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 nearly inseparable. Long before “faith healers” or “Pentecostals” existed, physical healing was revealed to be the will of God.
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. We all see our bodies healing themselves, just as sometimes medical care may heal them. These healings should be received as gifts from God, just as should all sunshine, groceries, friends, and pets.
As you may have guessed this post is about supernatural healing—healing that cannot be accounted for by natural explanations, whether the medical care exceeds medical expectations or, as in most of the Bible, no medical care is involved.
The fact that Christians believe unanimously in spiritual salvation but only occasionally in divine healing offers 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 Gethsemane, “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 Gethsemane, 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)
In the past, I distinguished between divine and medical healing. That snobbery made me ungrateful for all the healing that occurs daily through good medicine. God loves to have people help people. That is the fabric of our existence. Most healing will be medical. But not all, particularly the many conditions medicine cannot cure—or where the cure is almost as bad as the illness.
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 I am. 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.
One way to find that solid ground is to recognize that healing and salvation overlap considerably, even semantically. 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 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 and admonishing the person to sin no more. 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 forever fine. This life may be painfully lacking but when we sow our earthly bodies to the grave, we can await our restoration, some way, some how, 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. 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.”
The words “infirmities” and “diseases” are Matthew’s interpretation. In Isaiah 53:4 itself, you find words such as griefs, sorrows, pain, and suffering. But Matthew insists that the scourging and crucifixion somehow allowed Jesus to take up and carry physical illness. This overlap between physical and spiritual healing is of course perfectly consistent with the Greek words that refer to both kinds of healing.
The classical passage on how to pray in faith occurs in Mark 11:24. The fact that Jesus begins with “whatever you ask” implies that physical healing is included.
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)
In believing that we have received something before we experience it, we are moving from hope to faith. It would be hard to over-stress the difference between following Mark 11:24 and our feelings (which turn us quickly into quivering beggars when we are seriously ill).
If you are distressed, physically or emotionally, think about this: God knew before you asked what you would ask. God knows the exact solution. God says “yes” before the “yes” is visible. And God cares about your health just as he cares about your spirit.
This is the original April 22, 2024 version of the post (17 minutes), in the author’s voice (more improvisational, far less organized):
Publishing Info This post was first published on: April 22, 2024 at 15:00. Revised Apr 24, 2025. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.
Under differing circumstances, we exercise both hope and faith, just as we benefit from both promises and facts, as they are explained below. For none of these terms is it “either/or” but “both—and.” However, I emphasize faith in the following because it has been misrepresented as hope by so many preachers, a misunderstanding reinforced by our emotions.
I am neither a Greek scholar nor a grammarian, but I am aware, as my readers are or will soon be, that “tense” matters when it comes to faith in Jesus. By “tense” I mean the way verbs may point to past, present, and future events (I ran yesterday, I run or am running today, and I will run tomorrow).
When we pay attention to the past tense in the Bible, we see that God is already aware of our needs before we pray. We also see that much of what we pray for has already been provided by Jesus. The past tense redirects our attention from ourselves and our circumstances to God’s awareness and provision. Faith does not involve us reminding God of his promises. Rather, faith reminds us of God’s preparation. We are the one’s getting up to speed and not the reverse.
Note the past tense in the following passage, one of the most concise and profound teachings on prayer in the Bible.[1]
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)
Who, in fact, would have guessed that the key to faith is to believe you have already received what you are about to ask for? Yes, we are instructed to believe that we have already received whatever we ask for and then we shall have it.[2]
Many of us have read this verse all our lives and have not caught its meaning. Its meaning, however, points directly to the one to whom we are praying: the eternal creator who knows everything and stands outside of time. If you are not praying to this being, you are probably praying to someone created in your own image, most likely a “god” who is occasionally forgetful and sometimes indifferent.
We often pray as though God is a hopefully caring individual who will assist us if we can just get his attention, and this, frankly, indicates we are already living in disbelief. It’s essential to believe in the present that God both understands and has provided for this moment’s needs. He knows before we ask what we have need of (Matthew 6:8). For that reason, Jesus says, we should not keep repeating our prayers. We do not “remind” God of anything. We remind ourselves that God has already numbered the hairs on our head and knows what we need (Luke 12:6-7). We never make God aware of our needs. We wake up to his constant awareness. As we trust that God already knows and cares, we are living in faith.
What do we do in the mean time—the time between trusting we have and actually experiencing it? We are to be thankful and to act on our faith. Thanksgiving can take many forms, especially songs and statements of gratitude and relief. Tears and laughter, too, express gratitude.
To act on our faith is to make decisions based on the answer to prayer. Remember how often Jesus told people to do something to receive their healing: stand up, pick up, go to this pool. Note, also, how each of those things simply would not happen unless the person were healed. Jesus never said, “stop taking your meds” (which anyone can do, healed or sick). One of the safest responses to faith is to look for ways to help other people, being like Peter’s mother who, after being healed (we have no idea how she felt), rose to wait on Jesus (Matthew 8:14-15)
The next passage reveals that not only does God know our needs before we mention them, but that God knew our needs before time itself began. Grace is nothing to be begged for or worked for, but only to be recognized and received.
He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:9-10)
We may not understand all that it means for grace to be given to us before the beginning of time. I do not. It assures us that we have been in God’s mind long before we had minds of our own.
We must live in terms of the past—in terms of what Jesus has already provided. Paying attention to how God has provided in the past what we need in the present stirs our faith. Faith looks at things unseen, not at things that are seen. It opens our minds to the God for whom nothing is impossible, the God who resists the proud but who reveals himself to the humble, to those who come to him with the trust of children. As we yield to faith, we are able to hear for ourselves what Jesus said to the blind men: “According to your faith let it be done to you…” (Matthew 9:29).
Past Facts and Present Promises
The present and the past are not separate for the eternal God. We live in time, but God does not. When we pray to the one who already knows everything, we are addressing the real God, wholly unlike ourselves in respect to time. What we experience today, God already knew about. What God did in the past may have full consequences for us today, especially when we rely on those consequences.
Speaking in strictly human terms we can, I think, agree that the past seems stable, while the present may be daunting, and the future remains uncertain.
If the present is difficult (such as with ill health, bad circumstances, or demoralization), we will find more consolation in learning that something for our benefit has been done in the past than we will in finding something may be done for our benefit in the future. It is my wish that the readers of this post will walk away with increased confidence that our Father has already foreseen and addressed the majority of their needs in the past. This revelation will result in peace for the believer who will be free to respond with thanksgiving instead of with worry.
Both hope and faith are important, each having a different role in our lives. Usually, hope looks to the future, while faith accepts in the present that we have what we need even though we do not see it. Also related to time, promises refer to future events (I will marry you), while facts refer to past accomplishments (I married you).
While promises are valuable, facts are often ignored. Think of our redemption as it is explained in Romans: we have died with Christ (fact), we have been forgiven (fact), we are dead to the law (fact), the spirit of life has set us free from sin and death (fact), we are more than conquerors (fact), and nothing can separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus (fact). To pray for any of these things is to pray in vain. Pray instead that the eyes of our heart may be opened to see these things, to accept them, and to be thankful for them.
Most of us feel comfortable with promises. Promises and hopes for the future come to us naturally. We grow up with caregivers who make promises, and if a caregiver is both trustworthy and capable, we can hope for its fulfillment. Similarly when the scriptures provide a promise such as “no good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11), we are right at home. We put our hope in the promise for future fulfillment and assume we will receive its fulfillment so long as we walk uprightly.
But we are less used to hearing a divine fact about a past accomplishment and accepting it as being done. For this difficulty there are at least two reasons.
First, the facts to which I’m referring are not obvious to natural observation. These must be revealed in the scriptures and by the Holy Spirit. This is why Paul prayed that believers would have a spirit of revelation and, I assume, why Jesus said “Whoever has ears, let them hear.” Jesus taught that only by revelation could we know the true God: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do” ( Ephesians 1:18, Matthew 11:15, 25-26).
The second reason we think in terms of God responding in the future instead of the past is that we have been misled by poor sermons. Much that consists of hope is passed off as faith. Much that is already accomplished as a fact is misrepresented as a promise for the future. Fuzzy preaching leads to fuddled minds. Instead of resting on divine facts we are treading water by thinking only in terms of an uncertain future. The history of the Christian church includes a theology of disbelief that must be replaced by a theology of faith if we are to experience a kingdom that comes not in word only but also in power (1 Thessalonians 1:4-5).
It’s fine to hope for fulfillment in the future—and some things, such as one’s wedding date or our new, heavenly bodies, are reserved for the future and are proper objects of hope. Other things—indeed many of our greatest needs—have already been known by God, addressed by God, and accomplished by Jesus. To use a crude analogy, the check is not in the mail, it has been deposited before we knew we needed the money and awaits only for us to draw upon the account.
In short, when we pray, we are not called to beg that God makes an exception, we are called to agree that God is our provider. Prayer is closer to praise than we often realize.
If you are indifferent to what I’m pointing out, please know that the difference is immense. Trusting what God already knows, what God already intends, and what Jesus already accomplished delivers us from a life of fretful worry to a life of peace and joy. We may not instantly experience much, but the knowledge that the matter is in hands greater than ours creates trust. I’ve found peace and resolution by assuming a gift from God is mine, even when it isn’t visible or sensible.
Assurance without tangible evidence may be considered the foundation of faith, which, as we learn in Hebrews 11:1 is “the substance [in the present] of things hoped for [in the future], the evidence [in the present] of things not [yet] seen.” The litmus test of prayer is whether, when we are done expressing it, we walk away with assurance that it’s being taken care of or whether we feel it all remains up to us to accomplish. We may have to remind ourselves that we’ve been heard; we never need wonder whether or not our Father has listened.
This assurance comes by being convinced that we know God’s will, that it is good, perfect, and acceptable, that it is for our welfare and not our destruction, and that it is full of grace and mercy. We must rid ourselves of institutional disbelief—teachings and practices that reduce God to a lesser being. Among the worst examples, God is an inexplicable being that prefers to teach through sickness rather than healing, through punishment rather than forgiveness. Other institutional disbelief portrays God as a weak, memory challenged being who requires many reminders in order to act—if indeed this God acts at all. We are taught to keep confessing sins that are already, once and forever, forgiven—which is one example of how disbelief puts us right under the law again. If the good news is anything, it is good and, yes, even at this late date, it is still news.
Once you are keyed into the importance of the past tense as a gateway to faith, you find it throughout the gospel.
The great scripture that is so often quoted as to become a mere jingle to our ears epitomizes the role of the past tense for conveying divine truth: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Note that the deed has been done in the past; we need not pray it happens nor can we make it happen: “he gave his one and only son….” Note, also, that we who live in the present can believe in this son: “whoever believes in him….” And, finally, observe that the effect of this past deed believed in the present will result in future effects for they “shall…have eternal life.”
Another wonderful scripture highlights the role of tense:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
(Romans 5:6-9)
The “right time” is the historical past, about 33 A.D. This is followed by the literary (or eternal) present, “God demonstrates his own love.” And, again, “While we were still sinners,” refers to the past in two respects. First, the author, Paul the Apostle, was alive and sinning (by his own confession) when Christ died for him. Second, those who were born after the crucifixion (that’s us) discover that, while we may be still sinning in the present, Christ already died for us in the past. As a result, whether a person lives in the first or twenty-first century, “we have now been justified” (past perfect tense—to indicate that one event happened before another in the past).
In a final example, the apostle Peter applies the past tense to the majestic prophecy of Isaiah 53:
“‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed'” (I Peter 2:24, quoting Isaiah 53:5. Peter changes Isaiah’s text from “by his wounds we are healed” to “by his wounds you have been healed—past perfect tense. Either the present “are” or the past “were” denote some kind of healing has taken place. Peter’s use of the past tense “were” reminds us that what was done in the past had real effects in the past. Before we were born, the drama of our rebirth into Christ had been transacted.[3]
More can be said for living by faith in what God has already achieved and accomplished. Not only does it put us in tune with God. It also makes our part in the process perfectly clear. We are recipients. We cannot brag about things someone else achieved, especially if they achieved it in the past, most especially before we were born. We can only be grateful. When we realize that the vast majority of our needs have already been met by Christ—through his sufferings and his resurrection—we have nothing to boast about, to anxiously work for, to fear concerning, or to earn. We are already home:
It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 1:30-31, NIV)
God has already placed us in Christ. We are neither waiting to gain entrance to God’s presence nor to be near Jesus. We are there, feel it or not. We are not waiting for Jesus to give us wisdom, righteousness, holiness (sanctification), or redemption. We now have them by virtue of already being in Christ. All we need are the eyes to continually see this and the heart to insist on it when this life tells us we are on the outside, far away from Christ.
Consequently, three attitudes should inform our prayers.
When we have a need, remember that God already knows about the need and has provided a remedy, although we have not yet received it.
When we feel we need to become a better person, know that we are already identified with Christ in his death, resurrection, and ascension. The true us cannot be closer to God than we are right now. Living this out in our old bodies may be difficult, but the difficulty is to trust we are exactly who we should be in all the ways that count most.
Let us be thankful that the true God both knows and provides for us before we ask.
Footnotes
[1] The teaching on prayer here is crystal clear. The cursing of the fig tree is puzzling to most of us who see Jesus as constructive and the fig tree as innocent (it was out of season according to the passage in Mark 11). Without pretending to know why Jesus did it, I can only point out that the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple occur on the same day, an extremely emotional one that demonstrates both the misuse of the temple and the impending death of Jesus, who, like the fig tree, would die prematurely.
[2] The past tense in Mark 11:24 is undeniable. The Greek text reads πιστεύετε ὅτι ἐλάβετε καὶ ἔσται. “ἐλάβετε” is the aorist (past perfect) of “λαμβάνω” (to take or receive). The New International captures the tense (believe that you have received it, and it will be yours), as does the New American Standard (believe that you have received them, and they will be [granted] you), as does the Revised Standard version (believe that you have received it, and it will be yours). Some translations hedge slightly, such as King James (believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them). “Ye receive” is present tense. Perhaps the translators could not believe the past tense was intended. The verse, however, retains its meaning that the believing comes before the receiving and that is the most important point.
[3] The word “healed” can refer to physical or spiritual healing, and spiritual healing can refer to emotional healing or spiritual rebirth. It’s all wonderful, but is confusing for us who see healing limited to physical and emotional events. Peter’s reference to sin attaches his meaning to spiritual rebirth. However, as I write in another post (Two Sides of the Same Loving Coin: Healing and Salvation), Matthew quotes the previous verse in Isaiah, applying it to physical healing.
We discover that time is and is not important in Christ: it’s extremely important because everything has to be worked out, experienced, achieved. Jesus had to suffer on a specific day under the authority of Pontius Pilate. Yet the intentions, the obedience, the supernatural power were expressed “since the foundation of the world” (Hebrews 4:3).
This is the original April 22, 2024 version of the post (17 minutes), which, in its overenthusiastic way, included what is now a separate post on healing and forgiveness:
Publishing Info This post was first published on: April 22, 2024 at 15:00. Revised Apr 23, 2025. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.
Anyone who has given Jesus more than a moment’s thought has a personal version of Jesus in his or her mind.
To some, he’s a literal king, to some an ideology (socialist, Marxist, fascist, you name it), to some an avenger who came as a lamb the first time but will return as an angry lion the next. He may be a friend, and some tame him to “my buddy,” the offspring of “the man upstairs.” At the other extreme, he is in his glorified state beyond description, beyond language—one before whom a person can only be filled with awe and silence (a safer extreme). In my early faith, he was a supernatural counter-culture rebel who would both give meaning to my life and remove meaning from the establishment, including the versions of him that churches had fixed beneath their stained glass and steeples.
The sneakiest version is the one assumed by the fundamentalist to be perfectly accurate and adequate. By fundamentalist, I refer to a person who equates literalism with truth and thinks he or she has an unmediated, direct knowledge of the real Jesus, a version infallible and unquestionable. Once one is sure one is right, there’s no need to look further. It’s hard to discuss matters with this person. For years I had a hard time discussing matters with myself.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with constructing a version of Jesus in our minds. It is unavoidable, being the way the human mind works. We are always and only constructing a knowledge of others from a mixture of facts, fallacies, reasoning, feelings, experiences, and imagery. Because the process is both universal and fallible, most good novels depict a main character as being disabused of assumptions about one’s world and its population. If it is hard to admit we are wrong about others, it’s often harder to admit we are wrong about ourselves. As a friend of mine quotes Lord Jim: “it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.”
Misconstructions of others and ourselves can be comical, irritating, inconvenient, or fatal (think of Othello). Misconstruction of Jesus, or, rather, stubborn adherence to our misconstruction, may be disastrous.
How disastrous? The Sermon on the Mount provides an extreme example. It is extreme because the image of Jesus is held by someone who seems to know better, someone whose experience comes replete with signs and wonders:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23)
We are not told how the evildoers perceived Jesus. They certainly had whatever it takes to prophesy, drive out demons, and perform miracles. On on hand, these are the will of Jesus’ Father, clearly. So something else went awry.
Perhaps the evildoers were living double lives, doing the right thing by day and then indulging in pride or carnality by night. In that case, they saw Jesus as someone impressed by the supernatural without consideration of character. Perhaps they simply followed supernatural fireworks and were devoid of love (as in St. Paul’s, if I have not love, I am nothing). In that case, they saw Jesus as a divine stuntman, not understanding in the least his Father’s motivation—and his cooperation—behind his coming to earth.
If my life has meant anything down these lines, it has meant year after year of having assumptions and presumptions pressed out of me, reducing me to the person I’ve always been: partial, clumsy, pretentious, and needy. In turn, more than ever, I see Jesus has more capable, wise, enigmatic, and deserving of my attention than ever. Let me add trustworthy, quite in contrast to myself.
He is the head of body (the real church), the first-born from the dead, the visible image of the invisible God, the source of all mercy, truth, and grace, the one who is no person’s fool and yet seems always willing to lower himself to those who find themselves lowly.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Apr 30, 2023 at 15:56. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.