A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Jack Mills is pastor of Fairview Church, Vancouver.
The Church’s ministry of healing has always been a subject of much interest to most Christians, yet is often one of the least understood, and at times, abused ministries. There have been and are those who have neglected it completely, relegating it to the dim and distant past; and there have been, and still are those who have taken it up and sought to exercise it with much more fervour than light – especially scriptural light!
The elders of our congregation have given much thought to this subject … and as a result, two things have emerged. First, the decision to make themselves available to anyone in the congregation who would follow the words of the Apostle James, and call upon the elders when they are sick (James 5:14); and second, because the matter is of such importance, yet generally not as understood as it ought to be, it was felt that a series of sermons be preached on healing. I am by no means an authority on it, but am myself trying to know God’s will for me, and for our congregation in these matters. I ask the reader to prayerfully consider what is written here, and that you do so with a completely open mind. Try, if you can, to push aside any preconceived ideas you may have and ask God to illumine your soul and mind. And seek to overcome any fears you may have or have had in the past on this matter.
Let me begin with the question, “What should be the place of healing in the contemporary church?” On the one hand, there are those who feel that it has no place in today’s church – that the ministry and the spiritual gifts of healing were given to the apostolic age for the express purpose of launching the Christian faith upon the world, a kind of evangelistic “opening special”, but that such a ministry and such gifts are no longer valid today. This is a sincerely held view by many in the Church, and especially within the Reformed tradition, of which we are a part. On the other hand, there are many Christians, indeed whole denominations, who greatly emphasize healing ministries and who claim quite unequivocally that they have the spiritual gifts of healing in abundance
within their ranks; they often hold mass revivalist, healing services and say that it is God’s will that everyone should be physically, as well as spiritually, whole. Although this is not the stance of the Reformed churches, generally speaking, there are many within our various denominations who would accept such a position. So the question is, should we be witnessing today the kind of events that were undoubtedly the norm during Christ’s earthly ministry and in apostolic times, or should we be looking for something very different?
What does the Bible say is God’s will regarding healing? First and negatively, all non-medical or non-material healing does not necessarily come from God, and we have Jesus’ words for saying this. “For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect. . (Mt. 24:24), and Paul echoes this same thought in 2 Thess. 2:9, “The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders.” So, we have to be careful.
But is it God’s intention that everyone should be healthy? Can it be claimed that just as it was His desire that people should not sin, so it was His intention that they have perfect physical health? Our answers to these questions will largely determine our approach to the subject of healing in the church.
Some Christians feel that the greatest barrier to the faith of a believer who would seek healing is the oft-repeated qualifying phrase in prayer, “if it be Your will.” These Christians, strong in their own faith, maintain that it is God’s will that everyone should be completely whole, physically as well as spiritually, and to use such a phrase is to cast doubt upon the divine will to heal. Christians can pray in complete confidence, believing that it is always God’s will to restore to full health. And certainly as we look at the New Testament records we can see how Jesus healed every sick person who ever came to him. I know of no recorded instance where he refused to make someone well. We read, for example in Mt. 4:23-24, that Jesus was in Galilee, in and out of the synagogue preaching the good news of the Kingdom and “healing every disease and sickness among the people.” The news about him spread and “all over Syria people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, the epileptics and the paralytics and he healed them.”
“I tell you the truth … anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.”
Even when things were getting hot for our Lord and he had to withdraw from public life to some extent, great crowds still sought him out and “many followed him, and he healed all their sick” (Mt. 12:15b). Even those who only managed to touch his clothes were restored (Mt. 14:35, 36; Mark 6:54-56). Luke records similar stories, as in 4:40 . .. an interesting testimony coming from a medical practitioner! If we are to take Jesus only, as our example (and do we need anyone else?) then there is no doubt about it, we have strong precedent here for the thought that God wills health for everyone.
But, we ask, was this Jesus’ prerogative only? After all, he was the Son of God and so we ought not to be surprised that he could and did heal so many. But a closer scrutiny of the Gospels shows us that his disciples were in on the act also. Jesus commissioned them to do the same thing. In Mt. 10:1, we read that he “gave them authority to drive out evil (unclean) spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.” Even more striking, in v.8, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out many demons . ..”. And Mark records (in 6:13), “They (the disciples) drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.” This healing was often linked with the preaching of the Word, as Luke points out in a number of places. So, obviously this healing ministry was exercised by Jesus and his disciples.
But did it end there? Well, no! In Acts we see how Peter and John, Paul and the other Apostles exercised a healing ministry, after Jesus had ascended to the Father and the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Church at Pentecost. In Chapter 3 we have the story of the crippled beggar sitting at the Beautiful Gate outside the Temple in Jerusalem, and in Chapter 5, Luke tells us that “the Apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people” (v.12) while he also records in Chapter 19 that “God did extraordinary miracles through Paul. Handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them” (vv. 11 & 12). Often it seems, people brought their loved ones out into the street, laid them on beds and mats, awaiting the passing of the Apostles so that their shadows might effect a cure, (cf. Acts 5). It was obviously a ministry which Jesus passed on to the early apostles and disciples, but was it a temporary phase to mark the beginning of the Christian Church?
There are other scriptures which suggest this was not the case, prominent among them being Paul’s words to the Corinthian Christians regarding the gracious extension from God through the Holy Spirit of certain gifts to be used by the Church for the upbuilding of the Christian community. Prominent among these were gifts of healing which significantly are distinguished apart from workers of miracles (1 Cor. 12:7-11).
Then too, there were those words of Jesus to his disciples in the Upper Room and just before his crucifixion in which he said an amazing thing, namely, that his miracles were only a foretaste of what they would be able to do. “I tell you the truth,” he said to them, “anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). In these words our Lord is telling the disciples that they will have even greater opportunity to witness to and proclaim the Good News than he has had because of the restrictions of his human nature. And since his own ministry had been accompanied by signs and wonders, so too would theirs be thus identified, even as Mark describes it in his Gospel (Mark 16:20). Some people may have difficulty with this latter remark based on the final verses of Mark’s Gospel because in all probability the Apostle did not write them; but even if they are a later addition by others, the sentiments of the verses are so much in harmony with the general tenor of the rest of the Gospel (and indeed with the other three gospels) that I have no problem whatever in accepting the spirit of the message.
The Apostle James picks up the same idea, and sets out the procedure for the Church to follow when one of their number is ill. The sick person is encouraged to call for the elders of the Church (NB, not the apostles) and the elders are to respond by meeting with that person, pray over him or her and anoint with oil in the name of the Lord; and, claims James, the prayer of faith will cure the sick and will result in any sin on his or her part being forgiven (5:14-15). So here James is suggesting that the elders have a place in this ministry and, by implication, that this should be the norm in any Christian community rather than some kind of unusual experience in the Church.
“… James is suggesting that the elders have a place in this ministry and … that this should be the norm in any Christian community …”
All of this from the New Testament seems to indicate without any shadow of doubt that God does will that His people be whole, physically as well as spiritually, and that often spiritual (supernatural) means are available to the Church to be readily used in healing ministries.
But is this all that has to be said on the matter? Can we stop at this point? I don’t think so. On occasion, it seems the Lord was anxious to get away from the huge crowds that followed him wherever he went, for example inMark3:9-10. On that occasion there were lots of people seeking to be healed, but we read, “Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him.” Here we have a situation where our Lord did not heal everyone who came to him. Why? Because his preaching of the Word was the raison d’etre of his ministry. I am also reminded of the incident recorded in John’s Gospel (5:1-15), the story of the man at the pool of Bethesda who had been an invalid for some thirty-eight years. He was only one of many, perhaps several hundred, invalids of one kind or another who gathered at the pool side every day hoping for their chance to get into the disturbed waters in the belief that their healing properties would restore them to full health. Yet, on that day when Jesus visited the pool and all of these people, he chose only to heal one of them. Why?
We all know the story of Paul’s celebrated thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:1-10). Apart from a few scholars who suggest Paul’s problem was a spiritual one claiming the ‘thorn’ was either an evil suggestion or temptation that kept recurring in his mind, most Bible scholars and teachers believe the problem to have been physical. It’s not likely to have been an evil thought or temptation because the Apostle would surely not have boasted about such a thing (cf. v.l) nor would he have prayed only three times for its removal. To have done so would have meant that he did not take it seriously; after all, the problem appears to have been with him for the greater part of fourteen years at the time of writing about it. Assuming then that it was physical in some way, this cruel ‘thorn’, this relentless tormenting illness (described by Paul as a messenger of Satan) was something he dearly wanted to get rid of, presumably believing that he would be a better apostle without it. And so he prays that it be removed, fervently prays. Yet his prayer is not granted. Why? Because in this instance God has decided that He is able to use Paul’s suffering for His purposes and for His glory. What has happened is this: over the years the Apostle has had a remarkable ministry which has included some very wonderful experiences of the power and presence of God in his life – visions, revelations that were so real and so wonderful that at times Paul scarcely knew whether he was still on earth or gloriously translated into heaven (w. 1-4). God was so near and so real to him that he found it difficult sometimes to know whether he was in his body or out of it. He had received from the Lord such insights into the mysteries of God that he could not possibly find words to express them and certainly was not at liberty to tell anyone about them. But being a normal human person there was always the temptation for Paul to talk about these things in such a way as to boast about them and give the impression that he was a ‘great, great guy’… thus drawing attention to himself and away from his Lord, who alone was worthy of honour and glory and praise. So, in order to keep Paul from becoming conceited and to teach him that all these wonderful experiences were from the Lord and that Paul depended upon God for them, God chose not to remove them, that is, not to heal him so that the apostle would prove by experience that God’s grace was sufficient for him at all times. God’s grace was adequate for any weakness in his life.
One other passage: in 2 Timothy 4:20, where we have Paul writing to his young Christian friend to tell him that he (Paul) had left Trophimus sick in Miletus. Now while some people suggest that Paul did this because he was unable to heal him due to Trophimus’ lack of faith, there does not appear to be any evidence to support such a contention, Trophimus having been an Ephesian Christian who had assisted Paul on his missionary journeys (cf. Acts 20:4). What is of interest is that there is nothing to suggest that Paul tried to heal him.
My purpose in drawing your attention to these incidents is to show that, while we can believe that God does will health for all, as shown earlier, and that He uses many in the Church for this purpose, He does not will it unconditionally and He does not give it universally, not even to His own. We have that astonishing story of Job, in the Old Testament, where we see a truly righteous man suffering abominably and doing so because God permits it to happen to prove something about Himself to Job, to his friends and to Satan. The health of God’s people, Scripture clearly shows us, is as much subject to His sovereign grace and power as is any other part of their lives or of His whole creation… and especially so in the light of the fall.
Having said this, I want to add that none of us should conclude that this therefore means that God wills illness or pain for His children. This just does not follow.
It is clear to me from Scripture that God is primarily concerned with the spiritual and moral wholeness of those who belong to Him, as we can deduce from an Old Testament passage such as Leviticus 11 in which we learn that God gives certain laws about the eating of clean and unclean foods, not just for the health of the people, but also and perhaps more so, for their moral and spiritual well-being – the passage emphasizes uncleanness as the antithesis of holiness. There are also many New Testament passages which testify to this fact that God’s first and vital consideration is for the spiritual wellbeing, though very obviously the physical is not unimportant to Him. However, everything is subordinated to this concern. Jesus himself sums it up in Matthew 6:33 when he encourages his followers to “seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” This is a far cry from the position of some Christians who see Christ primarily as a healer.
What then is our place as a congregation in all of this? The conclusion I must come to is that healing (nonmedical) had a prominent place in Biblical times, and as such ought to have a significant place in the twentieth century church. To some, God gives gifts of healing (different gifts to different people and not always on a permanent basis) and, like all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, it behooves us to discover and discern these healing gifts, using them for the building up of the saints. To others, and by this I suppose I mean all believers, has been given the ministry of intercession on behalf of the sick and the suffering, to be used much more extensively than is done in our church, praying specifically for healing (complete healing) by supernatural means (miracles!) and also for the cooperation of God’s people with those who exercise God-given talents through science and medicine as skilled medical personnel. God is in all of their work too. Medical opinion and efforts must always be respected by the Christian community, yet we should remember that nothing is beyond our God. “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14). Our most fervent prayer, and our most diligent use of healing gifts must always be accompanied by the recognition on our part that the Lord our God is sovereign and that “if we ask anything, according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14).
May He hear us often and may we seek His glory in all we do.