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This morning at our Medical Service I want to talk about The Christian Faith and Medicine. And to help us in our thinking I want to look at that reading we had as our 2nd lesson, 2 Corinthians 4.1-6. And after some words of introduction, my headings are first, “WE DO NOT LOSE HEART”; secondly, “THE OPEN STATEMENT OF THE TRUTH”; and, thirdly, “THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF CHRIST”

So something by way of introduction. Corinth, where the recipients of this letter of Paul, lived, had a long history. But since 27BC it had been the capital of the Roman Province of Achaia. It was a 200,000 plus city, with a multi-cultural population of Greeks, Romans, Jews, government officials, businessmen, people from all over the Near East, and many slaves. It was inevitably a multi-faith city, thoroughly pagan and highly immoral. Its great religion was that of Aphrodite, the sex goddess, and with all her temple prostitutes. From the 5th century BC the verb “to Corinthianize” meant to be sexually immoral.

Not surprisingly Corinth was an ancient world centre for sex-tourism. A 1st century travel writer, Strabo, tells us that many people visited Corinth because of these prostitutes. So Paul is writing to Christians in the church in such a city – the multi-faith, multi-cultural, idolatrous, sexually decadent Corinth – in fact, just like many cities in modern Europe including England. And Paul was tempted to get depressed by all that was going on and lose heart – just like many people are losing heart in this country at what is happening.

But - and our first heading, Paul writes in verse 1 of chapter 4 - “WE DO NOT LOSE HEART”;

Look at verse 1: “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.” But why? Why didn’t Paul lose heart? He tells us in the preceding verse at the end of chapter 3 – verse 18:

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord [in context the Lord Jesus Christ], are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (3.18)

He knew, from first hand experience, that the Holy Spirit of God can give you the strength to face any and every temptation including the temptation to “lose heart” even though the problem remains. For the Holy Spirit can bring change as people become more like Jesus Christ. The big problem for Paul was that a number of the Christians in Corinth were compromising and drifting back to their old pagan, sexually decadent lifestyles. In addition there were leaders in the Church who were opposing Paul for not teaching or doing what they wanted. But Paul was not going to give in to them. He would only teach and obey God’s word and not what they wanted.

Who is losing heart this morning? Some working in the NHS may be tempted to lose heart from current structural pressures. One doctor here this morning listed them as: the NHS having to find 4% saving year on year for the next five whilst improving quality; the changes and uncertainties from the Health and Social Care Act; the fact that experienced NHS folk are suddenly becoming unemployed or having to relocate; some finding they are now employed by the local authority and not the NHS; the changes in the clinician-patient relationship; and from many other things. Perhaps for you the problem is the broader, huge ethical issues such as beginning and end of life issues. And, last but not least, there are the overtly anti-Christian issues.

The latest incident to hit the headlines was last month after an unsuccessful appeal hearing about the dismissal from his hospital of David Drew, a consultant Paediatrician in the Midlands. He was dismissed for sending his colleagues the following famous prayer:

“Teach us, good Lord, to serve as You deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing we do your will.”

He prefaced the e-mail by saying,

“I find this a personal inspiration in my frail imperfect efforts to serve my patients, their families and our department.”

This was obviously an unhappy hospital for other reasons. But using this as a charge for getting rid of a senior doctor, when his Trust said, I quote, “we would like to reiterate that this case did not question Dr Drew’s skills as a Paediatric Consultant,” speaks volumes. The issue was that he refused to accept the hospital’s demand to keep his religious views to himself. He even was criticized for wishing someone a “peaceful Christmas”.

Well, Paul knew all about these sorts of pressures for himself; but in the Holy Spirit’s strength he could say “No!” to the temptation to “lose heart”. He also said “No!” to the temptation to employ “disgraceful, underhanded ways” or “practice cunning” (a mark of his opponents) in his reaction to their opposition. And this is important for us all in the 21st century. Look at verse 2:

“But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practise cunning or to tamper with God's word.” (4.2)

Sadly this cunning, today, is everywhere. It has two main types.

First, there’s the cunning manipulation of language by the controllers of language (people in the media, education, the therapeutic services and government - as some sociologists call them, the New Class). By new descriptions they unilaterally change the immoral into the amoral. And that allows things soon to become the new moral, with those in opposition becoming the new immoral. This manipulation results in what the prophet Isaiah called people who “call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5.20). So foeticide becomes abortion; human-with-potential becomes potentially-human; fornication becomes premarital sex; adultery becomes extramarital sex; buggery becomes same sex love-making; murder in some cases becomes euthanasia; and so on.

Secondly, there is the straight hiding of facts and truth. I haven’t time to document this regarding academic papers; but it is very serious. And it is happening all the time in the media. It is the Pinsky Principle named after a famous American Journalist, Walter Pinsky who said this:

“If my research and journalistic instincts tell me one thing, my political instincts another … I won’t fudge it, I won’t bend it, but I won’t write it.”

But Paul would have, and so should we have, none of it. Paul said “we refuse to practise cunning or tamper with God’s word.” That brings us to …

… secondly, “THE OPEN STATEMENT OF THE TRUTH”;

Look at verses 2b

“by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.” (4.2)

So that is in the context of Paul having just said, he “did not “tamper with the God’s word”. But that open statement of the truth can mean at least two things.

First, it can mean that when the Bible is clear on issues, Paul would teach the Corinthians what the Bible taught and not “tamper with it” to be politically correct in Corinth. Certainly from what we know from history, that would have related not only to the issues you read about in the two (of at least three) letters to the Corinthians that have survived, but to life and death issues like abortion and euthanasia. For they were as relevant then as they are today. So let’s take euthanasia. How does an open statement of the faith apply today? How should Christians who take Paul’s line of “not tampering with the word of God” decide on a Christian ethic?

You have first to define what you mean by “euthanasia”. For, on the one hand, there is voluntary euthanasia – assisted suicide, the death that the patient seeks. On the other hand, there is involuntary euthanasia – the death occurring by someone else’s decision when the patient can’t give his or her consent. But whether voluntary or involuntary, euthanasia when it is, like this, intentional killing, is always wrong. For the 6th of the 10 commandments says, “you shall not murder”. And the Christian obeys those 10 commandments because they are God’s commandments and they know his will is always good and perfect and reasonable. So they know there must be good practical reasons, even when they can’t yet see them, why euthanasia is wrong . And it is murder.

For it is not a judicial causing or introduction of death in a situation in which it did not previously exist, as in capital punishment or a just war. And it is this introduction of death that is important. Someone has put it like this:

“to withhold or withdraw useless treatment from a terminally ill patient is not euthanasia. Nor is the administration of painkillers to a dying patient which may incidentally accelerate death, but whose primary intention is to relieve pain. In both these cases death is already irreversibly present. To intervene with further treatment would only prolong the process of dying.”

Of course, there is a level of judgment in that. But there is an obvious distinction between causing somebody to die (which is wrong euthanasia) and allowing someone to die (which is not). That is summarized in the old saying “thou shalt not kill nor strive officiously to keep alive.” And Paul would have known, and so should we know, Genesis 9.6. That teaches that human life is sacred for “God made man in his own image”. And that means two things, one, there must be no killing and, two, human beings are unique in all creation.

Well, that in outline is a brief “open statement” from a Christian perspective on euthanasia. But the Bible makes much broader “open statements of the truth” by seeing how God has acted in history” – witness the history books of the Old Testament. And Christians today need to make some of those broader statements today.

So secondly, an open statement for today can mean reminding people that modern medicine as we know it is distinctly Christian. So lose that Christian dimension and you lose what so many cherish about modern medicine. Let me explain.

The early Christians inherited a pagan tradition of medicine – the Hippocratic tradition. They then made it Christian and not pagan and gave it to the world. You see, through God’s General Revelation in nature (hence the value of good science) and God’s common grace that gives all human beings a degree of conscience, this Hippocratic tradition produced an ethic that was based on the sanctity of life and doing no harm to the patient. The old Hippocratic Oath for doctors included this:

“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but I will never use it to injure or wrong them. I will not give poison to anyone though asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a plan. Similarly I will not give a pessary to a woman to cause abortion. But in purity and in holiness I will guard my life and my art.”

True, this was sworn to pagan Greek gods. But the early Christians saw that this echoed the teaching of the Bible and, therefore, adapted and refined it.

So they followed its view of the sanctity of human life and the prohibition against doing any intentional harm such as euthanasia and abortion. And the early Christians were particularly identified by their not practising abortion or infanticide. They understood from the Bible that the human individual begins at conception. They know Psalm 139 and they had learnt, for example, that the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in becoming man, began not at the first Christmas but at his conception. As we said in the Creed,

“he [not something else] was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and [then ] born of the virgin Mary.”

And this open truth that Christians should treat all human life as sacred and no harm should be done to anyone was fundamental in the establishment of Christian medicine.

And as such it was a turning point in the history of human civilization. For there was now established a separation between killing and curing. In the primitive world the doctor and the sorcerer too often were the same person. He or she was a witchdoctor with power to kill or cure. But now a profession evolved that was dedicated to life in all circumstances and as even the anthropologist, Margaret Mead, added,

“regardless of rank, age, or intellect – the life of a slave, the life of the Emperor, the life of a foreign man, the life of a defective child … But society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer – to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient.”

So this Christian tradition gives you not just technicians but technicians with values. But these have been the values of Jesus Christ and his gospel. And that brings us …

… thirdly, to “THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF CHRIST”

Look at verses 3-6:

“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (4.3-6)

Why is it that these open truths about medical ethics and the history of medicine are ignored. Why do people not realize that medicine, as we know it from the 4th century onwards, has owed a great debt to people with faith in Jesus Christ for its maintenance and progress? And why do they not see that to lose this Christian influence will (and is seeing) a lowering of standards and worse? The answer is here in these verses as well as the solution.

Verse 4 reminds us that there is much more going on than meets our eyes or our microscopes or our telescopes. For this universe of space and time is only a tiny part of reality. This universe is, as it were, enveloped by, and permeated through with, eternity. For God is there and the whole world is in his hands (as the song echoing Ps 95 puts it). But God tells us through prophets and apostles and supremely through Jesus, his divine Son, that there is a spiritual war going on. For there is a devil or an evil one. Verse 4 calls him “the god of this world”. And, says Paul here, “the god of this world” has blinded men and women so they don’t believe.

They are spiritually blind. They are blind to spiritual and moral truth and not only to specific ethics and historical facts but particularly to the truth about Jesus and the truth of Jesus – his teaching. So don’t be surprised when people can’t see the utter folly of neglecting God and his word and will in terms, on average, of long term misery even in this life let alone eternity.

And the solution? The only solution is this. It is for our great God of all, the God of creation (verse 6) to shine in hearts and minds to give light. So verse 6 says:

“God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (4.6)

The beginning of this universe of space and time (whenever that was and however else we can describe it), we are told, was the result of God speaking and saying: “Let light shine out of darkness”. And this whole universe came into being. So Paul is saying here that what is needed to be got rid of, is not physical darkness as at the beginning of the universe, but spiritual darkness now in human hearts. And God alone can do that as the gospel in preached and shared. For he now has to shine …

“in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (verse 6).

What then can be seen is …

“the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (verse 4).

That phrase is a great summary of the Christian gospel. That glory is the glory of the Christ who has ascended to the throne of God and is now ruling and reigning and praying for you and helps you when tempted. But it is the glory of the Christ who had lived and died for your sins, in your place. And those sins can include all those sins like those in Corinth that we know the recipients of Paul’s letters had committed. Yes, they had repented and were forgiven, but they needed not to slip back into their old pagan ways. And as today (and as it is true for all here this morning) no one in Corinth was too bad to be forgiven or too good not to need to be forgiven. And then it is the glory of the Christ who rose from the dead, leaving an empty tomb, conquering sin and death and who, as you trust him as Lord and Saviour, gives you his Holy Spirit, as we sang, with a new life, a new hope and a new future.

So I conclude with these questions. Who needs to start trusting Jesus Christ this morning? Who needs to recover their trust to be committed to “the open statement of the truth” on these ethical and factual issues? And who needs the strength of the Holy Spirit as you trust Christ to avoid the temptation to lose heart?