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A Challenge to All Healers (Below)
One of the major fads in church life today is the healing of bodily complaints. Professing Christians today are almost as obsessive with the need to visit a healer as New Agers are to visit a therapist! If one questions this obsession, the usual answer is that we are to do what Jesus did. Jesus seemed to spend most of his time healing, therefore so should we. That's the manner of thinking of so many Christians across the world today. Is this a correct understanding of why Jesus healed? Are Christians supposed to be attending meetings in order to have their legs lengthened (a popular sport in Vineyard churches)? Should physical healing be a principal precursor to evangelism? Is the spiritual "Gift of Healing" still extant today? Is there physical healing in the atonement? These are all questions which we shall broach in this paper.
It is of great significance that the 'Gifts of Healings' and 'Workings of Miracles' are referred to in the plural in the Greek texts. This is because all occurrences of healings and miracles were separate 'gift-events' which took place through the immediate impetus of the Holy Spirit. A person did not receive 'the Gift of Healing' on a permanent basis, so that he became a professional 'healer' and could heal at will, as it were. Every time a healing or a miracle took place, the one through whom the healing or miracle was performed received a specific prompting from the Holy Spirit to carry out the act. That person might never receive such a prompting again; or, on the other hand, he may receive many.
Some especially notable examples of this process in action are recorded in the N.T. First, the healing of the lame man at the temple-gate called Beautiful (Acts 3:1-10). Peter and John must have gone up to the temple at the ninth hour by this route on many occasions; but it was only on this one occasion that the Holy Spirit prompted them to perform this healing. It was a classic example of the use of a "sign", after which evangelism would follow (Acts 3:11-4:4). Second, the deliverance of the slave girl possessed with the spirit of divination (Acts 16:16-19). She hassled Paul for many days, but was ignored by him. Suddenly, on one particular moment of one particular day, Paul wheeled round and commanded the demon to come out. One must assume that this was the time chosen by the Holy Spirit for Paul to be empowered to do this. Without such prompting of the Spirit and the accompanying gift, even the Apostles did not attempt to work a miracle or perform a healing. This is presumably the reason why, when Peter was given the gift of working a miracle to bring Dorcas back to life, he prayed to the Lord to discern whether or not it was the Spirit's intention to do this (Acts 9:40).
Understanding all this is most important today, because there are a great many people who set themselves up with what they call "a healing ministry". However, not only are they attempting to use a Spiritual Gift which is no longer extant (as I shall shortly show), but they are usurping what is the sole prerogative of the Holy Spirit in distributing 'Gifts of Healings' according to His own will (Heb.2:4). There were no Christians who set themselves up as professional, full-time, Spirit-empowered healers in the New Testament. To set oneself up in this way would be shamanism.
The Gifts of Healings referred to in 1 Cor.12:7 were an extension of the Apostolic sign-ministry of healing set out in Mk.16:18, as these sign-gifts could only be received through the personal distribution of one of the Apostles (see separate paper on Apostleship). The healings of Jesus Christ and His Apostles were never meant to be an end in themselves just so that people would feel better. Neither were they given in order that we may have an example to follow. They were performed both as fulfillment of O.T. prophecy and as practical parables of the spiritual healing in which a person is bathed when he comes to Christ. Let us just expand on this concept by asking the question, 'Why did Jesus heal?' When we examine the Scriptures rather than the popular teachings of today, we find that there were two principal reasons for Jesus's healing ministry.
JESUS HEALED TO PROVE HIS MESSIAHSHIP
The first of these reasons was the necessity to prove His Messiahship. Now, it is vital to understand that all Jesus's miracles had a primary parabolic purpose. Although they really happened, they were also richly symbolic and represented a parable about Jesus' healing ministry. The Jews would certainly be very accustomed to the use a an historical event as a parable: the Old Testament is littered with such happenings. The Prophets, for example, often used actions and events as powerful symbols, generally at the command of the Lord. In Jeremiah we find a number of such occurrences (e.g., Jer.1:11-19; 13:1-11,12-14; 19:1-13; 24:1-10, etc.), and in Ezekiel there are even more (e.g., Ezk.4:1-17; 5:1-17; 24:15-27; 37:15-28, etc.). The book of Hosea is actually founded upon such a parable, when the prophet is commanded by God to take a prostitute for a wife as a symbol of Israel's spiritual adultery towards their Lord (e.g., Hos.1:1-3; 3:1-5).
So, in the fullness of time, when the Son of God is manifested in the flesh, He continues that rich prophetic tradition through His many miracles and healings, which were parables in themselves conveying vital messages. John, in His Gospel, chooses seven such 'signs' (as he calls them) precisely in order to confirm the fact that Jesus was the Messiah (cf. Jn.20:30-31). Remember how Paul said:
'Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles' (1Cor.1:22-23; see also John2:18)
In spite of the faithless nature of 'sign-spotting' exhibited in the Jews, our Lord was very longsuffering and merciful to them -- allowing them the many signs which Jesus enacted, and a further thirty-five years of Apostolic sign-ministry after His crucifixion before the Old Covenant dispensation was finally wound up with the destruction of Jerusalem IN AD.70
It is of signal importance that the Lord Jesus, at the beginning of His public ministry, identified the nature of His messianic work by quoting Isaiah 61:1-2a in the synagogue in Nazareth, which has been recorded in Lk.4:16-30: 'He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind'. The healing miracles and deliverance ministry which He subsequently carried out were in fulfillment of this and other O.T. prophecies (e.g., Isaiah 35:5-6; 42:6-7) which would serve to identify Jesus Christ to Israel as the long-awaited Messiah. When John the Baptist sent men to Jesus to ask if He was the Coming One, Jesus then authenticated His Messiahship to this last of the O.T. prophets by presenting a detailed catalogue of His healing ministry (see Matt.11:2-5). Why did He do this? Precisely because it was these which represented the infallible 'signs' that He had come. Moreover, these healing 'signs' provided vital spiritual lessons about His redemptive mission as the Saviour of the world: He was the spiritual 'Light' which would open the eyes to truth (Jn.9:39); He would give ears to hear that truth (Mk.7:32-37); He would transfer people from the authority of Satan into the kingdom of Christ (Lk.10:17). He was THE Messiah!
JESUS HEALED TO SHOW HE HAD POWER TO FORGIVE SINS
The second reason that Jesus practised healing was to demonstrate that his real mission is to forgive sins. It cannot be over-emphasised that Jesus did not practice healing, or empower His Apostles to do so, in order to provide us with a nice example to imitate. Mark discloses the real reason that Jesus healed when he records Him as saying to the Scribes and Pharisees, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance' (Mk.2:17). Here we are shown by the Lord Himself that the true healing which is at the heart of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of sins. The real sickness of Man is sin. All Jesus' healings were an illustration of this. Nowhere is this brought out more powerfully than in the healing of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof:
''Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven you', or to say, 'Arise, take up your bed and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins -- He said to the paralytic, 'I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go your way to your house' (Mark 2:9-11)
The Scribes knew full well that only God can forgive sins (Mk.2:7), and that Jesus was here ascribing Divine status to Himself. That is precisely why He performed healings and miracles: to give unassailable proof of His Deity (cf. Jn.20:30-31) -- a fact which would eventually lead to His being executed by the religious authorities (Matt.26:63-65; Jn.19:7). He only authorised His Apostles to continue that sign-ministry (Mk.3:15; 16:17-18). To imitate Christ by attempting to enact such miraculous healings, as many do today, is to deny the uniqueness of His sign-ministry and that of the Apostles sent personally by Him to establish the solid foundations of His Church (2Cor.12:12; Mark 16:17-18; Heb.2:4).
The true healing, therefore, is the forgiveness of sins. The First century Jew would grasp the significance of the parallelism of healing and the forgiveness of sins because it is fundamental to O.T. teaching. What appears to have eluded many brethren is that the words 'sickness' and 'healing' in Scripture by no means always refer to the problems of the body. In fact, almost all of the Old Testament references directly concern spiritual healing (e.g., 2Chr.7:14; Psa.6:2; 41:4; 107:20; Isa.6:10; 57:17-20; Jer.6:14; 17:9,14; 30:17; Lam.2:13; Hos.6:1; 14:4; Jn.12:40; Acts 28:27; Heb.12:13; Rev.22:2). The whole object of God's plan of salvation is to bring about the restoring of the world from sin (lawlessness), and this is spoken of in Scripture in such terms as "the healing of the nations" (Rev.22:2). It is this same idea which is being expressed in Psa.103:2-3: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases" . We must not dash headlong here into thinking that this means that all those who ask God to heal them will definitely be healed. The forgiveness of all our iniquities is here parallel with the healing of all our diseases. They are but different expressions of the same principle. The real disease of man is his sin, from which he needs redemption and forgiveness, which, in turn, leads to his (spiritual) healing. Even in the English language, it is no coincidence that the word 'salvation' is closely related to the word 'salve', ointment (cf. Rev.3:18).
When the Lord says, 'The heart is deceitful above all things and incurably sick. Who can understand it?' (Jer.17:9), It should not surprise us to read the response: 'Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me and I shall be saved, for you are the one I praise'.[Note 1] Similarly, we read of the Psalmist pleading with the Lord: 'O Lord, have mercy on me; heal me, for I have sinned against You' (Psa.41:4). In terms of the Lord's work in our lives, healing, salvation and the forgiveness of sins are one and the same. That is why the O.T. is peppered with sayings about people being 'healed' of their backslidings (e.g., Isa.6:10; Lam.2:13). Then we have the most wonderful saying of all which clearly shows that the Jews were waiting for One who would heal the soul:
'"For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up," says the LORD of hosts,. "That will leave them neither root nor branch. But to you who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings. And you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves"' (Mal.4:1-4).
In the most shining example of this parallelism between healing and the forgiveness of sins, the prophecy of Isaiah concerning Jesus's atonement says, "By His stripes [wounds] we are healed" (Isa.53:5). This does not mean that those covered by the blood of Christ will never be sick nor undergo affliction after their conversion, as some seem to interpret this text today. The fact that there is any healing at all -- whether physical, spiritual or emotional -- certainly has its roots in Jesus' atonement.[Note 2] But this does not mean that those for whom Christ has died will always be healed of any physical disease they may have. In his definitive commentary on this verse in Isaiah, the Apostle Peter quotes this verse in Isaiah and speaks of Christ as the One
'who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness -- by whose stripes [wounds] you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls' (1Pet. 2:24-25).
The healing being referred to here is clearly spiritual -- the forgiveness of sins -- rather than the mere curing of bodily ailments; and this is the thrust of the entire Scriptures. None of the passages which refer to healing in the Bible could be taken to infer that God wants everyone to be healed. In fact, the idea is explicitly refuted in one place by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself (Luke4:25-27), and can be inferred from many more incidents in Scripture. The fact that the majority of New Testament references to healing involve miraculous bodily healings by the Lord Jesus Christ does not detract from this principle. For through the healing of physical disease, Jesus was foreshadowing His atoning work in healing our spiritual disease and the thoroughly corrupting effect it has on our lives (e.g.,Jn.9:39,5-7; 11:43,44,25-26). That is the real reason for His work of this nature. His healings of the body were a gracious sign to the Lord's ancient Covenant people that the Physician of the soul had truly arrived -- exactly as had been foretold through the prophets (Isa.29:18; 35:5-7; Matt.11:1-5; see especially Mk.2:9-10,17)). In just the same way that it is futile to have a full stomach and an empty heart (Jn.6:26-27), so it is of no lasting consequence to have bodily health yet still be living in spiritual depravity (cf.1Tim.4:8). Furthermore, we should never imagine that satan is the immediate cause behind all disease. Neither is it ourplace to deduce that the illness of another is the result of personal sin or a lack of faith. Yet these forms of thinking are common currency in the church today -- especially the Charismatic Movement where, it seems, the more outlandish an idea the more likely it will be passionately believed.
Although it is a fact that in the New Heavens and the New Earth, after the return of the Lord Jesus, there will be no sickness nor, indeed, any kind of suffering (Rev.21:4), the earth in its present state is still a fallen planet and the people in it are still organic partakers in a fallen world. We see this clearly from Paul's teaching in the eighth chapter of Romans, where he discusses the awful tension which exists between the continuing corruption of the old order and the germination of the new order through those called by the Spirit of adoption to be the children of God. The Apostle is at great pains to show beyond refutation that, in spite of the appearances of things -- the continuity of fallenness in the created world -- those regenerated in Christ have absolute assurance of salvation. He says that if we are children of God, then we are "heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together" (Rom.8:17).
Here Paul clearly acknowledges that Christians will suffer with Christ. Our Master suffered, therefore we also will suffer (cf.Jn.15:19-20). The Apostle then immediately makes the profound statement that "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Rom.8:18). He we have, in essence, the Christian view of suffering. No matter how bad things get in this life, they pale into insignificance when we consider the sublimity of our future state in eternity. Then, after a memorable verse which superbly expresses the tensions in the whole creation -- shot through as it is with imperfection -- Paul says that it is not only the brute creation which strains at the seams in the stranglehold of corruption, but "we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly awaiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body" (Rom. 8:23). Why does he say this? Because he wishes to emphasise the fact that Christians too are still partakers according to the flesh in the world of decay and corruption. We still have bodies which are subject to mortal decay. It has not yet been revealed what we shall be in the time of the resurrection (1Jn.3:2). We still have that sin which is connected with "the flesh" to contend with, although we are being renewed every day according to the inward man (2Cor.4:16). "By His stripes we have been healed" -- that is, spiritually reconciled to God -- but the fullness of that spiritual healing will not be openly revealed until all things have been made anew. Until the day that we breathe our last, we will continue to need fillings in our teeth as well as atonement for our sin!
In order to avoid falling into error on this thorny subject, and to put the life experience of the Christian in its true perspective, we must recognise that there is a twofold development in the process of full redemption. As the Apostle writes:
"Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation" (Heb. 9:28)
There are two stages: Jesus Christ came the first time to bear the sins of His people (spiritual healing); He is coming a second time to complete the redemption process when all things will be made anew (the restoration of all things, Acts 3:21), including our bodies, which continue to be disease-prone and mortal between the two advents of Jesus. The Apostle Paul fully recognised that our bodies will not be in a state of redemption until the time when the whole creation stops groaning at the Second Coming (Rom. 8:22-23). To put it another way: The kingdom has come in grace, but it has not yet come in glory. The all-too-common misunderstanding of this 'not-yetness' aspect of the kingdom has led to many errors in the Church throughout its history, such as the sinless perfection of the believer, complete healing and wholeness for all, and so-called "Dominion Theology".
That the healing which is in Christ would have to be applied spiritually before the entire physical wholeness would come to fruition is absolutely central to the main thesis of this present study. As we shall shortly see, it is through the refining fire of suffering, evil and ultimately physical death that the people of God are brought into full glory. This is not to say that the Christian's salvation is uncertain until Christ's return. Perish the thought! But God has chosen not to effect the glorification element so long as His children remain in their mortal, temporally-adapted flesh. He has, however, done the next best thing: He has given all His children the indwelling Holy Spirit as a kind of downpayment or deposit as a guarantee of the future glorified life to come (2 Cor.1:22; 5:5; Eph.1:11-14).
So long as we remain in our physical bodies as they are presently constituted, "we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven" (2 Cor.5:2). This is every believer's experience. But to be so clothed does not happen yet. We Christians remain in this present fallen world; we groan, being burdened, subject to the effects of that original Fall-induced curse on creation and subject to the persecutions of the atheistic, antichristian world-system. However, in order to prevent us from becoming despondent or doubtful while we wait for full redemption at Christ's return, our gracious and loving God has organised the most comforting remedy. He has given us the ultimate Comforter (Jn.14:18,25-26; 15:26). As Paul puts it:
"Now He who has prepared us for this very thing [i.e. full redemption at the resurrection] is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith rather than by sight" (2 Cor.5:5-7).
It is crucial for us to realise that because the Fall of man was occasioned by doubt, so his restitution must be occasioned by faith. If everything in our lives was suddenly totally transformed into perfection the instant we were converted, the whole purpose behind the Fall would be undermined and the aeons of sin, suffering and death which have been designed for our learning would be rendered meaningless. Therefore, until Jesus' return, we remain clothed in imperfection and in a suffering world in order that we may carry out our allotted role as God's appointed heralds of salvation to those who are still to be brought into the kingdom (Jn.17:15; cf. Phil.1:21-24), while at the same time we are enabled to undergo our own progressive purification process. For it is during that paradoxical period between conversion (spiritual rebirth) and bodily death that the child of God is being systematically trained up for heavenly service.
Another facet of Gifts of Healings is that they occurred exclusively by direct command of the Apostles or those empowered by them (e.g., Lk.4:39; Acts 3:6; 9:34; 9:40). God still heals today, if it is His will to do so -- not through direct command, but by means of prayer -- not through apostles or other gifted people with a sign ministry, but through the pastoral ministry of the local churches (James 5:14-16). It is impossible to reconcile this passage in James with the Charismatic 'faith-healing' of today. The way is clearly set out for the Christian who is sick: There is no advice to seek out a 'gifted' healer. Just a simple exhortation to 'call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord'. This conveys some significant information: for, either the spiritual gifts of healings were no longer in existence by the time that James' letter was written (c.AD.60), or the original Charismatic gifts of healings were solely for the authentication of the Gospel rather than a form of medical treatment. Whichever of these is the case, the present practice of faith-healing is not in the least consistent with the explicit teaching on healing in James 5, which must surely be the 'control text' to which we must turn for instruction in this pressing pastoral area.
Also in this passage in James's letter, we find the verse "And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up" (Jas.5:15). This is understood by many in the Charismatic Movement to mean that if a person who is praying for one who is sick has absolute certainty that the invalid will be healed, then it will definitely happen -- the Lord will definitely raise him up. This is yet another example of plucking a solitary verse out of its Biblical context and forcing it to support a theory. In this instance, the theory is that it is God's will that everyone should never be ill. However, this is a most dangerous theory, for the following reasons. Since it is patently obvious that not every sick person prayed for (even by them) is healed, then for those who hold this theory, this must mean one of two things: either 1)the person praying did not have enough faith, or 2) the Lord has been outsmarted by Satan. Whichever one you go for, the precious name of God is besmirched, for the first implies that healing is of human origin, commensurate with the amount of faith exercised by the person praying; while the second implies that God is not the Lord of creation. What these people fail to recognise is that the efficacy of any prayer must always be seen in the light of the 'control text' in John's first letter, which says: "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us" (1 Jn.5:14).
This does not mean that we can, or must, infallibly know God's will every time we pray for someone or something. Children ask their human parents for all sorts of things that they are unable to provide, but they could not have known that before they asked. It is the same with God and His spiritual children. God answers prayer in one of three ways: 'Yes', 'No', or 'Not yet'. One of the primary purposes of prayer is to teach us to be dependent on the will of God for all things, not that we can manipulate God into providing anything we desire. To claim that all we have to do to make a prayer work is to strongly believe that it will work is a totally carnal -- nay, fundamentally magical -- concept (see separate paper on Visualization). Furthermore, no less an authority than the Lord Jesus taught His disciples to pray to God with the words, "Thy will be done" (Matt.6:10). And when He was Himself plunged into anguish in the Garden of Gethsemene, and pleaded with His Father to let this cup pass from Him, He was careful to add those all-important words, 'yet not as I will, but as You will' (Matt.26:39).
(See When We Don’t Know How To Pray and Visualization)
So the "prayer of faith", for these visualisers, does not mean resting on the Lord to do whatever He sees fit with regard to our humble petitions. Instead, it means making God into a "Genie of the Lamp" who exists to do our bidding.
Because the Gifts of Healings were given for a sign that the promised Messiah had come and that He was God manifested in the flesh who had power to forgive sins, they were only applicable to the church in the Apostolic era. But the sign-healings of Jesus, the Apostles, and those empowered by them are just as much for our benefit as they were for the people alive at the time. So, when the N.T. canon was complete, all the 'signs' necessary for the authentication of the Messiah throughout the remainder of the age had been recorded in the Scriptures. Once the churches had been established throughout the world, they provided the proper place for an ongoing healing ministry.
InPlainSite.org Note: Many cessationists say that the evidence demands the view that the New Testament prophetic gift ceased its operation very early in the history of the church. That although no one single argument alone demonstrates this, the combined weight of the total evidence decisively points to this conclusion. On the other hand the flamboyant claims of the Charismatics are beyond tolerance and have succeeded in leading Christians to seek the ‘gifts’ rather than the ‘Giver’ and has probably already done untold harm to the people of God. Is God still speaking to His church through direct revelation? Is the office of prophet still operational in the body of Christ today? Are miracles still occurring in the church? See Section on Cessationism
A CHALLENGE TO ALL "HEALERS"
Let it be noted here how vastly different are the immediate, instantaneous, organic healings of the Lord Jesus and His Apostles when compared with the psychosomatic, shamanistic, suggestion-based 'healings' being practised by so many in the Charismatic-Pentecostal churches today. I here put out a challenge to all those who lay claim to a personal ongoing 'healing ministry' today: Don't just tarry in your tent meeting waiting for all those poor people to line up in front of you. Instead, go out into the casualty departments of your local hospitals on a Saturday night and bring instantaneous organic healing to the battered and broken victims of the brawls and accidents that present themselves there for treatment. Then nip up to the surgical wards and lay your hands on the amputees, everything-ectomies and hopeless cases, so that their truncated limbs and diseased entrails will be restored to them. When those places have been emptied, find your local Institute for the Blind and bring some colour into their lives for the first time with your remarkable healing powers. Then buzz over to offices of the Spastics Society and get them to take you out to their many training centres, where you can restore those withered limbs on the spot. When all the world's calipers and crutches have been thrown on the scrapheap, if you still want to show you have a 'proven' ministry, find some local government Special Schools and make that Down's Syndrome melt away from those pleading little faces. And if you still have any energy for healing left, take a taxi across to the local mortuary and bring some of its frigid occupants out with you for a breath of fresh air and a good meal. While we're on the subject, isn't it about time you discarded those eye-glasses? It is amazing how many people who claim to be healers -- and who claim that full health is a right for all Christians -- happen also to wear spectacles! Now there's a challenge: Healer... heal thyself!
If you lay claim to a 'healing ministry', I challenge you to do all these things today. Why wait? For those are the kinds of healings which the Lord Jesus and the Apostles carried out in the course of their ministry (e.g., Lk.22:50-51; Mk.3:1-5; Lk.8:43-44; Jn.9:1-11; 11:43-44). Not only did they have a 100% success-rate, but nothing was too difficult for them to tackle. If you believe you should be healing just like Jesus, then anything less than the same success-rate and instantaneity of His healing is a complete sham. By all means, call yourself a 'faith healer' or even a witch or a Shaman, but do not make the false claim that you are doing the works of Jesus. If you want to 'claim your healing', then claim those that have been recorded in the New Testament. THEY are the healings which have been given to us as a sign to point the way to Jesus, the Forgiver of Sin, which is the true healing.
When the famous Council of Nicea was held in AD 325, it was attended by some three-hundred bishops from around the empire. Accounts of this gathering state that a great many of the delegates were crippled, often without limbs, and came limping in on crutches, having suffered physical abuses in the persecutions. But there was no healing service. Just a quiet faith in Jesus Christ and an acceptance of their sufferings for the Lord. They knew the great secret that the true healing is that of the soul. They knew the great truth that "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor.4:17).
It is a sobering thought that there will be many professing Christians in the Day of Judgement who will 'knock on the door of heaven' and say to Jesus: "Lord, Lord, have we not...done many wonders in Your name?" But He will declare to them, "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" (Matt.7:21-23).
FOOTNOTES
[1] The translation "incurably sick" is a literal rendering of the Hebrew in Jer.17:9. (As we see, for example, in the New International Version). In the Authorised Version, this is translated with a dynamic equivalent as "desperately wicked", which -- although not a literal word-for-word translation -- is certainly what the Hebrew is really getting at.
[2] Because the Atonement on the Cross is the central point of all history, both prospectively and retrospectively, anything which is restored can be said to be the result of Jesus's atonement. For the only reason life continued at all in the wake of the Fall was so that God's purpose could be accomplished in Christ and through the Church!
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