Is it sometimes God's will for believers to be sick?

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."

How frequently, when people speak of faith, do we find that they think a believer ought never to be suffering from sickness that it is a shame, and due to something wrong in his path, and they talk of "faith-healing." But while we know God can do everything, and all things are possible to him that believes, we want faith also in His love, and wisdom, and care. Sickness may preserve us from going the wrong way. Paul's thorn in the flesh was not for anything wrong in his past path, but was given him as a preventive, lest he should be exalted above measure, through the abundance of the revelations. The danger was not when in the third heaven, but when he came down. "In everything let your requests be made known unto God." It is our holy, blessed privilege to hand everything up to God, but it is also our privilege to say, "Not my will, but thine be done." We would not limit the Lord's power, but we bow to His wisdom and purposes in all that He does. He is far more deeply interested in us than we can conceive. How much there is to inspire our hearts! But I think as to faith, the one who knows most about it, has the least to say about it. David kept the secret about the lion and the bear within his own soul, until it was right to speak of it, when he bore testimony before king Saul. But if you hear people constantly talking about their faith, I don't think there is much faith there: "Hast thou faith, have it to thyself before God."

In James 5 we read, “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” The “if” shows that the sickness might not have been sent on account of any particular sin.

It would be a very grave mistake indeed to say “that all the trials and sufferings of Christians are punishments for some particular sin.” Very often these things are sent as a preventive and to draw the heart nearer to Christ. Who would presume to say that the sickness of Epaphroditus in Philippians 2 was a punishment for some particular sin? The apostle expressly tells us that “for the work of Christ, he was nigh to death.” Were Timothy's frequent infirmities sent as a punishment for some particular sin?

While God uses sickness, accidents, and other trying situations to chasten His children, we must never conclude that God is disciplining us only because of sin. (This was the mistake Job's friends made regarding his suffering.) The Lord often uses sufferings and trials to draw us closer to Him. He may seek to strengthen our faith by putting us in situations where we have to depend upon Him.

These conditional promises were given to Israel under law, not to the church of God today, for our blessings are spiritual, and connected with heavenly places (Eph. 1:3). Godly people today may suffer illness and other afflictions such as this, as Epaphroditus was “sick almost unto death,” not for disobedience, but for the sake of the work of Christ (Phil. 2:25-30). One reason for this is that the knowledge of Christ brings with it the living power to endure such things in a spirit of genuine faith and cheerfulness.

Now there were resources in Christianity both for joy and sorrow. If any were afflicted, let them pray (God was ready to hear); if happy, let them sing; if sick, send for the elders of the assembly, who would pray for the sufferer and anoint him, and the chastisement would be removed, and the sins for which, according to God's government, he was thus chastised, would be forgiven as regards that government; for it is that only which is here spoken of.

The imputation of sin for condemnation has no place here. The efficacy of the prayer of faith is set before us; but it is in connection with the maintenance of sincerity of heart. The government of God is exercised with regard to His people. He chastises them by sickness; and it is important that truth in the inner man should be maintained. Men hide their faults; they desire to walk as if all were going on well; but God judges His people. He tries the heart and the reins. They are held in bonds of affliction. God shows them their faults, or their unbroken self-will. Man "is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain," Job 33:19. And now the church of God intervenes in charity, and according to its own order, by means of the elders; the sick man commits himself to God, confessing his state of need; the charity of the church acts and brings him who is chastised, according to this relationship, before God — for that is where the church is. Faith pleads this relationship of grace; the sick man is healed. If sins — and not merely the need of discipline — were the cause of his chastisement, those sins will not hinder his being healed, they shall be forgiven him.

I do not want, however, to dismiss the subject without adding a word as to what remains for us in these days. For this, we must first of all distinguish between cases which Mr. S. necessarily mixes up in confusion. Elihu, in the book of Job, shows us the chastening of a soul under God's hand, for which his flesh is consumed until he dies, or else humbles himself and confesses his sin and finds mercy. The apostle speaks in this way of a sin unto death, for which he does not say that any one should pray. In James, this case of chastening is supposed, though not exclusively. Here, the remedy is clearly not in doctors, and it is of the very greatest importance to remember it. Here still the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and "confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed" abides ever as the resource. The prayer of faith surely remains to

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.

(Vv. 16, 17). Furthermore, this confidence in God leads us not only to pray for ourselves, but also to intercede for others. Many a sickness that comes upon the people of God is by no means a chastisement for sin, but, as in the case of Lazarus, for the glory of God (John 11:4). Nevertheless, there is the governmental dealing of God with His people, and, if we see a brother chastened of God by some sickness because of a particular sin, we can intercede for such an one, provided that the sin is not to death.

Such confidence the Lord delights to own. At once it gives Him the occasion to say that this sickness is for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. The devil would seek to use our trials to raise murmuring and dishonouring thoughts of God: the Lord would use them to draw out our confidence in Himself, and as an occasion for manifesting His love in such tender fashion that He is glorified, while we are blessed.