Healing and Salvation: Sides of the Same Coin

Physical healing is coupled with spiritual healing throughout the Bible. This may be particularly true in Isaiah’s detailed prophecy about Jesus (Isaiah 53) and in the gospel accounts of Jesus. Healing and salvation are often inseparable. There are many scriptures where the same words can be translated either as “healed” or “saved.” Long before “faith healers” or “Pentecostals” existed, physical healing was revealed to be the will of God.

In fact an argument can be made that in the Old Testament, belief in an afterlife was less relevant and less pervasive than belief in the physical welfare of God’s people who were promised “none of these diseases” if they remained faithful. The Jewish community was divided on the the question of the afterlife, when Jesus appeared in Galilee. At the same time, many Jewish leaders apparently thought healing acceptable, but only as long as it did not occur on the Sabbath. In the face of all this ambivalence, Jesus wholeheartedly believed in the afterlife and in physical healing (any day of the week).

You may be thinking at this point, “Spiritual healing, I’m convinced of, but physical healing rarely occurs, not in the supernatural sense. I’m saved, but I haven’t seen a person healed for a long time, if ever.”

The “supernatural sense” provides a useful qualification. As you may have guessed, this post is about supernatural healing—healing that cannot be accounted for by natural explanations. I am not, though, discounting other healings. We all see our bodies healing themselves, often as medical care helps heal them. These healings should be received as gifts from God, just as should all sunshine, groceries, friends, and pets.

Most healing will be medical, even as supernatural healings increase. It is one purpose of humanity for people to help each other, in many things including the practice of medicine. But not all diseases and conditions can be or are healed by medicine, and for these the supernatural becomes vital.

The fact that Christians believe unanimously in spiritual salvation but only occasionally in divine healing should make us wonder what has happened since the early church. It gives us an opportunity to ask ourselves these scandalous questions:

• If the only parts of the gospel that I believe are the ones that cannot be verified, am I really believing? Or is my “faith” just religious hopefulness?
• Is it possible that I’m walking in disbelief in spite of my intentions?
• Is widespread disbelief among Christians what Jesus suspected when he asked, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)

If you want to know whether or not it’s God’s will to heal you, look at Jesus in the gospels. He did only what he saw his father doing (John 5:19):

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. (Matthew 4:23)

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 (Matthew 8:16 & Luke 4:40).

Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. (Matthew 15:30)

Jesus never told a sick person to learn to live with an illness, nor did he ever say that God wanted to teach the person a lesson through the sickness. He never used his prayer from the Garden of Gethsemanee, “If it be your will,” when confronting sickness. He healed all who came to him. Even in his home town where there was so little faith, “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (Mark 6:4 – 6).

Because God’s will to see us healed is crystal clear, we must ask why it’s so easily disputed and discounted. Among the reasons are the following:

• we pray and remain sick
• we pay more attention to feelings than scripture
• we let our experience define our theology
• we ignore the gospels and instead listen to sermons and teachings that promote disbelief

Instead of focusing on these deterrents, we do well to focus on Jesus’ unabated habit of healing. Even in the Garden of Gethsemanee, when Peter cut of the servant’s ear, Jesus healed it (Luke 22:49 – 51). It was the eve of his crucifixion and he still healed. Who are we following, after all? Our feelings? Our experience? Our institutions? Or the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever? (Hebrews 13:8)

As I write this, I’m aware of faithful Christians with chronic conditions, including blindness and polio—and I’d venture that these people are in many ways closer to God than am I. My concern is not to explain away our experience but to focus on what God revealed through Jesus. Then we are at least waging our war against disease on solid ground.

Modern languages and practices have drawn a fairly sharp line between physical healing and spiritual salvation. You go to the doctor for one and go to the alter for the other. This kind of thinking is tidy but it also hinders faith in divine healing.

Ancient Hebrew and Greek, the main languages of the Bible, combine physical and spiritual healing. That means that the language of the Bible may be referring to physical healing more often than we realize, just as Jesus practiced physical healing more than many recognize. Once we see that the same words are used to describe both physical healing and spiritual redemption, we have greater assurance that God’s will is comprehensive: good, perfect, and acceptable (Romans 12:1 – 2).

Three words in Greek are used to refer to both healing and salvation: sozo/σώζω, therapeuo/θεραπεύω, and iaomai/ἰάομαι (Three New Testament Words for Healing). Each of these words is used in the New Testament, and each refers to both physical healing and spiritual salvation. The Gospel (incarnated in Jesus) reveals that the whole person is under the purview of God’s love, with the result that no hair is too short for him to number, nor life too poor for him to care. On more than one occasion, Jesus healed and forgave the person, making the person whole physically, freeing the person emotionally, and enlightening the person spiritually. Let us learn, then, to think of the divine touch as complete, sufficient for all our needs.

We all know that spiritual healing, being eternal, is the most important transformation any of us can (and should) undergo. If I have everything this life can offer—health, friends, and family—but am riddled with guilt and shame, these things mean little. But if I’m a new person, a person adopted by God and endowed with the righteousness of Jesus—I’m well off, even if I have not received my healing. This life may be painfully lacking, but when we sow our earthly bodies to the grave, we can await our eventual restoration as forever healthy children of God.

Although physical healing is less important in the long run, we will see it promised or even stated as a fact in many scriptures, especially when we are aware that many times spiritual redemption and physical healing are both suggested in a promise.

Sometimes a New Testament writer will interpret the Old Testament in a way we would not suspect, even in ways that might distress a Biblical scholar. Apparently, apostolic authority trumps tradition. It happens in Matthew’s gospel, where the writer insists that the healing is physical. After word got out that Jesus could heal people and deliver them from demons, Jesus was flooded with requests:

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 fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

“He took up our infirmities
    and bore our diseases.”

(Matthew 8:16 – 17)

The words “infirmities” and “diseases” are Matthew’s interpretation. In Isaiah 53:4 itself, you find words that refer to the emotions, specifically griefs and sorrows. But Matthew insists that the scourging and crucifixion allowed Jesus to take up and carry physical illness. This overlap between physical and spiritual healing is of course consistent with the Greek words that refer to both kinds of healing.

How are we to take hold of the physical healing so strongly promised in the Bible and so clearly demonstrated in the life of Jesus? The answers may be many and the results few, but one thing remains clear, that true faith is the key. The sooner we believe God wants us healed, the sooner we can trust God for the healing.

The classical passage on how to pray in faith occurs in the gospel of Mark:

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)

The fact that Jesus begins with “whatever you ask” implies that physical healing is included. It may come naturally or supernaturally. In believing that we have received something before we experience it, we are moving from hope to faith. The bridge between faith and our feelings involves admitting our feelings and adding, “Nevertheless, not my feelings but your will be done.”

God cares about your health just as he cares about your spirit. He allowed his apostles to freely use words that refer at the same time to physical and spiritual healing (σώζω, θεραπεύω, and ἰάομαι). Only the context determines the intended use, and the New Testament provides plenty of examples of both kind of healing. Matthew reads healing into the passage of Isaiah, stressing its importance.

The message we get from the scriptures differs from what we get from many pulpits and most of our experiences. God wants us healed. As John writes to his friend Gaius, may we all think accordingly: “I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well” (3 John 1:2).