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Healing in illness by the Touch of God, as apart from His use of His own gifts of help, is unforgettable. To know that indeed the power of the Spirit has quickened our mortal body to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint, long after the natural power has broken and gone, is a deep and solemn joy.
But is one who has proved the Healer in this way asked to be satisfied with something different, something that appears at first sight to himself and to others to be less to the glory of God than healing by the Touch would be? If that child of the Father be dwelling deep in the Father’s love, too deep to be disturbed by any noise of words, then all is well. But if he has wandered from his rest then there will be something like that earlier picture in the Song of Songs: “The voice of my Beloved! Behold, He standeth behind our wall, He looketh in at the windows, He showeth Himself through the lattice.”
The Beloved is never content to be “behind our wall,” on the other side, as it were. He looketh in at the windows. The Lord turned and looked upon Peter. He turns that same melting look of love upon the one who has allowed a wall to grow up between himself and his Beloved. And with that look will come to mind the word of a more faithful lover: “I am filling up as required what is lacking in the afflictions of our Christ, in my flesh, on behalf of His body, which is the Church.”
The words seem too great and heavenly to be approached by anything so small and earthly as we are, and I know too little of their meaning to do more than quote them from the translation in Moule’s Colossian Studies, where he adds this note: “He (Paul) is thinking not of our Lord’s passion, but of His sacred Life-work. (He only began to do and to teach.) Every true soldier and sufferer for Him and His flock contributes to the filling up of that incompleteness, so far as he toils and bears in Christ.” And Elliot helps by his translation of “afflictions”: hard and galling pressure. Bonds can be that. But what do they matter if only we may suffer in behalf of the glory of God?