That is not what the Word of God teaches. That makes it God’s fault and not ours if things don’t go right. To deal with this dilemma, the doctrine that it’s not always God’s will to heal has arisen. It is obvious that not everyone gets healed, not even all those who desire healing receive it. Instead of making their experiences match God’s Word, many seek to make God’s Word match their experiences. If total health is God’s original plan for man, and one of the most universal needs of man is total health, doesn’t it make sense that the Lord would address this need? Why is it that so many Christians are opposed to divine healing? Why do others who believe in healing fail to receive? I want to try and answer these two questions.įirst, one of the main reasons I think Christians don’t believe that it’s always God’s will to heal is that it is convenient to believe that way. Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 say, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Death, including sickness, was our choice, not God’s. Sickness came upon us as a result of our rejection of God and His ways. God didn’t create us to be anything less than perfectly healthy. There is a God-given aversion in every one of us to sickness, disease, and death. That’s because mankind was created by God to live forever. That is a universal desire you could easily say it’s one of the most compelling desires of everyone who has ever lived. People will do just about anything to retain or regain their health. That’s evident in the huge amount of money that flows into hospitals, doctors’ offices, and pharmacies. One day, I’m looking forward to seeing my friend and his wife, healed, restored, redeemed, forgiven-by the stripes of Jesus.I don’t know anyone who wants to be sick. All of this is summed up in the words by his stripes-it’s those five bleeding wounds Jesus received on Calvary that give us such hope.Īnd because we have received Jesus’ stripes as our own, we have reason to be hopeful, to have the earnest expectation that we are being and shall be healed. He took upon Himself the iniquity of us all. He received the chastisement that brought us peace. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was our substitute, our replacement, who stood in our place and bore our punishment. How will this happen? How is it possible to have this confidence? We can have such confidence because Jesus was wounded for us: by his stripes-by his wounds-we are healed. Our spiritually renewed inner person shall be reunited with our restored outer person every tear shall be wiped away, every pain removed, all our physical ability restored-never to be wasted away again. That bodily healing will come in the last day and is guaranteed to us: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. We are healed in the inner person as we are transformed into the image of Christ.Įven more, this spiritual healing will involve not only our inner person, but our outer person as well-because our spiritual healing demands resurrection. By his wounds you have been healed.” The healing that God grants us through Jesus is one that involves a cleansing from our sin and living unto righteousness. That’s how the Apostle Peter uses the verse in 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. It points us to a spiritual healing that comes by way of redemption. It wasn’t to be she died right before Memorial Day 2010, and he, too, went to be with the Lord eighteen months later.Īnd yet, there is a sense in which that text in Isaiah points us to healing. He had read some things on the Internet about that verse and so claimed it as a promise that his wife would be healed in this life through Jesus’ stripes. One of the texts to which he clung and with which he wrestled was Isaiah 53:5: “By his stripes, we are healed” (NKJV). I came to know him in that context as he wrestled for fourteen months with his wife’s condition, with his desire for her healing, and with God’s purposes in his life. Right before I was called to our congregation, his wife had a massive stroke. He was a business leader in our community, heavily involved with our local university and its athletic teams.
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