I’m starting a sermon series on healing tomorrow morning. Largely I’m editing an old sermon series, which any readers of my old website might recognise from three or four years ago. I’m preaching on this to prepare one of my churches for the introduction of ‘services of prayer for healing.’ Here’s the first one.
Healing 1: A Biblical Basis
Introduction
Here’s a howler from a student sitting an RE exam:
‘Everyone was pleased when Jesus healed the paralytic man, except Simon who had to pay to have the roof mended.’
[Murray Watts, ‘Bats In The Belfry’, p68 #95.]
Healing is disruptive, even when there is good news!
Seriously, though, the subject is fraught with difficulties. We long for healing: some of us have witnessed it; some have cried out for it, but not received it. Then there are the controversial practitioners. Beware some of the TV evangelists like Benny Hinn, who give a bad name to the good ones.
Some Christians even denounce all expectations of direct divine healing. I once heard a preacher denounce every Christian who believed in healing as people who demanded that God perform to their orders. This is a terrible misrepresentation.
The subject needs careful handling. Can any of us be completely objective about the question of healing in response to prayer? I can’t. I have known loved ones healed, I have also had my own share of disappointments, where I still don’t understand the reasons why.
So I shall take several sermons to explore this theme. Even then, I cannot cover everything. However, I hope I can give a rounded treatment of the subject as far as I can go.
We begin with a biblical basis for Christian approaches to healing. We shall journey with the story of God’s involvement with his creation, from the Great Beginning to the Great End. I shall do this in four stages.
1. Creation
Do you remember learning multiplication tables, chanting them until you knew them? If I wanted to know what eight times eight was, I could chant my eight times table until I came to that sum.
We see this learning by repetition in Genesis 1’s account of the creation. The words, ‘And God saw that it was good’ keep recurring, until you have received the message loud and clear that God took pleasure in his creation, declaring it good. Indeed, at the end, we read, ‘God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.’ (Genesis 1:31)
God’s action in creation is good, even very good. There is no hint in the account of any imperfection, imbalance, anything displeasing, any distortion, disharmony, suffering or evil. The child who asked her mother if God created lions and when told yes then asked a supplementary question, “But isn’t he frightened to?” missed the goodness of God in creation.
In terms of healing, we are to deduce that ill health is not central to God’s plan. Whatever God may allow and even use for good, it is not his best for creation. The intention of God’s creation is that everything is good and working well in harmony.
The doctrine of creation shows us the divine purpose in healing. It is to restore things to how he intended them to be. To care about healing the sick is to care about God’s creation and to share his perspective on how this world is meant to be.
But reality is more complicated, so we have to look at other elements of the biblical story.
2. Fallenness
A man dies and finds himself standing at the pearly gates. St Peter comes out to greet him, but looks puzzled. “We weren’t expecting anyone just now,” he says, “just wait here a minute while I look up your records on the computer.”
While the man waits, he notices a wild party going on down among the clouds. There’s music and laughter, food and dancing, and the people are having a good time. “I wonder where that is?” he thinks to himself. “It’s obviously not heaven, but it looks far too much fun to be hell.”
Then the gate opens again, and St Peter comes out scratching his head. “I’m really sorry to keep you,” he says, “but we can’t find your records at all. If you wouldn’t mind waiting a bit longer, I’ll go and have another look.”
So the man stands twiddling his thumbs, and every so often looking down at the cloud where the party’s still in full swing. He eventually makes up his mind, and jumps down to join the party.
But he falls straight through the cloud and lands in front of the devil. It’s boiling hot, the flames are shooting up around him, and the devil grins at him and says, “Welcome to hell!”
“But I didn’t want to come here,” the man stammers, “I just wanted to join the party.” “Ah,” the devil replies, “I see you’ve come across our marketing department.”
[Simon Coupland, ‘Spicing Up Your Speaking’, p116 #101.]
Sin is good at marketing, and that is what we find in the Garden of Eden: “You will not surely die,” says the serpent (Genesis 3:4).
Christians realise through this story and others – as well as our own experience – that sin cuts us off from God. But fallenness has many more consequences. Whatever God’s goodness in creation, sin means that we live in an off-kilter universe. In the story – and in life – humans are alienated from God: Adam and Eve hide from God and can no longer be naked before him. They are alienated from each other, as they blame each other, and the husband ends up ruling over the wife. Sharing in God’s act of creating by bringing new life into the world is affected too, as childbirth becomes painful. The relationship with the rest of creation is disrupted, as Adam’s tilling of the land becomes a burden. Worst of all is the association of sin with decay and death.
This sin is not just isolated individual acts. This is what we call fallenness, or original sin. It is the state we are in. Think of it like being born in enemy territory, in a land opposed to God and his goodness. You are not responsible for having been born there, but you are responsible for your actions if you stay there.
This fallenness produces disruption, decay, and death that permeate creation. Every part of existence is affected. If we were born with certain predispositions, it does not mean that these were all what God intended for us. We cannot use the excuse, “I was born that way; God made me like this.”
Thus, we recognise the need for healing, because all are affected by decay and death through the universe being out of harmony with God. It is not to say that every illness is caused by a sin. it would be cruel to say, “You are ill, because you did something wicked.” But we accept that at times our sinful behaviour is bad for our bodies and may make us ill. However, generally the truth is that creation’s disrupted relationship with God leaves everything subject to decay.
Therefore, the healing ministry is one sign of the battle against sin and all that opposes God. Sickness is a sign that all is not as God intended it to be, and the healing ministry is a sign that God will not take that lying down.
3. Redemption
The promise of redemption comes as God curses the serpent in the Garden:
‘And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head
and you will strike his heel.’
(Genesis 3:15)
Christians have traditionally seen this as a prophecy of Jesus and his cross. He is the offspring of woman who crushes the serpent, the tempter, but who is wounded in the heel, that is, where he touches the earth. The New Testament presents the Cross of Jesus not only as Jesus being a substitute for our personal sin but also as the victory over all the powers of darkness.
Not only that, the prophecy in Isaiah 53 of a suffering servant that the New Testament sees as being fulfilled in the sacrificial ministry of Jesus is applied in Matthew’s Gospel to the healing ministry:
‘When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“He took up our infirmities,
and carried our diseases.”‘
(Matthew 8:16-17)
Some people push this text too far, saying that healing is just as much the birthright of the Christian through the Cross of Christ as forgiveness is. I think it is better to see it more generally: if in the Cross Jesus conquers the powers of darkness, then when healing happens in his name, it is because he has disarmed evil spiritual forces in his death for the sins of the world.
Therefore healing in the name of Jesus is part of the victory of the Cross. In terms of sin, God forgives us, but we must then – with the power of the Holy Spirit – live in holiness. In terms of sickness, God invites us to pray for healing as the Holy Spirit joins the war against all that denies the goodness of God.
That ‘war’ against evil is still on, even if the decisive battle was won at the Cross, rather like the D-Day landings showed which way World War Two would end, but it took another year to make the Allies’ victory certain, final, and complete. The war of God in the cosmos against sin is on a much larger scale, but it is in the context of that war, where Jesus has won the decisive battle that we pray for healing.
4. Kingdom
God’s kingdom has begun in the ministry of Jesus: in Jesus, God acts in kingly power. But we anticipate the time when the kingdom has fully come, when the war is finally over, and peace and justice reigns.
Come to Revelation 21, where a new heaven and a new earth appear, and the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, descends, representing the redeemed people of God. We then read that the old order of things has passed away. Death, mourning, crying and pain are abolished. All that has corrupted creation and caused dislocation and disharmony is vanquished. This is the fulfilment of the Christian hope.
In terms of healing, we look to the day when illness will no longer afflict our bodies, and they will not decay to the point of death.
What is the basis for this hope? It is in the resurrection of Jesus. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 20, the resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits of the harvest from the dead. The rest of the harvest will surely follow. As he goes on to say in verse 26,
‘The last enemy to be destroyed is death.’
Now we can assess where we are in general terms with regard to the healing ministry. We live between what has been called the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet’. The ‘now’ is that since the coming of Jesus the kingdom of God is here and continues to come.
Because we live in the ‘now’ of the kingdom we may expect to see God act in kingly power when we pray with the authority of Jesus, and this includes healing, in which we follow the example of Jesus himself.
But we also live in the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom: the kingdom of God is not yet fully present, where even death has been destroyed. The D-Day landings may have happened, but we haven’t reached VE Day or VJ Day. Resistance remains; the war continues.
Therefore, not everything we long to see that is in line with God’s kingdom happens yet. Even if healing happens, people still at a later date die, because death will be the last enemy to be conquered.
We must hold this ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ of the kingdom in tension. To major on just one or the other is to distort the picture. If we only concentrate on the ‘now’ of the kingdom we shall expect everybody we pray for to find healing, and we shall have a crisis of faith when not everyone is. If we only concentrate on the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom we shall fail to pray for people to be healed when they could have been, and great blessing will be missed.
Conclusion
Let’s sum up: the doctrine of creation shows what God does and how he intends things to be. But fallenness introduces a corruption into the universe that taints everything in creation.
However in Christ and his Cross God conquers the powers of darkness; even if the final victory over death is yet to happen, the outcome is certain.
Thus we live in the tension between the ‘now’ of God’s kingdom, in which we expect to see him do great things in response to our prayers, and the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom, meaning that we do not see all that we long for in answer to our prayers. We may not know why such prayers are not always answered: that may be hidden.
Where does this leave us with healing? We need to listen for what God is saying and doing. Just praying a quick prayer and adding, “If it be your will” on the end can be the prayer of the lazy Christian who will not have the compassion for the person in need to spend time listening to God.
It is quite a different matter if either circumstances mean a prayer must be offered there and then, or if time has been spent trying to listen to God but try as you may you feel you have not discerned what God is saying. How should you pray then?
In those cases, surely the best thing to pray for is for God’s best for the person – which in the case of illness is usually healing. Perhaps God will say ‘no’, but at least give him the chance to say ‘yes’. Let us not deny the sick person the opportunity to receive blessing from God.
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