesus Christ who never lost a patient yet.
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