Augustine on 1 Timothy 1:15 and on Christ as the Great Physician

None occasion was there for Christ the Lord’s coming, but to save sinners. Take away diseases, take away wounds, and there is no occasion for medicine. If a great Physician hath come from heaven, some great one was lying sick throughout the whole compass of the world. This sick one is the human race.

Augustine, “Sermon CXXV.,” in Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament (Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1875), 2:897.

There was no reason for Christ the Lord to come, except to save sinners. Eliminate diseases, eliminate wounds, and there’s no call for medicine. If a great doctor has come down from heaven, a great invalid must have been lying very sick throughout the whole wide world. This invalid is the whole human race.

Saint Augustine, “Sermon 175: On the Same Words of the Apostle, 1 Timothy 1:15–16: The Word is Faithful and Worthy of Total Acceptance, Etc. (c.412),“ in Sermons 148–183 on the New Testament, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 5, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1992), 265.

I first heard this quoted by Dr. S. Lewis Johnson in one of his sermons preached later in his life. Johnson was very intrigued by this comment from Augustine.

Similarly, Augustine said:

A teacher of humility both by word and deed. By word, in fact, from the beginning of creation he never kept quiet about it, teaching the human race humility by angels, by prophets. He also deigned to teach it by his own example. Our creator came humbly, to be created among us; the one who made us, who was himself made for our sakes; God before all time, man in time, in order to set man free from time. The great doctor came to heal our swollen condition. From the east as far as the west the human race was lying there like one great big invalid, and was requiring a great physician. This physician first sent his lads, and came himself later on, when some were despaired of. Just as a doctor too sends his lads, when there’s something simple to be done; when there’s great danger, he comes himself. In the same sort of way the human race was very dangerously ill, caught up in all sorts of vices, especially the one flowing from the source of pride; and that’s why he came to cure this pride by his own example.

Be ashamed, man, of still continuing to be proud, you on whose account God humbled himself. God would have humbled himself very considerably if he had only been born for your sake; he was prepared even to die for you. So there he was on the cross, as a man, when his Jewish persecutors were wagging their heads in front of the cross, and saying, If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross, and we can believe in him (Mk 15:29–32). But he was keeping hold of his humility; that’s why he didn’t come down. He hadn’t lost his power, but he was giving a demonstration of patience. I mean, just think about his effectiveness and his might, and see how easily he could have come down from the cross, seeing that he was able to rise from the grave. But if you were not to be given a demonstration of humility, of patience, then you should not be given a command about them; if however, you were to be given a command about them in words, then they were also to be demonstrated and commended to you by example.

Saint Augustine, Sermons 306–340A on the Saints, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 9, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1994), 299; Sermon 340A.5.

The human race one huge invalid; Christ the doctor

15. Think carefully, my brothers and sisters; it was essential for such times to come, hard and grievous. What would we do, if such a great consoler were not around?⁴⁶ The human race was going to fall very gravely ill. Like a doctor attending one huge patient, from Adam right up to the end, that is to say, that doctor attending the whole hideously injured human race—because from the moment we were born here, from the moment we were turned out of paradise,⁴⁷ the illness of course is there but at the end it was going to get much worse, immediately preceding a return to health for some, presaging death for others. So since the whole human race was ill, that great doctor attending the invalid, who was lying in a kind of huge bed, the whole world, paid attention just like a most experienced doctor to the phases of the illness, and he observed and foresaw what the developments were going to be—after all, it was he himself who had engineered this sickness, because of his justice, as a punishment for our sin.

So during the milder phases of our illness the doctor himself first sent his assistants to inspect us, he sent the prophets. They spoke, they preached; through them he cured some and restored them to health. They foretold that in the last phase of the illness there would be a kind of severe crisis, a kind of violent agitation of this invalid, which would have to be shown to the doctor himself, and would thus require him to come in person. So this is what our doctor said: “In the last times the patient will be more severely and violently agitated than ever, and to attend to the appropriate medication it will be necessary for me to come in person at that time. I myself will restore him, I myself comfort, I myself encourage, I myself make him promises, I myself will heal him if he believes.”⁴⁸

And that’s what happened. He came, he became man, a shareholder in our mortality, so that we might be able to become shareholders in his immortality. And still the patient is in the grip of this agitation. And when he’s panting in his fever, with a very high temperature, he says to himself, “From the moment this doctor arrived, I have been suffering from a more severe fever than ever, I’m being tossed around ever more violently. Oh, this monstrous temperature! Why did he ever come to me? I don’t think it was with a lucky foot that he entered the house.” That’s what they all say, those who are still gravely ill with vanity. Why are they still gravely ill with vanity? Because they refuse to accept from him the potion of serious sobriety. You can see these poor wretches being tossed about and agitated by their cares, and the various afflictions and terrors of the world, and saying, “From the moment Christ came, we have been suffering these times; from the moment Christians appeared on the scene, the world has been falling to pieces in every way.” O senseless patient, it’s not because the doctor has come that your illness has grown more serious; but it’s because your illness was going to grow more serious that the doctor came. He foresaw that, he didn’t cause it.⁴⁹ He came, though, to comfort you, and to make you really and truly better.

16. What, after all, are you being deprived of, what’s being taken away from you but unnecessary superfluities? You see, you were agog for harmful things; the things you were agog for were not good for your fever. Is the doctor harsh because he snatches harmful fruits from the invalid’s hands? What’s he taking away from you, but the bad kind of security which you were eager to swallow, to the ruin of your insides? And this very thing that you’re grumbling and groaning about is part of his treatment. If you want to be cured,⁵⁰ put up willingly with being hurt. The times simply have to be harsh. Why? To stop earthly happiness being loved. It’s absolutely essential—it’s the appropriate medical treatment—for this life to be troubled, so that the other life may be loved.

Look here; if people still cling to earthly things with such sluggish reluctance to let go, if they are still crazy about the theaters, what would be the case if everything was smiling on such vanities, if on no occasion were your frivolities struck from your hands? Look, the world has so much bitterness and gall mixed into it, and yet it is still sweet. Come now, my dearest brothers and sisters, I beseech you by the Lord, by his cross, by his blood, by his charity, by his lowliness, by his highness, I beseech and adjure you not to listen to all this in vain, not to assume that I’m really standing⁵¹ in this place as if I were just putting on a show. His mercy knows, under whose eyes I tremble like this, that I am led on by the duty of love to say these things to you, and that I am driven by the dread I feel, knowing that I am going to have to give an account to the Lord himself for you all.
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46 The implicit thought seems to be similar to that of the felix culpa, the “happy sin of Adam,” which brought us so great a redeemer, in the Exultet of the Easter Vigil.
47 See Gn 3:22–24.
48 For this whole section on the giant invalid, see Sermons 175, 1 (III, 5); 340A, 5 (III, 9).
49 But at the end of the first paragraph of this section he said that Christ had engineered the whole thing, as a kind of punishment for sin.
50 Reading curari volens, instead of the text’s curare volens, “if you wish to cure.”
51 Standing, not sitting; so we may infer that he was not preaching in his own church of Hippo Regius, where he would preach seated on his cathedra, but in that of another bishop, where he would preach standing in the pulpit; in Carthage therefore, most likely. But it seems he was visibly trembling—not unnaturally after such a marathon of a sermon—if indeed it is all one sermon.

Saint Augustine, “Sermon 114B (Dolbeau 5) (Mainz 12): Sermon of Saint Augustine on the Passage in the Gospel Where the Coming of the Lord on the Last Day is Described,” in Sermons Discovered Since 1990, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 11, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997), 113–114; Sermon 114B.15–16.