The Best Medicine and the Driest Bones Text: Proverbs 17:22
Introduction: The Psychosomatic Reality
The modern world, for all its technological sophistication, is profoundly dualistic. It treats man as a ghost in a machine. You have your "mental health" over here, and your "physical health" over there, and we have built massive industries to treat both as though they were entirely separate kingdoms. If you are sad, you have a chemical imbalance that requires a pill. If your body is sick, it is a mechanical problem that requires a procedure. The materialists see only the machine, and the gnostics see only the ghost. But the Bible knows nothing of this division. Scripture teaches that man is a psychosomatic unity. You are an embodied soul, or an ensouled body. What happens in your heart does not stay in your heart. It works its way out into your bones, your face, your posture, and your blood pressure.
The book of Proverbs is a book of applied theology for life in the real world, God's world. It is intensely practical, which is to say it is intensely realistic about how God made us to function. And this verse before us is a sharp, two-edged piece of divine wisdom that cuts right through our modern confusion. It tells us that there is a direct, causal link between the state of your spirit and the state of your body. There is a medicine that the best doctors cannot prescribe, and a sickness that the most advanced scanners cannot detect.
We are told that a glad heart is good medicine, and a broken spirit dries up the bones. This is not poetry, though it is poetic. This is physiology. It is spiritual anatomy. Solomon, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is giving us a foundational diagnostic principle. Before you can understand health, you must understand the heart. And before you can understand the heart, you must understand its relationship to the God who made it.
We live in an age of profound spiritual sickness, and so it is no surprise that we are also plagued by anxiety, depression, and a host of physical ailments that follow in their train. We are a people of broken spirits, and our bones are dry. The world offers two false remedies: numb the spirit with distractions, or numb the body with chemicals. But God, in His Word, offers the true cure. He goes to the source. He goes to the heart.
The Text
A glad heart is good medicine,
But a broken spirit dries up the bones.
(Proverbs 17:22 LSB)
The Divine Prescription: A Glad Heart (v. 22a)
We begin with the first clause, the divine prescription for health.
"A glad heart is good medicine..." (Proverbs 17:22a)
The first thing we must do is define our terms using God's dictionary, not Webster's. What is a "glad heart?" The Hebrew word for glad here is sameach, which means joyful, merry, or cheerful. But this is not the flimsy, circumstantial happiness that our culture chases. This is not the result of getting a promotion, or your team winning, or having a good hair day. That kind of "gladness" is a thermometer; it simply reflects the temperature of your circumstances. If things are going well, you are up. If things are going badly, you are down. That is not medicine; that is a symptom.
Biblical joy, the gladness of the heart spoken of here, is a thermostat. It sets the temperature. It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22), which means it is supernatural. It is a deep satisfaction and confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of God, regardless of the circumstances. It is the joy that Nehemiah spoke of when he said, "the joy of the LORD is your strength" (Neh. 8:10). It is the joy that Paul and Silas had when they were singing hymns in a Philippian jail, with their backs bleeding and their feet in stocks (Acts 16:25). That is a gladness that the world cannot give, and cannot take away.
This joy is rooted in the gospel. Where does it come from? It comes from knowing that your sins are forgiven. David prayed, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation" (Psalm 51:12). He had sinned grievously, and his sin had stolen his joy. The joy of salvation is the gladness that comes from being reconciled to a holy God through the blood of His Son. It is the gladness of knowing that the ultimate threat to your existence, the wrath of God, has been removed forever. It is the gladness of knowing that God is for you, and not against you (Rom. 8:31). If that is settled, then everything else is just commentary.
And this gladness, Solomon says, "is good medicine." It does good. It promotes healing. It invigorates the body. A heart that is resting in the finished work of Christ, that is confident in the sovereign goodness of God, will have a profound effect on the body. It eases tension. It strengthens the immune system. It makes the face shine (Prov. 15:13). This is not a call to "put on a happy face" or to engage in positive thinking. This is a call to believe the gospel so thoroughly that it takes root in your heart and sends life out to the very tips of your fingers. It is a call to be so satisfied in God that it makes you physically well.
The Desiccating Disease: A Broken Spirit (v. 22b)
The proverb then presents the antithesis, the disease that causes the body to waste away from the inside out.
"...But a broken spirit dries up the bones." (Proverbs 17:22b)
Here again, we must be careful with our definitions. A "broken spirit" here is not the same as the "broken and contrite heart" that God will not despise (Psalm 51:17). That kind of brokenness is godly sorrow over sin, which leads to repentance and life. That is the kind of brokenness that leads to the glad heart we just discussed.
The "broken spirit" in this proverb is a spirit that has been crushed by despair, bitterness, envy, or anxiety. It is a spirit that has lost hope. The Hebrew word neke'ah means smitten, stricken, or afflicted. This is the spirit of a man who has given up. Why? Because he has forgotten God. He is looking at his circumstances, his troubles, his sins, or the sins of others against him, and he sees no way out. He has become spiritually dehydrated.
And what is the result of this spiritual condition? It "dries up the bones." The bones, in Hebrew thought, represent the very frame of a person, the core of one's strength and vitality. The marrow of the bones was seen as the source of health. To have your bones dried up is to have your life-force sapped away. It is a picture of deep, internal decay. It is a spiritual osteoporosis.
This is what happens when we harbor bitterness. It is a poison we drink, hoping the other person will die, but it only eats away at our own bones. This is what happens when we are consumed by anxiety, living as practical atheists who believe the world rests on our shoulders. This is what happens when we are eaten up with envy, resenting the blessings of others. This is what happens when we walk in unconfessed sin, as David described it: "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long" (Psalm 32:3). A guilty conscience is a bone-drying machine.
This is a profound warning. You cannot separate your spiritual health from your physical health. A heart given over to the slow poison of bitterness, resentment, and unbelief will eventually present with physical symptoms. The world will call it depression, or chronic fatigue, or any number of syndromes. And while there can be physical causes for our ailments, we must never ignore the spiritual diagnosis that God's Word provides. A broken spirit is not a chemical problem; it is a covenantal problem. It is a heart that has turned away from the fountain of living waters and is attempting to sustain itself on dust.
Conclusion: The Gospel Cure
So what is the takeaway? Are we to simply try harder to be cheerful? No, a thousand times no. That is moralism, and moralism is just another way to dry up the bones. The solution is not to try to muster up joy. The solution is to go to the source of all joy.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the only true medicine for a broken spirit. We are all born with broken spirits. We are born in sin, alienated from God, spiritually dead. Our bones are desert-dry. This is the condition of every man, woman, and child apart from grace. We see this pictured in the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37. The bones were very many, and they were very dry. There was no life in them.
What was the solution? The prophet was commanded to do two things: prophesy to the bones (preach the Word), and prophesy to the breath (call on the Spirit). And as the Word was preached and the Spirit moved, there was a rattling, and the bones came together, and sinews and flesh came upon them, and breath entered them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
This is a picture of salvation. The preached Word of the gospel comes to us in our deadness. The Holy Spirit takes that Word and breathes life into our broken, dead spirits. He unites us to Christ. He gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh where there was a heart of stone. And with that new heart comes a new gladness, the joy of salvation.
Therefore, the path to a glad heart is the path of faith and repentance. It is the daily application of the gospel. When your spirit begins to feel crushed, when your bones begin to feel dry, you must ask yourself: What lie am I believing? What sin am I cherishing? What am I looking to for life apart from Christ? You must preach the gospel to yourself. You remind yourself that you are justified by faith alone. You remind yourself that God is sovereign and good. You confess your sins, knowing that He is faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. You cast your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.
This is how the medicine is applied. It is not a one-time dose. It is the daily bread of faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. He is the one who went to the cross with a broken spirit, who cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" so that our spirits could be made whole. He endured the ultimate dryness of God's wrath so that we could be brought to the fountain of ultimate joy. A glad heart is not a personality type; it is a theological reality, purchased by the blood of Christ. And so, we must look to Him, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. In Him, and in Him alone, our spirits are healed, and our bones are made strong.