I’ll never forget the phone call I received from a friend at church. A week earlier, she had privately told me about a mass that doctors had discovered. Considering me a “prayer warrior”, she asked me to pray for her healing. I did not hesitate to pray a zealous prayer over her that day, asking God to dissolve that mass and restore her to health. Fast forward back to the phone call. With child-like excitement in her voice, she relayed the good news. A second MRI showed that the mass had disappeared. This moment was an exciting reminder that God can and still does heal. I quickly added this testimony to my special “answered prayer” list, along with a handful of other instances where I was used by God to pray for and receive an apparent miraculous healing.
Healing is an often debated subject in evangelicalism. The debate is not typically over the possibility of divine healing, but over the level of expectation and entitlement thereof. Should all Christians expect healing? Is healing a benefit secured by the atonement? Should we always “claim” to receive it? When I was involved in the Word of Faith movement, I had significantly different answers to these questions than I do now. Thankfully, God used much providence, including an extreme church, a good friend, and an odd prayer “decree” to force me to re-evaluate, re-study, and re-discover my theology. This article, along with my other Rediscovery articles, is a fruit of that rediscovery. It will address the purpose of healing in the New Testament narrative, how healing relates to the atonement, and how it relates to faith and prayer.
Healing in the New Testament Narratives
When we turn to the pages of the Gospels, we see that miraculous healings were a primary validator of the Messianic identity of Jesus Christ. Shortly after being vindicated by the Father, and anointed by the Spirit as the Messiah (i.e. “Anointed One”) at His baptism (Mt 3) , He proclaimed this identity to the Jewish leaders by quoting from Isaiah 61:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed
(Luk 4:18 ESV)
He then began a vibrant, Spirit-anointed healing ministry. Paul describes this ministry, also suggesting that it fulfills Isaiah 61:
“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him”
(Acts 10:38, ESV)
When John the Baptist sent some disciples to question Jesus about His identity, He reiterated the above prophecy, combined with Isaiah 35, associating it with His healing ministry:
Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.
(Luk 7:22 ESV)
Jesus vigorously defended the testimonial nature of his healing miracles, pleading with both His enemies (Jn 5:36, 10:38) and His disciples (Jn 14:10-11) to believe in Him because of His “works”. His disciples later did the same (Acts 2:22, 10:38).
Though he healed many people in various localities (Mt 8:36, 9:35, Jn 21:25), he did not heal all individuals in every crowd that thronged him (Lk 8:45-46), nor did he have a prevalence of miracles in every city (Mt 13:58). In fact, Jesus’ comparison of His healing ministry to Elisha’s isolated healing of the Gentile Namaan suggests that His Jewish healings were sparse (Luke 4:27). However, the healing miracles He did perform were intentionally didactic and typological; illustrative of greater spiritual truths associated with His Messianic mission:
- The healing of lepers demonstrated His willingness to touch that which is unclean (Matt 8:1, Mk 1:40, Lu 5:12, Lu 17:1), pointing to His incarnation and empathy with the human condition.
- The healing of the paralytic demonstrated His willingness to forgive those who are helpless in their sinful condition (Matt 9:1, Mk 2:1, Lu 5:17).
- The healing of the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda taught a similar lesson, augmented with the necessity of repentance – “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (Jn. 5:1-14).
- The giving of sight to the blind man at Bethsaida (Mk 8:22), the two blind men (Matt 9:27), blind Bartimaeus (Matt 20:29; Mk 10:45; Lu 18:35), and the man born blind (Jn 9:1) all taught the necessity of divine illumination for salvation, which the deceived Jewish leaders lacked (Jn 9:39-41).
- Every demonic exorcism (Matt 8:28, 9:32, 17:14, ) was a statement of Jesus’ imminent victory over Satan, who had been holding people captive to sin (Mk 3:22-27).
- The healing of the man with the withered hand demonstrated Christ’s authority over the Sabbath, and freedom from bondage to man made traditions (Matt 12:9, Mk 3:1, Lu 6:6).
- The healing of the Centurion’s servant (Matt 8:5; Lu 7:2) and the daughter of the Canaanite woman (Matt 15:21; Mk 4:24) both demonstrated the universality of the Gospel and its reception by Gentiles of “great faith”, contrasted with its rejection by unbelieving Jews.
- The raising of the widow’s deceased son (Lu 7:11), Jairus’s deceased daughter (Matt 9:18; Mk 5:21; Lu 8:40), and Lazarus (Jn 11:11) all pointed to His power over death itself. He is the “Resurrection and the Life” (Jn 11:25).
From this list we see a picture of the Gospel. The Son of Man empathizes with sinful, unclean, depraved humans by descending to their economy and touching their wretched condition. He opens their spiritually blind eyes through the Gospel, freeing them from the bondage of Satan, enabling them to have great faith and be forgiven. He then defeats the power of death and secures our final inheritance – resurrection from the dead.
During the training of His disciples, Jesus gave them specific power and authorization to do similar healing miracles:
And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.
(Luk 9:1-2 ESV)
Since the gift of miracles is not given to everyone, we know that this authorization was limited in scope (1 Cor 12:29). It was also limited in duration, as the apostles were later told to wait for an endowment of power through the Pentecostal unleashing of the Holy Spirit (Lk 24:49); an unleashing that would later reignite and expand their miraculous ministry, enabling them to do even greater miracles than Jesus was doing (Jn 14:12). This would fulfill their commission:
Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table . . . he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation . . . these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
(Mar 16:14-18 ESV)
As anticipated, “they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs” (v20). They cast out demons (Acts 16:16-18), spoke in tongues (2:4), and picked up serpents unharmed (28:3-5). They laid hands on the sick and they recovered (Acts 3:7, 5:15-16, 8:7, 9:18, 34, 14:10, 20:10, 28:9-10). As Jesus promised, they did “greater” miracles than even He did; Primarily greater in power, because their miracles also included granting people with the gift of the recently dispatched Holy Spirit (Acts 8:17, 19:6).
The author of Hebrews confirms this foundational miracle-working ministry, attributing its efficacy to the gifts of the Spirit that God had sovereignly given to the apostles, and to a few other early disciples, either directly (e.g. Ananias) or through the laying on of the apostles’ hands (e.g. Stephen, Philip):
How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
(Heb 2:3-4 ESV)
The Gift of Healing Today
This brief panorama of the Messianic and Apostolic healing ministries begs the question: Do miraculous healings happen today? Most Christians would agree that God occasionally intervenes through the prayers of saints, either alongside or apart from medical intervention, to accomplish unexplainable bodily healing. But do they happen as normatively, as spectacularly, and as “on-demand” as in the inaugural era? An honest assessment of contemporary healing ministries would demand an answer of “no”. While there may be pockets of miracles reported by such organizations, they don’t seem to be as public, as powerful, or as pervasive as those in the apostolic era. We certainly don’t see withered hands growing out and dead people being raised on a daily basis. Many charismatics, specifically Word of Faith adherents, claim that this is a result of the church’s lack of faith, knowledge, and sanctity. On the other end of the spectrum, cessationsists argue that the supernatural gifts of faith, miracle-working, and healing have ceased due to God’s sovereign decree to reserve them for the inauguration of the church age. Open-but-cautious advocates, like myself, agree that these gifts were more prevalent with the inauguration of the church age, and that their genuine, contemporary manifestations are much more rare than what charismatics claim. However, we argue that their cessation cannot be proven Biblically (see my article “The Baptism and Gifts of the Spirit”).
Healing and the Atonement
Although the miraculous gift of healing is not as prevalent today, Word of Faith adherents claim that healing is provisioned through the atonement, and therefore available through prayer. Kenneth Hagin states,
“The same Bible that gives us John 3:16 also says, “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (Matt. 8:17). That same Bible says, “Surely he hath borne our griefs [Hebrew—sicknesses], and carried our sorrows [Hebrew—diseases]: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:4,5). And the same Bible says, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).” [1]
Hagin inextricably links our provision of healing to the famous Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 53:
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. (Isa 53:4-5 ESV)
Purportedly, the Hebrew word for “griefs”, ḥŏlî, refers to physical diseases and therefore physical diseases were born by Jesus on the cross in the same way that sins were, leading to our “wounds” being “healed”. However, this word is often used by both poets and prophets symbolically, referring to the sickness of specific sins (Eccl 6:2), and the symbolic spiritual decay of nations (Hos 5:13). Similarly, the word for “sorrows”, maḵ’ōḇ, is symbolically used by the prophets to describe the emotional anguish caused by the exile (Jer 30:15, 45:3, Lam 1:12, 18). Accordingly, Isaiah is providing imagery of a profound spiritual and national restoration that God promised His exiled people; elsewhere He tells them, “I will heal their backsliding” (Hos 14:4).
The New Testament upholds the primarily spiritual interpretation of this prophecy. Peter alludes to it in 1 Peter 2:24-25:
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
(1Pe 2:24-25 ESV)
Charismatic scholar J. Rodman Williams argues that the context in 1 Peter 2 is spiritual, not physical:
The context of 1 Peter 2:24 relates only to sin, for the immediately preceding words are “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” [2]
Also, notice that Peter purposely adds the conjunction “for” between verses 24 and 25, in order to elaborate on the phrase “you have been healed”. The elaboration depicts a relational healing – “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” Therefore I totally agree with Williams that physical healing is nowhere suggested in this passage.
The other reference to Isaiah 53:4 is in Matthew 8:16-17:
That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”
(Mat 8:16-17 ESV)
Here Matthew applies Isaiah 53:4 to the healing ministry of Jesus. While this is evidence that the prophecy is not limited to the spiritual realm, it must not be admitted as evidence related to the atonement. Jesus was alive and well here; not on the cross suffering in agony; not on the brink of death. As Rodman exclaims, “it is primarily through the life [not death] of Christ that healing occurred” [3]. Jesus was actively bearing the sicknesses of His people in His life, not His death. This would be akin to a philanthropist bearing the burdens of a poor tribe by visiting and helping them; not substitutionally or vicariously, but sympathetically. By being among the people, witnessing their struggles, and spending hours upon hours helping them, Jesus was feeling the weight of their infirmities. Surely this ministerial suffering contributes to the humiliation depicted by the suffering servant prophecy. Paul later mentions a similar burden bearing aspect of his own ministry (2 Cor 11:28).
While the evidence is highly lacking that the atonement offers a guaranteed current provision of sickness-free, pain-free, sorrow-free living, I propose that these things are in the atonement as a future provision. RC Sproul offers this middle ground solution:
Whether healing is in the atonement is clear in terms of Isaiah 53: it is. But when that healing takes place is a matter of great debate. There are many people who claim this passage to mean that because the atonement has already been rendered by Christ and He’s offered that healing, then we should not, as Christians, ever suffer any kind of affliction or sickness. That is on a collision course with everything the New Testament teaches about the suffering of the saints in this life, concerning both disease and affliction, prior to glory. When we get to glory, it will be the end of all disease, all illness, and all death, which is one of the consequences of the perfect atonement that Jesus made. [4]
As Sproul highlights, the atonement has purchased our salvation, which is a past, present and future reality. There is a future “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:5), which will result in glorified immortal bodies that are free from sickness, pain and sorrow. Surely this “salvation” was purchased on the cross. I would also argue that preliminary foretastes of this future glorification, manifested through the gift of healing, were also indirectly secured by the atonement; for Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension were prerequisites to the commissioning of the Spiritual Gift-Giver (Jn 16:7) [5].
The Prayer of Faith
How does faith relate to healing today? I was previously part of the Word of Faith movement, which claims that, with enough faith, anyone can and should be be healed today. A common passage they use to advocate this concept is James 5:14:
Is anyone among you sick? 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 will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
(Jas 5:14-16 ESV)
At first reading, this appears to be a ticket to guaranteed healing. Kenneth W. Hagin states:
This passage goes on to tell us what to do if anyone is sick, which means we aren’t to leave them sick in that condition, thinking God is trying to teach them something. This verse instructs us to call for the elders of the church, anoint them with oil, and pray the prayer of faith; then the Lord will raise them healed and whole! It’s God’s nature to heal. In other words, His will is healing. We need to remember that Satan is the author of sickness and disease. God is the author of divine healing and health! [6]
Does James 5 support Hagin’s claims? We must clarify some important aspects in this passage to understand its scope.
The Elders
Notice that James exhorts critically ill people to seek out the elders for prayer. If James was martyred in 62AD, this letter was written before then, and possibly as early as 40AD; within a decade of Christ’s commissioning of the apostles. Accordingly, this would have been a generation of elders commissioned and empowered (through laying on of hands) by the original apostles; themselves being the first elders (2 John 1). As we see in Acts, Apostolic commissioning and empowerment nearly always included the transfer of spectacular gifts of the Spirit, granted for the foundational ministry of the church (Acts 6:6,8; 8:17-19; 19:6). Paul told Timothy,
Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.
(1Ti 4:14 ESV)
This Apostolic environment guaranteed that the church James addressed had elders who possessed the miraculous gift of faith; who could pray a genuine “prayer of [the gift of] faith”. Accordingly, an incapacitated ill believer could call for the elders, and their prayer would miraculously raise her up. The prescription of anointing oil adds further credence to this view, as such a practice was used by the original twelve sanctioned miracle workers:
And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. … And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.
(Mark 6:7,13; ESV)
James’ allusion to Elijah gives even further credence to my proposal. Elijah was a supernaturally endowed prophet and miracle-worker in Israel. His gift of faith was exercised when the specific “word of the Lord” came to him, telling him exactly when the rain would stop (1 Ki 17:2, 5) and when it would start again (1 Ki 18:1). He definitively knew God’s will in that specific circumstance. Additionally, his gift of miracle-working was not a universal provision to all Israelites, as he later transferred it to a select individual – Elisha (1 Ki 19:19). Hence, the comparison of Elijah’s nature to “ours” may be a comparison to that of the elders. Such a reference would necessitate a 1st person plural reference if James was including himself as an elder.
Does James’ command to pray for “one another” in 5:16 contradict his prior prescription for the “elders” to do the praying? Not at all. The corporate phrase “one another” doesn’t nullify the prescribed hierarchy of prayer any more than submitting to “one another” in Ephesians 5:21 nullifies the hierarchy of submission in relationships described thereafter (e.g. husband-wife, parent-child, master-servant). In 5:16, James is still describing the elders’ prayer for the sick person, adding the importance of the confession of sin; as there are some instances where sickness is caused by sin, either as a natural consequence (1 Cor 11:30), an indirect satanic preventative (2 Cor 12:7), or a direct divine infliction (Acts 12:20-23). The ultimate cause of all sickness is sin — the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve. Therefore, all sickness should invoke a humble reminder of the devastating effects of personal, corporate, and historical sin.
Whose Faith?
Notice the simplicity of the promise: “The Lord will raise him up.” The account is describing a critically ill person who can’t even stand up. It reminds me of Peter’s command to the lame man at the temple: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6). The invalid simply stood up and walked. It did not take mountain moving faith on the recipient’s part, because the healer was the one with the gift of faith. One recipient of such a miracle admitted his lack of faith (Mk 9:24); Lazarus, being dead, had no faith (Jn 11:43); Others had varying levels of positive faith (Mk 5:34, 10:52; Lk 17:19, 18:42), rarely having “great faith” (Mt 15:28). But in every case, the recipient was healed because the gift of faith, in conjunction with the gift of miracles and healing, was on the giving side, not the receiving side. The recipient only needed a simple faith that the power of God was at work in the healer. Only in one rare case was the Master Healer unable to perform healings because of their surprising lack of faith in Him and His message (Mk 6:5-6). In one other rare case, His disciples failed to employ healing due to their lack of spiritual preparation (Mt 17:16, 19-20; Mk 9:28-29). However, this was before the unleashing of the Holy Spirit, Who would overcome their timidness and endow them with much more power than they had while riding with their proverbial “training wheels” (Lk 24:49, Acts 2ff).
My point is: James’ promise is literal and very real! His hearers were being guaranteed that if they went to an elder who possessed the gift of faith, they would be miraculously healed by the “prayer of faith”. They wouldn’t be carted out in the same wheel-chair they came in, and be told to keep confessing that they are healed to “manifest” the healing later; a practice very prevalent in healing meetings today. No, James promised a miracle here. Why are we not seeing this scripture fulfilled as much today? Because of a consistent lack of faith on the recipient’s part? I don’t believe so. I propose that it is because of God’s sovereign choice not to grant the miraculous gift of faith as pervasively as He did to the first century eldership.
Can the gift of faith still arise today? Of course. If and when it does, the church will know it, and it will receive undeniable healing miracles as James promises. Sick people won’t need mountain moving faith to see these miracles, as the gifted people will already have that faith. Recipients will only need enough faith to go and receive what God has sovereignly enabled through those that are gifted. The “prayer of faith” – their gift of faith plus a simple trust and willingness to be healed – will raise up the sick!
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End notes:
[1] Kenneth E Hagin – The Key to Scriptural Healing, Pg 10
[2] J. Rodman Williams. Renewal Theology: Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective. Page 690.
[3] Ibid, Page 690
[4] Transcript is from an Ask R.C. Live event with R.C. Sproul, found at https://www.ligonier.org/learn/qas/what-does-by-his-wounds-we-are-healed-mean
[5] I suggest a study of Bruce Ware’s multi-intention view of the atonement, which proposes various aspects to the atonement: Limited scope purpose, limitless scope purpose, bona fide offer purpose, just condemnation purpose, and cosmic triumph purpose. See https://www.epm.org/static/uploads/downloads/Extent_of_the_Atonement_by_Bruce_Ware.pdf
[6] Kenneth W. Hagin. God Wants You Well. August 6, 2018. https://events.rhema.org/god-wants-you-well/
The Middle Ground 