The One Who Heals Suffers the Most

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part V of our series on Healing and Comforting

Why doesn’t God heal everyone?  That’s the question we asked in our last post.  The answer is one part surprising and one part challenging: sometimes we bear the image of God best when we bear illness.

Paul calls this “sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings” in Philippians 3:10-11:

“…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”  (emphasis mine)

Healing will come, in this life or the next.

But we have to realize that healing is not the only way we are able to bear the image of God to the world.  Our illness and death can do that as well.

In God’s Kingdom, healing, illness, and death are a lot more closely connected than we think. The healer heals at great personal cost and risk in each of the three dimensions: physical (body), social (soul), and religious (spirit).

It is not coincidental that in the parable Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan and the wounded man, the Good Samaritan says (and this is made emphatic in the Greek), “I, not the man, will pay.”

Biblically, the healer always suffers the most.

As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ bears the illness and sin in himself. Society, religion, and the power of sickness and death were arrayed against Jesus—all sought to cast him out; none would host him.

So hear the proclamation of Isaiah 53:5! Christ freed us from our involuntary hosting of sin and illness and death…by hosting these enemies of humanity in himself, on the Cross:

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

How will you participate in this Work of Mercy differently, now?

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Why Doesn’t God Heal Everyone?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part IV of our series on Healing and Comforting

There’s some good news, according to our last post, about illness: it is always the platform for revealing the glory of God.  That’s what healing is all about, the restoration of God’s image in every part of the human body – spirit, soul, and body.

So why isn’t everyone healed, then?

If illness mars the image of God in us, and if God desires us to bear his image, then why do some illnesses remain?

Some are quick to claim a “lack of faith.” And clearly the Bible talks about that. You can see that in Mark 6:1-6 where, because of the unbelief of many, Jesus was unable to perform a “mighty work” though he did still heal some.  And you can see the effect of the presence of faith on healing, like in Mark 9:20-23, where Jesus heals a demon-possessed boy and proclaims that, “everything is possible for him who believes.”

But, just as discipleship involves submitting our whole selves to Jesus (and not just that which is “spiritual), so, too, does healing.  It’s not just about submitting our illnesses to Jesus.  What he starts in one part of us – whether body or spirit – he intends to bring to completion through our whole existence.

Healing is about submitting our whole lives to his care. It is about hospitality, remember?  It’s not about miracles.

But the Bible also portrays Jesus as not healing when he could. Check out Mark 1:32-39.  Here, after a full day of healing and ministry, Jesus leaves one town (where “everyone” was looking for him) and goes to another.  You can picture the line of patients Jesus has waiting for him there!  But Jesus leaves.   He is not trying to heal everyone in town but rather to raise up a witness for himself in every town.

Surely today, after two thousand years of the Christian faith growing and penetrating the world’s cultures, he has enough ambassadors that he could heal everyone if he wanted to – or at least everyone who had faith – right?

The apostle Paul shows that even Jesus’ lack of healing is still about human beings bearing his image:

“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10, emphasis mine)

The Bible never says what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was. It may not have even been a bodily illness—we just don’t know. But the principle Paul lays out here applies to bodily illness, too: We humans have an amazing ability to take blessings of God—like health—and use them as means of sinful self-sufficiency and ignoring God.

So sometimes we bear the image of God by bearing illness, either for a time or permanently, so that we can show the world – and ourselves – that his grace is sufficient, his strength made perfect able to keep us from falling.

Does this change how you feel about an illness of yours or someone close to you?  How might you be used by God to help someone bear God’s image by bearing illness?

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Illness: the Platform for Revealing the Glory of God

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part III of our series on Healing and Comforting

Healing and comforting have everything to do with hospitality.  That’s what we learned in our first post on this series. In the second, we discovered that sickness, disease, and ultimately death are the result of humans hosting (being hospitable to) what we were never intended to: sin. And because Christ’s resurrection signals the eviction of sin and death, the primary category for healing is not miracle, it’s sign – pointing towards hospitality set right. 

So with these thoughts in mind, let’s return to the story we started with in John 9:1-7. It begins with the disciples asking Jesus a question: Is this man blind because of his own sin or that of his parents?

It’s a fair question, because as we’ve talked about so far, illness is joined at the hip to sin. And certainly some illnesses are caused directly by our own sins, whether those be smoking or drinking or overeating.

But interestingly, absent from the Bible is a division of illness into ones we’re directly responsible for through our own sin and ones that we host as a result of Adam’s original sin. And this is consistent with how God views sin, too: Humans go to hell for sin -separation from God – whether it’s original sin from Adam or our own name brand sin that we pile on top of what we’ve inherited. So differentiating between the two is pointless, whether we’re talking about being healed of sin or illness.

Further, as Jesus makes clear, illness is not intended to point toward sin and death but rather to the power and presence of God, to which it must ultimately yield.

In the case of the man born blind, Jesus says, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

And think of Jesus’ similar words in John 11:1-4 when he heard that his friend Lazarus was ill:

“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Illness is always the platform for the revealing of the glory of God, the restoration of God’s image in every part of the human being—spirit, soul, and body.

That’s what the Work of Mercy of healing is all about.  I know what you’re wondering: if that’s true, then why are some healed and others not?

Tune into our next post and find out!

How might thinking of healing as a sign, rather than a miracle, change the way we pray for those who are sick (including ourselves)?

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