What does the Bible say about healing?
The Bible treats healing on two levels at once — the body that suffers and the soul that sins — and it never lets the smaller need eclipse the greater. Scripture records both, but the passages also show God withholding healing from His most devoted servants, which raises the harder question: when He does not heal, what is He doing instead?
"I am the LORD, your healer"
The title God takes for Himself in Exodus 15:26 sits behind every healing story that follows. Commenting on the man cured of dropsy in Luke 14, one writer reads the sheer volume of sickness in Israel as evidence not against that promise but against the people:
William KellyHad not the LORD said before the law was given, "If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God... I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer" (Ex. 15:26). Yet what was the witness of the man with dropsy before the Lord and before them? And what did all kinds of disease and sickness in the land of Israel mean, crowding round Him as it were to be healed? ... It was not the LORD who heals that had failed, but man in general and Israel in particular.
The paralytic: forgiveness comes first
When four men lowered a paralysed friend through a roof, Jesus dealt with his sins before his legs — and then used the cure as public proof of the pardon.
F. B. HoleThe forgiveness of sins is not something visible to the eyes of men; it must be accepted by faith in the Word of God. The instant healing of a bad case of bodily infirmity is visible to the eyes of men, and the Lord proceeded to perform this miracle. They could no more release the man from the grip of his disease than they could forgive his sins. Jesus could do both with equal ease... Thus He puts things in their right order. The spiritual miracle was primary, the bodily was only secondary.
Isaiah 53:4 in Matthew 8:17
Matthew applies Isaiah's words about bearing griefs and sicknesses to the healings of Jesus, not to the cross. That distinction shapes how the verse should be read:
William KellyThe meaning is not that He took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses in His own person, but that this is how He acted in healing diseases and driving out demons. It was not mere power; He felt before God in grace the weight of all the evil that He removed.
The neighbouring line, "by his stripes we are healed," is pressed by some as a promise of bodily cure. Commentators in this collection reject that reading:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinRecently the so-called "divine healers," men and women who claim gifts of healing, if not gifts to work miracles, speak of the sentence "By His stripes we are healed" as meaning the healing of diseases. They claim that Christ died also for our bodily ills... This is a most dangerous perversion of the truth. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, but nowhere is it written that He died for our bodily diseases.
James 5:14 — the one instruction given to the sick
Scan the letters and you find sick believers everywhere; only one passage tells them what to do about it.
F. B. HoleNotice further that in the letters various cases of sickness or infirmity among believers are mentioned: among the Corinthians — the very people who had the gifts of healing (1 Cor. 11:30); with Paul himself (2 Cor. 12:7-9; Gal. 4:13), with Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25-30); with Timothy (1 Tim. 5:23); with Trophimus (2 Tim. 4:20)... yet only in James is there any word about a way of healing, namely prayer and confession... It is the faith of those who pray that is in question, not the faith of the sick person.
Commentators differ over how far that provision still reaches. Some say it stands unchanged and is simply neglected:
A. J. PollockThe sick believer may call for the elders of the church, if they can be found, and they may anoint the sufferer with oil, and the prayer of FAITH shall save the sick, and he shall be raised up. Of that there can be no question. It is a pity that it is not more often done.
Others are more cautious, holding that the miraculous power the Lord exercised over sick bodies is not guaranteed to His witnesses today, and that using medical remedies is entirely consistent with trusting Him — as Hezekiah did when a poultice of figs was applied and he still said God Himself had healed him (The Bible Treasury).
When God does not heal
Paul, who healed others, watched close friends stay ill and lived with an affliction God refused to lift.
Frederick W. GrantAll sickness does not come under the heading of chastening, though we may find discipline in it... The apostle's thorn in the flesh had this character, and was not removed, nor could it be; God taught him to accept it and to profit by it. For Timothy's weak stomach and frequent infirmities he prescribes, not the prayer of faith, but "a little wine." He leaves Trophimus at Miletus sick... Even in the apostles' days the gifts of healing were used, not indiscriminately, or for the personal comfort of Christians, but for the glory of God.
Sickness as the Father's discipline
Paul told the Corinthians that many were weak and ill because of how they treated the Lord's Supper. That changes how we pray for the sick:
W. W. FeredaySickness and death are often used by the Lord in a disciplinary way, and perhaps these things have this character more often than our dull hearts realise... Since these things are true, we need spiritual discernment in praying for a sick fellow-Christian... There is no question of the soul's salvation in these dealings; it is divine chastening.
Summary
- Healer — God's own name in Exodus 15:26 is "the LORD, your healer"; where sickness spread through Israel it was not that Healer failing, but the people.
- Order — with the paralytic Jesus forgave first and cured second, proving the unseen miracle by the visible one; the spiritual was primary, the bodily secondary.
- Sympathy — Matthew 8:17 applies Isaiah 53:4 to His healing ministry, where He felt before God the weight of every evil He removed; commentators here hold that healing of the body is nowhere said to be in the atonement.
- Prayer — James 5:14-16 is the only passage telling the sick what to do: call the elders, anoint, confess, pray — and it is the faith of those praying, not of the patient, that counts.
- Restraint — Paul's thorn stayed, Timothy got wine, Trophimus was left sick; healing power served God's glory, not personal comfort, and some sickness is the Father's discipline, calling for self-judgement before it calls for a cure.