“The doctor has so objectified himself that he never faces up to himself and his own life at all.”
“Somewhere in Pembrokshire a tombstone is said to bear the inscription, ‘John Jones, born a man, died a grocer.’ There are many whom I have had the privilege of meeting whose tombstone might well bear the grim epitath: ‘…. born a man, died a doctor’! The greatest danger which confronts the medical man is that he may become lost in his profession.”
D Martyn Lloyd Jones, in “Healing and the Scriptures.”
Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones was a brilliant British physician and an outstanding preacher, and offers great medical wisdom and spiritual insight. This book was published in 1982 but still contains “a masterful view of the Christian physician’s calling, and of the dimensions of ministry to the whole man.” (Quote from J.I.Packer).
How often our identity is tied up with being medical professionals. Lloyd Jones challenges us to view success not merely as the accumulation of medical knowlege, reputatation and material wealth, but fruitfulness for Christ and His kingdom. The foundation of our identity must be in God, not ourselves; we are creatures made in the image of God and created for fellowship with God — all of which is only possible through the salvation obtained by Jesus at the cross.
Dr. Lloyd Jones says to us, “I beseech you not to allow the profession to make you forget yourself, that you are a man, and not merely a doctor.” And to bring the vocabulary in the 21st century, we’d say, “you are a man or a woman, not merely a doctor!”
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