Throughout the gospels Jesus says things like “your faith has made you well” and even in the Old Testament, we have prophetic words about Jesus, like Isaiah 53 which says “He would wounded for our transgressions… by his stripes we are healed…” Do passages like this teach a connection between our faith in what Jesus has done for us in salvation to our physical health?
In this week’s episode of Ask, I respond to a personal question about the relationship between saving faith and physical healing.
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G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: Will God heal me if I have enough faith?
Throughout the gospels Jesus says things like ‘your faith has made you well’ and even in the Old Testament, we have prophetic words about Jesus, like Isaiah 53 which says “He was wounded for our transgressions… by his stripes we are healed…” Do passages like this teach a connection between our faith in what Jesus has done for us in salvation to our physical health?
Well, let me say straight away that I can feel the pastoral weight of this question; it’s not just a theological question, and that’s why it’s difficult to give a general, public answer – because personal questions deserve a personal response. But there are three things I’d like to say by way of response.
First, the sufferings, sickness and injuries we experience are ultimately symptoms of living in a broken creation.
In Romans 8 Paul says that all creation is groaning – which harkens back to the creation account in Genesis, specifically chapter 3 and the first human sin of Adam and Eve. Now, there’s different ways people have sought to understand the idea of ‘sin entering the world,’ but here’s how I like to think of it: sin it’s so much a ‘thing’ with substance all of its own; sin is principally defiance against God – His being and His creation. So when we say ‘sin entered the world and that’s why we get sick and eventually die,’ I don’t think we should, you know, have in our heads something like a ‘black mist called sin that came forth into the world and now permeates all things affecting you, me, and everything around us…’ No, sin is not extraneous to humanity like the dark side of the Star Wars force, it is simply the name we give to describe life which deviates from God and the order, pattern and structure of His creation.
Side note: the Greek word for evil, ponerous, actually implies a malignancy, something that is corrupting a good and healthy state of being. And if God is life and if, in the beginning, the order, structure and pattern of creation was all “good”… then anything which deviates from or unrelated to God is non-life – death – and anything which goes against the order, structure and pattern of creation is not-good, giving rise to realities like, sickness and suffering.
So right away this theology of sin should calibrate our thinking on the question of ‘why’ we suffer and get sick. There may be obvious, particular moral reasons why someone gets sick – perhaps a lifestyle choice or personal decision – but there may also be no evident reason at all in which case the sickness may not be a moral consequence but a natural consequence of living in a fallen, broken, groaning creation… like the Tower in Siloam which fell and killed some people back in Jesus’ day, when asked ‘why did that happen to those people?’ Jesus explains in Luke 13 that it wasn’t necessarily because of their faith… it was simply a consequence of living in a sin wrecked world. That’s why Jesus takes the opportunity to remind the people of the need to get right with God… physical sickness, physical death… these remind us in a very tangible way of our inherent need for relationship with God.
A second thing to say is, God is more interested in our spiritual heal than our physical health.
It is a fact of scripture that there is not a single promise that Christians will be healthy or wealthy in this life.
The idea that God will punish the wicked with diseases to which the virtuous will be immune exists in many religions, but it is NOT Christian. To the contrary, the NT teaches time and time again that Christians will suffer. The disciples suffered and died… Jesus suffered and died… and the last time I checked the death rate was still one per person.
There are many instances of fantastic miracles recorded throughout the life of Jesus in the Gospels and the early church in the book of Acts. God can, has, and I believe continues to do miraculous healings of the sick around our globe. But when we look at the examples in Scripture, we see that there is a deeper purpose to the healings beyond the physical.
Take John 9 for example. There is a blind man and the disciples ask Jesus ‘who sinned that this man would be born blind? Him or his parents?’ Jesus said amazingly, neither… it was so that the works of God may be displayed in his life and, as we know, Jesus healed the blind man. Jesus was saying every moment of that blind man’s life was MEANINGFUL because it is working with purpose within the providence of God. That’s’ not to say God is the direct cause of all of the sickness and suffering, but it is to say that God can bring beauty from the ashes; that no sickness or suffering is ever in vain or wasted because it is pregnant with purpose.
Perhaps more pointedly, is another example in the gospel of Mark chapter 1. Jesus is healing the masses from dawn to dusk, and he’s exhausted by the end of the day. The next day comes, he gets up early in the dark to pray. His disciples find him and say ‘hey, Jesus, everyone is looking for you’ – you know, all these sick people are just flowing in from all over the place to get healed… What Jesus says next is stunning… he says ‘let’s go to the next town that I may preach there also for that is why I have come…’ Wow…
You hear what Jesus is saying? Jesus is interested in physical healings but not for the sake of physical healings. There is a deeper significance here tied to the message Jesus came to preach… a message which gets to the spiritual root of the physical issues we face – that first issue of sin and a broken relationship with God.
And this second point really helps us understand those bible passages I read out earlier, about Jesus saying things like ‘your faith has made you well…’ James 5 says that a prayer of faith will save a sick person and raise them up. But the word for ‘save’ there in the Greek – sozo – is a salvation word, and the ‘raise up’ refers to the resurrection. THAT’s what this is talking about. You see, if I can say provocatively, God always – without exception – answers prayers of the faithful for healing… it may not be in the immediate timing we wish, it may not be till the time of resurrection, but it will be answered and faithfulness looks like resting in that salvation promise that we have in Jesus.
I mean, think about it: the same Jesus who healed the blind man in John 9 is the same Jesus who said if your eye causes you to sin gouge it out in Matthew 5… The same Jesus who healed a withered hand in Luke 6 is the same Jesus who said if your hand causes you to be led astray, cut it off in Matthew 5… This tells us about Christian priorities in the economy of God.
Third, sickness and suffering may be, indeed very often is, the means God uses to bring people to faith and to deepen their faith, trust and dependence on Him.
CS Lewis one wrote that sometimes you only look up when you’re on your back; God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world…
In other words – to zero in specifically on the point of ‘faith’ in this question – it is precisely in light of these kinds of “present sufferings”, as Paul calls them, that Christians are called to persist and endure in faith.
In some Christian circles today, there is the view that we only have only to ask God to heal us and, because God loves us, He will heal us straightaway. So healing is seen as a sort of ‘proof’ of a person’s faith and of God’s love in return.
This kind of transactional idea of faith for physical health and wealth is popular today, because it offers people a sense of control and reward when dealing with the unknown. But it is not Christian… it is a cancer to the good news of Jesus, going against so much of what the Bible has to say.
It is this kind of thinking that leads to blaming the victims of disease for their sickness or death.
It is this kind of thinking that takes our eternal treasures in heaven and locates them here on earth where moth and rust destroy.
It is this kind of thinking that views faith as a work meriting salvation instead of a response to the work of Christ in securing our salvation
our work in ‘being faithful’ instead of saving work of Jesus to the hopelessness of our own abilities in ‘doing more’
It is this kind of teaching that turns from the hope we have in Jesus to the hope we have in our physical health which gets old and goes to ground sooner or later.
When it comes to questions of faith, faith’s focus is key. Faith is like a cheque – the value is not in the piece of paper that notes the amount of money, the value is in the money at the bank that cheque points to… You see, Christians do not have faith in our faith because that shifts our focus onto ourselves. We have faith in Jesus… we look to Him, the author and perfector of our faith. Will God heal me if I have enough faith? Jesus says if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can do mighty things because it’s not about our abilities but God’s saving power.
Friends, we have to back up and realise God is not absent from our sickness, absent from our suffering… if we believe in God then faith comes in at the moment of realising he is sovereign over all of this… and faith comes also in the future expectation that Jesus Christ will always bring restoration and healing… That may be in this life, it may be in the life to come… either way, we have cause for praise and joy in the hope we have in Jesus… because the primary purpose of the Christian life is not healing from sickness and suffering, it is to know God… and often times, the journey to knowing God involves sickness and suffering because that is how we learn to lean in to a deeper faith and trust in Him to carry us through this life.
In the words of the apostle Paul: “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us…”
If you’re sick and suffering day, then can I encourage you to pray and seek God at this time, that he may reveal to you His purposes and mould you into his likeness through this trial. Don’t waste your sickness… don’t waste your suffering… allow God to shine through it for His glory holding onto the hope that there is a day coming when there will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more sickness, a day when Jesus Christ will himself wipe every tear from your eye.
