Seeking a physician's counsel and treatment is not a violation of faith, and trusting God and using a physician are not mutually exclusive. Jeremiah asks, "Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?" and builds his spiritual appeal on the parallel that if the physical remedy is right, so is the spiritual one. Jesus drew the same parallel in saying the sick need a physician, and Luke, inspired of God, is called "the beloved physician" because he kept practicing his profession after conversion. The error lies in leaving God out. Asa sought only the physicians, and Ahaziah turned to Baalzebub, ignoring God entirely. The sequence is God first, as Hezekiah sought God and then used a fig poultice. Physicians have real limits. Their knowledge of the body is shallow compared to the Creator's, the woman with the issue of blood was not helped by many of them, and Job called his friends "physicians of no value." Doctors barely consider the spiritual growth God is after. So the counsel is caveat emptor: every treatment carries risk, and diagnoses may be wrong, so seek a multitude of counselors and study beforehand. Differences among doctors, naturopaths, and chiropractors are physical, not spiritual. Assigning spiritual rank to them, or disfellowshipping someone for draining a knee, adds to Scripture.

The woman with the flow of blood had spent all her money on physicians, yet their care solved nothing. Her incurable disease drained her of energy and wealth, and she grew worse under their treatment. Luke, himself a physician, omits the phrase that she grew worse and says only that she could not be healed by anyone. The cost of expensive remedies and her fruitless reliance on doctors made her a hopeless case from a human standpoint. Human medicine could not cure her, and only Christ could. When she touched the hem of His garment, her flow of blood dried up at once, and He confirmed that the healing was permanent. Her physical healing parallels spiritual healing. Sinners cannot purchase the healing of their sinfulness, and no human remedy can deal with a corrupt condition. Christ alone can fully and instantaneously restore a person by His sacrificial death, and this restoration is freely given in response to faith.

Luke was the beloved physician (Colossians 4:14), a Gentile and Paul's almost constant companion in preaching the gospel. When others like Demas left, Luke alone stayed with Paul in his final days (II Timothy 4:11). As a physician he was probably tending Paul's wounds and physical needs through beatings, stoning, shipwrecks, and imprisonment, and he likely shared in many of the same trials. That close service under pressure equipped him with the irrevocable gifts God had given him. It also gave him a grasp of the hard-to-understand things in Paul's teaching, so that he could write with clarity to Jew and Gentile alike about Jesus Christ. Luke inconspicuously writes himself into Acts with the word "we," beginning at Troas, and he keeps the focus on the true Author rather than the scribe. His careful, orderly, journalistic investigation produced Luke and Acts, perhaps nearly a third of the New Testament, and the most beautifully written book of the Bible. He may also have written Hebrews. His example shows that God's gifts, however small, are developed under pressure and used in humility for His plan.