What does the Bible say about healing?

That God often heals the sick in answer to prayer is clearly taught both in James and John: in the former according to ecclesiastical order, though by the prayer of faith; in the latter as an individual matter, and I have seen and assisted at the clearest examples of this both in England and on the continent. In two cases, at the request of the parties, prayer was accompanied by anointing.

We should be with God about our sickness, and after bowing under His mighty hand, we may rest assured that He will raise us up. This is not at all a question of so-called faith cure. There is often more pride in what is called that than in the humble employment of proper means for recovery. God may, and doubtless often does, heal in answer to prayer, and without the use of medicines, just as He often blesses the instrumentalities used. But the point of importance is that recovery is not the first object. What would God have us learn in our sickness? Has there been disobedience for which we are feeling His chastening hand? Or, if there has been no direct act of disobedience, has there been a low, carnal, worldly state, worse than actual outbreaking evil? How foolish to expect or want recovery to bodily health before the soul is healed.

The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is used by Peter in this paragraph. There it is written: "By His stripes we are healed," and the confession, "all we like sheep have gone astray." Of late the so-called "divine healers," men and women who claim gifts of healings, 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 and that the stripes laid upon Him were specifically for the healing of our bodies, which Scripture so clearly states are "dead on account of sin." 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.

Our first most vital need was that of a Savior to save us from the guilt of our sins. But sins here are called iniquities, that is, greatly aggravated guilt, and no matter how great, they are forgiven to those who receive the Lord Jesus as Savior. But at this time also, the Lord will heal all their diseases, so that in all those thousand years bodily disease will be banished (v. 3). We read in Hebrews 6:5 of those who tasted "the powers of the age to come," which shows us that the limited measure of bodily healing at the beginning of Christianity was but a small foretaste of what will be true in the coming age, the millennium. All believers now do not (and are not expected to) enjoy this freedom from disease, as they will in heaven, and as believers will in the millennium. There are some who teach that bodily healing is in the atonement, and that therefore every believer should be free from disease of any kind, but Matthew 8:16-17 shows that the Lord Jesus fulfilled the scripture, "He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses" when He was healing on earth, not in His sacrifice.

This was very noticeable in the early history of the church, when healing took its place among the gifts the ascended Lord gave in giving the Holy Spirit. That God can and does still in response to faith heal the bodies of His saints at the present time we do not deny, but a word of strong warning needs to be uttered in this connection. There is a class of persons who exalt faith healing into a system, and fix the minds of Christians upon their bodies instead of on Christ and His Word.

As to sickness the Apostle's instructions are equally plain. It is viewed as being God's chastening hand upon the saint, very possibly in the form of direct retribution for his sins. In this the church would be interested, and the elders of the church should be called in. They, at their discretion, pray over him, anointing him with oil in the Lord's name and he is healed, his sins being governmentally forgiven. It is evident from such a scripture as 1 John 5:16 that the elders were to exercise their spiritual discernment as to whether it was, or was not, the will of God that healing should be granted. If they discerned it to be His will then they could pray the prayer full of faith and confidence, which would be without fail answered in his recovery.

Psalm 103 brings before us the effect of the Lord's presence on the earth, "Who heals all thy diseases" as well as "forgives all thine iniquities." This is not so now, as it will be in the coming day, when healing and forgiveness will go together. True He does heal now at times, but still He allows sickness to affect His people. Then the healing will not only be wholly, but connected also with forgiveness. Some people think the grand thing is to have faith in God's power. He has only to speak, and the worst disease can be healed easily; but He is training us. Sometimes sickness is sent as a preventive, sometimes as a corrective; we ought to have faith in His love as well as in His power, and in His wisdom too. Have faith in God, not simply in His power. Here Job shines. Perhaps we have not thought adequately of his sufferings — "though he slay me yet will I trust in him."

In showing such grace, however, He rightly put them under responsibility, making a statute to the effect that they they should listen to His voice and do what was right in God's estimation. This was accompanied by a definite condition: if they were obedient to His commandments, He would preserve them from the diseases that He inflicted upon Egypt. For the government of God must always be observed, and certainly specially so by those whom He has blessed with the knowledge of redemption. Israel would have been preserved from suffering such physical diseases if they were simply obedient to the Lord, for He is the Lord who heals. In our present dispensation of grace we are not promised exemption from physical diseases on the ground of obedience, but obedience will certainly preserve us from spiritual diseases, and give us spiritual health and strength.

Truly we have no warrant for believing that the Lord has secured to His own a present exemption from the physical and mental disabilities common to mankind. Neither have we warrant for believing that the power He exercised in New Testament times over the sick bodies of men is continued to His present witnesses. In those miracles of healing He demonstrated once for all His power as the First Cause, dispensing with all material remedies as intermediaries, accomplishing His purpose with a word or touch. He was pleased to use a plaister of figs for the recovery of Hezekiah, but the king knew that it was Jehovah who had healed him, as he said, "He has both spoken unto me, and himself has done it" (Isa. 38:15). And we, encouraged by the personal activities of Jesus recorded in the holy Gospels, may use our medicinal remedies in the assurance of His equal activity today both in sympathy and in power to heal.

All sickness does not come under the head of chastening, though discipline we may find in it, and find it needful, therefore, to that end. The apostle's thorn in the flesh had this character, and was not removed, nor could be; God taught him to acquiesce in and to profit by it. For Timothy's weak "stomach's sake and often infirmities" he prescribes, not the prayer of faith, but "a little wine." Trophimus he leaves at Miletum sick; Epaphroditus too is sick, nigh unto death, right under the apostle's eye; but God has mercy on him, and on Paul too thus, and raises him up. Even in apostles' days, and with such as he, the gifts of healing were used, not indiscriminately, or for the personal ease of Christians, but for the glory of God as with Lazarus' resurrection, or that healing of the sick of the palsy, "that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."

Thus stands the matter, simply taking Scripture. That we need still the admonition, "Have faith in God," — that men may still die, because they seek not to God, but the physician, as Asa did, — that many an one may lie unhealed for whom a simpler and therefore more discerning faith would find in God the power to heal, — all this need not be doubted. On the other hand, Christians cannot be too earnestly warned against a view of things, coming up in many quarters in the present day, which ignores the sorrowful realities of the flesh and the world. It is but another fig-leaf apron, — another human invention to cover man's nakedness; a fruit of wisdom acquired by the fall, and not divine. F. W. Grant.