Is Healing Reserved for a Few Christians or Should All Practice It?

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VI of our series on Healing and Comforting

Healing is unique among all the Works of Mercy in that it is the only one that shows up in Paul’s list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11:

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

So is healing a spiritual gift given just to some Christians but not to others? Or is it a Work of Mercy commended for all Christians? 

Jesus seems to point to the latter understanding in Matthew 10:8, where he says to all of his assembled disciples:

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.

Trying to find the answer to this question has been going on throughout church history. Some Christians have said that healing gifts were given only to the apostles or the early church. Others have said that such gifts remain operative today in the specialized ministry of a few select healers (it seems they all go on to become famous TV evangelists!). Still others say that all Christians should be able to heal but can’t because they lack faith.

But a review of the breadth of Scripture and the witness of church history indicates that Christianity has never understood healing to be restricted to miraculous moments or manifestations. Sometimes God casts out illness through healing gifts, as Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 12. But sometimes God blesses some of the most mundane means.

Even washing soiled bedsheets qualifies.

Bottom line: healing is something all Christians do as a way of mirroring into the world the healing love we personally received from God. The method or means may vary (sometimes miraculous, sometimes mundane), but the call is consistent: All Christians heal because God heals all Christians.

If that phrase surprises you, remember this: salvation is the fundamental healing we experience, and it is common to all Christians. As we discovered last week, to the Lord, sin, death, and illness are all connected at the root.  We’ll talk more about that next week, but for now share your thoughts:

Is healing a specific gift given only to a few Christians or a Work of Mercy and, therefore, something all Christians should be engaged in?

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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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