No aspect of the healing ministry of Christ Jesus is more meaningful or helpful to a student of Christian Science than that of his approach to and triumph over material difficulties. A study of his lifework shows that he met and overcame each one with the same confident sense of spiritual dominion, ease, and freedom. Regardless of the nature of the difficulty to be overcome, the Master always evidenced a willingness and joy to prove that Spirit, Mind, is supreme, infinite, all-powerful, and that evil, error, under whatever guise, is unreal, powerless, actually nonexistent, an illusion of mortal mind.
To Jesus, discordant situations were opportunities to work out the problem of being, to prove Life to be eternal, to demonstrate the power of good over evil, Love over hate, Mind over matter, Truth over error. In this he demonstrated the spiritual facts of being, not only for himself but for his followers as well. For example, when notified of the sickness of Lazarus, he said (John 11:4), "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." Then, after Lazarus had died, Jesus went to him and with the spiritual understanding of the indestructibility of Life raised him from the grave, thereby enabling Mary, Martha, and all others present to see the glory and power of God.
Step by step through his three years of ministry Jesus annulled and destroyed with Truth every physical law or false belief that confronted him. Finally his crucifixion and his work in the tomb enabled him to solve the great problem of being. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 44): "The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being. His three days' work in the sepulchre set the seal of eternity on time. He proved Life to be deathless and Love to be the master of hate. He met and mastered on the basis of Christian Science, the power of Mind over matter, all the claims of medicine, surgery, and hygiene."
