There are those who believe God heals today, those who don’t, and those who believe he might if He feels like it. Is any of this true? And if God is in the healing business, how can we get healed? Is there a Biblical foundation to believe for healing? Because if there is, I want to know it.
If God does heal us, can we loose it? Or is it once healed, always healed? Are there different ways or methods God uses for us to receive His healing power?
I suppose if anyone would know it would be Jesus. Are there any patterns we can glean from His earthly ministry?
“Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (That is, to bring Christ down from above) or, ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (That is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” What does this mean? Simply, what was done on the cross is finished. We don’t have to get Christ to come down from heaven to fulfill what He’s already done, nor does Christ need to go back to cross and grave to finish anything. Since this is true, we need to know what He made available for us through the cross, because if He didn’t do it in His sacrifice, we have no guarantee for healing (or anything). Healing from God would then be whenever He got the desire to heal.
Which leaves us with the question, “Is healing provided for in the atonement?” Another question we’ll answer.
But maybe the first question we need to examine is:
Where did sickness, infirmity, and death come from?
It only makes sense that in order to know God’s attitude toward infirmity of any kind, we must understand how God created things and what happened when man sinned.
When God finished creation, He called it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). After Adam sinned, then the curse came and life itself became a toil (Genesis 3:17-19). We see the full extent of the curse in Deuteronomy chapter twenty-eight. God didn’t create the earth to be cursed. So, what happened.
God told Adam if he were to disobey and eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in that day, “You shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Well, in that day Adam didn’t die physically, but he and Eve did die spiritually. Spiritual death is separation from God just as when we die physically, we’re separated from out bodies: “The body without the spirit is dead” (James 2:26). When we read the Bible in light of this truth, it becomes much clearer.
So separation from God brought a curse. Why was God so hard on Adam and Eve? He had no choice.
Satan was the original sinner. He rebelled against God. God cast him out of His kingdom. God’s kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. God made the natural for humans to rule and enjoy. When God cast Satan out of His kingdom, He cast Satan to the earth: a spiritual being in a physical kingdom; a spiritual wilderness for Satan and his followers; there was no blessing for Satan, only a curse. When Adam obeyed Satan, he separated from God. Satan became Adam’s spiritual lord and father because Adam chose Satan’s word over God’s: “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). And because Adam disobeyed God, and the only precedent was the rebellion of Satan, in all fairness and legality, Adam was subject to the same fate as his spiritual master: the curse of being separated from life himself. God is life. Being separated from God is to be separated from all the good things in life.
Jesus said that hell was made for the devil and his angels. When Adam changed masters, hell defaulted to his eternal spiritual destiny. In the natural, everything under Adam’s authority began to die; a result of the curse. God gave the human race a certain amount of authority in the earth (Genesis 1:28). When Adam changed masters, Satan began to use man’s authority to destroy his new subjects. How? The same way Adam was suppose to bless it: words and action. Only now, man wasn’t prone to say the right things or do the right things. And Satan was there to help him along: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:13-15, emphasis mine). You see, Satan uses our unrestrained desires against us to lead us astray.
This leaves God with the problem of restoring human spirits back to life and righteousness, and into His blessing. The culmination of God’s plan is found in Jesus. Jesus became our unrighteous sin on the cross and then was raised up from the dead a righteousness man. Jesus completely broke the curse having become a curse for us.
When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we become right with God, not with a self righteousness, but with His righteousness: “For He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him [Jesus]” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus also became a curse so that we may have the blessing of God in our lives: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:13-14).
Read Deuteronomy chapter twenty-eight. There you will find the blessing and the curse in detail. As you read this chapter, you’ll see that “every sickness and every plague” is a curse.
Sickness and infirmity began plaguing the human family when sin entered in the earth through human disobedience. Death and sickness is not a blessing from God, it is part of the curse.
A Journal of Edification and Exhortation 