DIVINE HEALING(E W Kenyon)
THE SUBJECT OF HEALING is one over which there has been much controversy. Today there exist at least three different attitudes toward healing among the Christians.
One group teaches that healing is not for us today. They base this upon the theory that healing is a miracle and that miracles do not belong to the present day; that they belonged only to the Apostolic Age.
Another group teaches that God heals today in answer to special prayer or a special act of faith, and that according to His own will in the matter. The third group teaches that healing for the body is the legal right of every child of God, and that he receives healing for his physical body upon the same grounds that he receives remission of sin for his spirit. Let us now examine these three teachings in the light of the Word.
The first attitude can be easily shown to be erroneous by a definition of a miracle. A miracle, according to Webster, is an act or happening in the material or physical sphere that apparently departs from the laws of nature or goes beyond what is known concerning these laws. It is really an intervention of God into the realm of natural laws, or the realm of human activity. It is God coming upon the scene.
Whenever God comes into immediate contact with men a miracle is performed. Every answer to prayer, regardless of its smallness, and every New Birth is a miracle. An act of healing whereby God comes into immediate contact with man's physical body is no more a miracle than the New Birth, in which God comes into immediate contact with the spirit of man, imparting to it His own nature.
Man asks God to perform a greater miracle than healing when he asks Him to save his soul, and as great a miracle as healing when he asks Him to answer a request, regardless of how slight it might be. To say that miracles belonged only to the Apostolic Age would be to say that God must take the place of a mere spectator or cipher in the world He had created, from the Apostolic Age to this. We can easily see the utter fallacy of this teaching. Let us now seek to find what God's Word declares about the issue of the other two beliefs. If the second attitude is the correct teaching, the third is not.
If God heals only in answer to a special act of faith, and that only when He wills to, healing does not legally belong to the child of God and was not included in Redemption. If, on the other hand, healing was a part of man's Redemption in Christ, healing belongs to every child of God, and no special act of faith is required to obtain it. There need be no questioning as to whether it is God's will to heal; if it is in the Redemption, it is His Will. We will now consider what God's Word says about this.
Origin of Sickness and Disease
Before we are able to understand healing we must understand the origin of disease, sickness and death. We have seen that as a result of Adam's crime of High Treason, Spiritual Death gained an entrance into the spirit of man. This Spiritual Death, which has reigned in the human race, has been the soil out of which has grown the reign of sin, disease and death over man. Sickness, disease and death in man's physical body are but the manifestation of Spiritual Death within the spirit. If man had never died spiritually, disease and death would never have had a part in man's physical body.
When Satan became the god of this world, one of the results of his reign was the peopling of the air with disease germs so that from then to the present time, disease microbes too small to be seen with the naked eye have been one of the greatest enemies of man. The fact cannot be denied that in this world there exists evil. The existence of evil has caused many earnest people to reject belief in a God of love; they have not understood that evil was the result of Satan's reign over humanity as the prince and god of this world.
There are philosophers who have been so impressed by the reign of evil that they have arrived at the conclusion that the central principle of the universe is evil. They are wrong. It is not the Creator, but the Usurper, Satan, who is the source of evil. The two divisions of evil are pain and sin. Pain may have several subdivisions, but the major body of pain known and experienced by humanity is the pain caused by disease. In conclusion, sin and disease are twins, born of Spiritual Death. They are both the work of Satan. Sin is a disease of the spirit; sickness, as we see it, is a disease of the physical body.
God's Attitude Toward Disease
God looks upon disease as He looks upon sin, the work of Satan in the life of His Creation, man. Christ came to reveal the Father-God, to make known His attitude toward man. By carefully following the life of Christ we may learn the attitude of God toward sickness.
Christ Was the Will of the Father
Christ's ministry from the beginning to the close was a twofold ministry. He brought peace to the souls of men and healing to their bodies. Healing had a major place in the ministry of Christ. Throughout His ministry He delivered all those who were oppressed of Satan. This deliverance included healing for physical bodies. If disease did not come from Satan, it must have had a place in God's original plan for man. Read Matthew 8:16-17 and Mark 1:32-34.
If this were the case, then Jesus' ministry would have been contrary to the Father's will. He was the Father's will revealed to man and He revealed that it was the Father's will to break the power of disease over man's body and set him free from pain and suffering. Christ's ministry proclaimed healing and blessing to the physical part of man's nature, as well as to the spiritual side. There are several instances where the attitude of Christ toward disease is clearly shown. One is in Luke 13:10-17. After loosing a woman on the Sabbath from an infirmity which she had had for eighteen years, Christ was criticized by the rulers of the synagogue.
His answer was, "Ought not this woman, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the Sabbath?" He clearly stated that Satan was the cause of the infirmity which had bound her physical body. Another incident is found in Mark 2:1-21. A man with palsy is brought to Christ to whom Christ said, "Son, thy sins are forgiven." When the scribes questioned the statement Christ had made, He answered them with this, "Which is easier, to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?"
In reality Christ is saying this, "Which is easier? Wherein is the difference to forgive sins which are the results of Spiritual Death in man's spirit, or to heal the disease of his physical body, which is the result also of the same Spiritual Death." In either case Christ was dealing with the bondage of man to Satan. To see more fully the attitude of Christ toward disease and the place healing played in His ministry, read the following:
Healing in Redemption
I John 3:8 tells us that Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. He came to destroy what Satan had wrought in humanity when he became the spiritual father of man as a result of Adam's crime of High Treason. He came to bring Satan to nought in his relationship and power over man. Hebrews 2:14. He came to completely redeem man from the effects of Adam's sin by identifying Himself with humanity. Study carefully Romans 5:12-21.
If man's redemption from Spiritual Death is to be a complete redemption it must be a redemption from disease as well as sin. God realized this, and He has clearly shown us in His Word that He has made provision for the healing of man's body. Isaiah 53:4-6. God lifts the curtain through the prophets and lets us see Him dealing with sin and sickness. Literally it reads, "He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of pains, and acquainted with sickness."
Fourth verse, "Surely He hath borne our sicknesses, and carried our diseases; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted." He was stricken of God with our diseases. He was afflicted with our pains. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." Tenth verse, "Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him, He hath made Him sick; when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin."
The old version which reads "griefs and sorrows" is not correct. Every literal translation gives "disease and sickness." God not only laid upon Jesus our iniquities, but our diseases. He was made sick with our diseases. He was made sin with our sins. In the Father's mind, and in the mind of Jesus, and according to the Word, our diseases and sins were borne by the Master. If they were borne by Him, then it is wrong for us to bear them. Sense Knowledge has attempted to repudiate this, but the truth remains that God laid our diseases and our sins on Jesus. He could not be raised until man was declared righteous (Romans 4:25).
When He arose from the dead, the body of sin, of Spiritual Death, had been destroyed (Romans 6:6). Sin had lost its power and so had disease. Isaiah 53:10 reads as follows in the Hebrew: "Yet Jehovah hath delighted to bruise Him; He bath made Him sick." God made Jesus sin with our sins, and He made Him sick with our sicknesses: He delighted to do it because of one reason . . . it meant healing for man.
Christ bore our sins and the penalty that we might be free from sin, its power, and its judgment. Upon the same grounds He bore our disease and pains. He carried them that we might be set free, that we need not bear them. God made Him to be our sin-bearer and our sickness-bearer. Him who knew no sin was made sin and Him who knew no sickness was made sickness.
In the ministry of Christ, the Father-God revealed that it was His will to heal man physically. Now in Redemption He breaks the power of disease and sickness
upon Christ. Satan, who had the authority in the realm of Spiritual Death, has been brought to nought (Hebrews 2:14). In that victory, disease and sickness, the works of Satan, were brought to nought also. By His bruising, we are healed from the law of disease.
Healing Today
Christ's ministry upon earth was twofold, constantly affecting the spirits and bodies of men. His death was two-fold, bearing our sins and diseases. He is the same today and the twofold ministry of blessing for spirit and body has continued from His earthly ministry to the present time. He bore man's Spiritual Death that he might have Life, and in His Word He made provision for man's salvation. He bore man's diseases and in His Word He made provision for his healing.
In Mark, the sixteenth chapter, He gave to His disciples the Great Commission. He is going to depart to be with the Father to take up His work at His right hand. His disciples are going to take His place. His representatives are to continue His ministry, do what He would do if He were here. So in their commission to a world for whom He died He reveals that the twofold ministry will continue. First, the commission is to meet the spiritual need of man. Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved."
Every child of God applies this portion of the commission to himself, teaching that faith in Christ is essential to salvation and that unbelief excludes one from it. Then comes the second part of the commission, Mark 16:17, "And these signs shall accompany them that believe." The Greek word for "believe" is the same as "believeth" in verse 16, except for the fact that one is singular and the other is plural. What right has anyone had to separate these words of Christ which immediately follow His first part of the commission?
Where in His Word has He ever implied that the first words had reference to all men, and that the last had reference to only the Christians of the Apostolic Age? Both promises hang by the single stem "believing." The act of believing brings one into the family of God. The rich cluster of miraculous promises following, belong to them that believe, or the "believing ones," a literal translation.
Man has held fast to the first promise, because he knew how to use it, and he has flung back the other because he did not know how to use it. He bore man's diseases that man might not bear them, and the provision for man's healing is in this: "In My Name ... they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." The ministry of the disciples under the guidance of the Holy Spirit had the same twofold blessing as had Christ's ministry. A complete Redemption was preached by them, the New Birth for the spirit and healing for the body.
The two streams of blessing which began from the personal ministry of Christ, a stream of regeneration and healing have continued from then, through the Apostolic Age, and to the present, wherever Christians have dared to act upon His Word.
Our right to healing given to us in His Redemption has been invested in the authority of His Name. Today He is watching over this Word to confirm it, as He confirmed it in the days of the Apostles (Mark 16:20).
The Basic Bible Course
