Physician, heal yourself

[tonychanyt]

Lk 4:

16 [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.

Jesus read a passage from Isaiah.

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

Jesus applied this verse to himself. Jesus sensed that the response from the audience was mixed.

23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.”

What was Jesus trying to convey here to the audience of his hometown?

They were sarcastic in unbelief. They might have witnessed Jesus being sick when he was a boy. They were thinking: Since Isaiah proclaimed him the anointed healer, then heal yourself first, Physician!. They challenged him to prove his abilities by addressing his own needs first and then to the needs of his people in his hometown:

What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’”

They were thinking: Go ahead. Prove yourself. You are the great Physician!

Jesus didn't perform miracles at their demand due to their unbelief. At the end, they tried to kill him:

29 they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.

Why did Jesus use the proverb "Physician, heal thyself"?

Jesus used the proverb because that was what they were thinking. They didn't believe in Jesus and responded with this proverb sarcastically in their minds.

What was Jesus trying to convey?

Jesus warned against familiarity breeding contempt:

24 He said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”

Don't be like those homegrown unbelieving Jews in the time of Elijah. The people of Nazareth thought they knew him, but they were blind to his true identity and mission. Spiritually, they didn't know Jesus.