Should God always heal?

A number of years ago someone gave me a video of an English-based preacher speaking in Uganda.  This man stood before a small congregation and made an outrageous claim.  He said, ‘I have an anointing, and because I have this anointing I can heal you.  I don’t care whether its AIDS or TB, today you will be healed.’

Imagine those dear people putting their hope in him.  Think of those people who stopped taking their medication because of what he said, only to find their condition deteriorating.  I do believe God can, and does, heal today.  But I don’t believe that healing is something that can be presumed upon.  I believe that even the faithful get sick and die.

What is the relationship between sickness and sin? 

Sometimes people are quick to assume that the reason a person is ill is because of some unconfessed sin in their life.  I am not doubting that this can be the case.  In 1 Corinthians 11 the apostle Paul says that there were people getting ill and dying because they had a loveless and irreverent attitude towards the Lord’s Supper.  However, we must not make the mistake of assuming that every illness is the result of some specific sin.

The disciples made this mistake in John 9.  They approached Jesus with a blind man and asked: ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’  Jesus replies that his blindness was not the result of either his or his parent’s sin.  Similarly, at the end of 1 Timothy, Paul tells his young disciple Timothy to ‘stop drinking only water and take some wine for your stomach’ (1 Timothy 5:23).  If Timothy’s stomach problems were caused by unconfessed sin in his life, then Paul would have simply told him to repent.  The whole book of Job deals with the issue of the fact that bad things happen to faithful Christians.

Can we always expect healing? 

More than once, I have witnessed people claim that an ill person would be made well, only to see that ill person die shortly afterwards.  Why weren’t they healed?  Was there something wrong with their faith?  It is interesting that some people who pray for the healing of others will blame the sick person if they don’t get well, rather than assuming that there may be something deficient in their own faith (see Mark 9:14-29).

Contrary to what these people think, the New Testament does not present us with a picture of everyone who was prayed for being healed.  Surely Paul prayed for Timothy’s stomach before he told him to take some wine for his illness.  Paul had to leave Trophimus behind in Miletus because he was sick (2 Timothy 4:20).  Surely Paul prayed for him too.  Indeed, in 2 Corinthians 12 the apostle Paul pleads with the Lord three times that his thorn in the flesh (whatever that was) would be removed.  However, the Lord had a purpose for the thorn and replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (verse 9).  The Lord didn’t remove the thorn but did give him the grace to sustain him and worked out his purpose through Paul’s suffering. 

In the Old Testament, the story of Elisha is very interesting.  Elisha had a significant healing ministry, but then we read that that he got ill and died (2 Kings 13).  He healed others, but a time came for him to get ill and die.    

The mistake of thinking that the prayer of faith will always heal people has lead to needless suffering amongst those who already enduring the pain of watching a love one struggle with terminal illness.  In the first church I worked with, there was a fine Christian man who was dying of a brain-tumour.  The pain his wife was enduring was made worse by well-meaning people promising he would be healed if they prayed with enough faith.

But what about all those promises about the prayer of faith?

For example, in Mark 11 Jesus declares to the disciples, ‘Have faith in God . . . I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain “Go through yourself into the sea” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.  Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’ 

I am glad that Jesus healed in situations where faith was far from perfect.  Where our faith seems weak we can pray those great words, ‘I believe, help me in my unbelief’ (Mark 9:24).  But what is going wrong when we pray in faith and a person is not healed?  Why was Timothy not healed of his stomach problems?  Why was Theophimus not healed of his illness?  Why did Elisha die of his illness?  Why did God refuse to remove the thorn from Paul’s flesh?

Jesus’ teaching on the prayer of faith is meant to remind us that God delights ‘to give good gifts to those who ask him’ (Matthew 7:11).  We should not think that he is reluctant to respond.  Jesus is also teaching that we should show confidence in God’s ability to do anything we ask.  However, I think that he assumes what is taught elsewhere: that we subject all our prayers to the will of God (e.g. 1 John 5:14).  Later in Mark’s gospel we see this attitude on the lips of Jesus when he prays, ‘Father, all things are possible with you … Yet not what I will, but what you will’ (Mark 14:36).  Sometimes God’s will is to bring healing for his people as he brings them home through the valley of death.

Am I just dampening your enthusiasm for healing?

I hope not.  That is not my intention.  I actually believe that praying for healing should be a vital part of the life of any church.  James pictures a person calling the elders of the church to pray with them.  I have been a part of a team that was gathered by a church to pray for a particular healing, and it would appear that God responded to that prayer by healing them.

We have the gifts of healing in 1 Corinthians 12.  At certain times God uses particular people as an instrument of bringing his healing.  Notice the plural—it is not ‘the gift of healing’ but ‘gifts of healing.’  That fact the Apostle Paul of ‘gifts’ rather than ‘the gift’ seems to suggest that each healing occasion is the result of a gift being given for that particular situation.  The author Michael Green writes of a man he knows who prayed and laid hands on someone who had been told that they must spend the rest of their life in bed, immediately that person got up and was instantly and permanently healed.  But that man who was only used in that way on that one occasion.

I love the attitude of one person with a notable ministry in this area.  He acknowledged that God does not always heal the way would want him to.  But he said, ‘I’d rather pray with a hundred people and see one healed, than pray with no-one and see none healed.’

Conclusion – ‘Now and not yet’

Finally, some people claim healing on the basis of Isaiah's prophecy that 'he took up our infirmities and carried our diseases' (Isaiah 53:4 and Matthew 8:17).  They say that 'there is healing in the atonement'.  That is true.  The cross is the source of all the blessings we experience as followers of Christ.  But not all the blessings secured by Calvary come to us now.  For example, no-one in their right mind would claim to have their resurrection body already!  God often heals in this life, but we have to wait until the New Heaven and the New Earth for that time when there will be no more sickness for Christ's people (Revelation 21:1-4).

Don’t believe anyone who says that it is God’s will that his people should not suffer illness.  Freedom from illness and an end to suffering is a ‘not yet’ for the Christian.  We experience sickness and death in this life.  In his mercy God often does amazing things, we shouldn’t ignore the role of healing in the Christian life, but we should see these only as a foretaste of what is to come.        

Thank God for healing in whatever form it comes!  Pray with faith.  Be open to the fact that God will sometimes use particular people in certain situations as a channel of his healing mercy.  But these are first-fruits of the healing to come, when we will be given an imperishable body that will never perish or spoil.