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This regular feature of Truth Matters deals with many of those hard-to-understand passages which are common to us all. I will be the writer/contributor for this offering with the sole purpose of being a help to the body of Christ, the church.
Prov. 4:20-22, “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh” (KJV).
In the healing activity of Jesus it is clear that faith played a major roll, both His faith in what His Father would do and the sufferer’s willingness to believe. Our Lord’s Own faith in God’s willingness and power to heal is incomparable. It was a piece of His confidence that His Father will prevail over every evil. However, this is not to say that He expected or taught that all forms of illness can be eliminated. We have no word in the gospel records about whether illnesses will afflict man until the end of the world. Jesus taught His disciples that they would struggle with sin and death right up to the end. Since He believed that these evils were not to be finally overcome until His return, there is no reason to think that He expected physical and mental illness to be vanquished! But He certainly
demonstrated the will and ability to overcome particular diseases here and now, and He taught the necessity of man’s cooperation if God is to achieve His victorious purpose in the lives of believers.
Your five senses are all physical doors that lead to your brain. You know a thing is sweet because you taste it. You know it is fragrant because you smell it. You know it is beautiful because you see it. You know it is hard or soft, coarse or smooth because you touch it, feel it. You know a thing is noisy because you hear it. But you cannot find God or possess His promised blessings through your physical senses. For this, a sixth sense, faith, must be exercised. This means that you are convinced that what God promises, and what you asked, is yours; that you have received it, even before you can see or feel it. Here is the battle ground of your reason and God’s Word. It is here that you no longer pay attention to what your see and feel, but you attend only to what God says in His Word.
Solomon’s words give us insight on how to appropriate the promises of God’s Word into our lives. Divine healing is always predicated upon the Word of God, which stands above and beyond all reason and experiences of men. If you know someone genuinely healed by the Lord and who is unquestionably God’s child and living accordingly, it is good to listen to that testimony and be encouraged by it.
However, if you have an illness, sickness or ailment and expect to be healed of it, you must go to God’s Word and rest on it alone to see the work done. All the testimonies in the world that could be gathered together would not establish the doctrine of divine healing. If this were not true, it would be merely human and not divine. God’s Word cannot fail.
Two verses contain three outstanding truths relative to divine healing and our redemption from all sin. Matt. 8:17, “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (KJV). Isa. 53:5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (KJV).
First: by the stripes of the Lord Jesus Christ we are healed from the wounds of sin. Of all the maladies of man, sin is the most tragic and most fundamental. It is the source of all other maladies. One may never be healed physically and never fully understand why, but there is no reason at all why anyone cannot be healed spiritually. If one comes to Christ in honesty, confessing, and in a spirit of true repentance, Christ will forgive; He will heal the broken heart and wounded soul.
Second: this verse declares that we can be healed from the diseases of our bodies, which are under the curse of sin as a result of the Fall. In this connection we must remember that, while it is the privilege of every believer to come to Christ for the healing of his body, not every believer has been healed upon coming to Christ for healing. This is no reason for us to say such a person is not a Christian. There are some things that we may not understand: God’s glory, our good, and the exaltation of God in the minds of men must be considered. A good example is Job.
Third: Isaiah refers to healing from the physical effects of sin that we shall experience in the resurrection at the end of time. Then every trace of sin, sickness and physical weakness will be forever banished. We must remember that the atonement provides for many blessings whose benefits we shall reap only in the age to come. The resurrection body is one of those benefits, but we cannot claim it until time has run its course. There is sickness in which there is no sin. It may be true theologically that all sickness came from the origin of sin, but experientially there is a sickness that is of grace. For example, the affliction of Job was of grace—it was to the glory of God. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was not of sin. Satan took advantage of it, but God gave it for the glory of His grace. Paul healed others, but he accepted his own sufferings as part of the afflictions he bore for Christ. Epaphroditus was healed of the Lord (Phil. 2:27), but Trophimus had to left sick at Miletum (2 Tim. 4:20).
Divine healing is conditional. There is this difference between receiving the basic benefits of redemption or salvation by faith in Jesus Christ and receiving the gifts of the Spirit, as well as the rich benefits which God gives to us. Salvation is an immediate possibility to all who meet the conditions. The moment those conditions are met, in that instant, on the exercise of faith, that person is saved. However, the difference between appropriating redemption by faith and appropriating the other rich promises of God by faith (healing being one of them) is this: we must add the condition which the leper who came to Jesus recognized when he said, “Lord, If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean” (Matt. 8:2). Our petition must always be a request and never a demand.
The healing of our bodies may depend on several factors: First, it may depend on whether it is God’s time for us to be with Him in eternity. God knows that—we do not. Second, it is necessary that we should be walking with Christ in holiness and obedience and living up to His present will for us. The principle stated in Ex. 15:26 is still in effect, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee” (KJV). Third, specific faith is necessary, that is, the definite belief that God gives us the healing which we claim, and gives it now. Mark 11:24, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (KJV). Fourth, in order to receive the Lord’s healing, we need to know the Holy Spirit. In the days of His corporeal flesh, Christ was present among men in physical form, but He reveals Himself now through the Spirit; and unless we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, we cannot perceive Christ and His help for our healing. Fifth, we need to know Jesus as a Living Person, and touch Him and abide in Him in order to know the fullness of His physical life in our body. Divine healing is the result of a personal union with a personal Christ. We should not fight the physicians, psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, as long as they are of a mind not to discount our faith and the power of our God, but let us always remember that there is a Great Physician always on call.
If you are sick, be assured that God cares for you and loves you. You are His. He made you. He ransomed you. Do not struggle and grab everyone and anything which seems to promise healing, as a drowning man reaches for a straw. Examine your heart, consecrate to live or die in Him, call for the elders, be anointed with oil, and rest with faith in God. The day of miracles is not past. God, through our faith in the shed blood of His Son, can heal your body, mend your broken heart, as well as put your shattered soul and spirit back together again.
The healing of His seamless robe Is by our beds of pain. We touch the hem of His garment in life’s road And are made whole again!
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