We’ve heard it time and time again: “with his stripes we are
healed”. This phrase comes from Isaiah
53:5. This verse is used by many
Health-and-Wealth, Name-it-and-Claim-it, “prosperity” preachers. They teach that our physical healing was
purchased through the atonement of Christ; therefore, if you have cancer, the
flu, a common cold, Alzheimer’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease, your healing was
purchased by the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. All you need to do to receive your healing is
have enough faith and you are GUARANTEED healing because it was purchased by
the atonement.
Is this true? I know
it’s popular, but is it Scriptural?
On one level, it is true: Our healing was, indeed, purchased
at the cross. When Jesus died on the
cross, He purchased a complete, full salvation for His people. He guaranteed that His people would one day
be saved from the penalty of sin; this happens when we are justified. Justification is that moment when God – based
on the atoning work of Christ on the cross – forgives our sins, removes His
wrath from us, and places Christ’s righteousness on our account. He guaranteed that His people would be
continually saved from the power of sin; this happens as we are
sanctified. While I have been saved eternally saved from sin’s penalty, I am being continually saved from sin’s
power in my daily life. He also
guaranteed that His people will one day be saved from the presence of sin; this
will happened when we are glorified.
What will happen to us when we are glorified? We will receive a new body, just like
Christ’s. Romans 8 calls this the
“redemption of our body”. So, in one
sense, YES, Jesus did purchase our healing on the cross. But He purchased our healing by purchasing a
new, perfect, glorified body.
But, when I hear or read preachers teach that Christ
purchased our healing on the cross, I don’t think they have our glorification
in mind; they are speaking of a physical healing to our natural, physical
body. So, in responding to how they use
Isaiah 53:5 to justify their false doctrine that all physical healing is
purchased through the atonement of Christ and all one must do to receive it is
exercise enough faith to receive it, I offer the following objections:
1. Semantic Domain.
This is a phrase that means
context. It states that context
determines the meaning of certain words.
Let me illustrate. If I use the
word “net”, you don’t know what I mean unless you understand the context. If I associate the word “net” with a basketball
game, I mean the net that hangs from the rim.
If I associate “net” with a cook in a kitchen, I mean the thing covering
their head that keeps their hair from falling in the food. If I associate “net” with fishing, I mean the
device you use to scoop the fish out of the water. You see, the context determines the meaning
of the word.
This means that the word “healing”
in Isaiah 53:5 must be seen in the overall context of Isaiah 53. Let me ask you: Where in Isaiah 53 does the
prophet speak of physical healing?
Kenneth Hagin argued that the word “grief” in Isaiah 53:5 also means
“sickness”, but the Hebrew word can also mean affliction, trouble, grief or
injury. So how do we determine the
correct meaning? The context. In the context of Isaiah 53, the prophet is
focused on sin and how the Servant will bear the iniquities of His people (vv.
5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12). Based on the
context, using the word “grief” in v. 4 is a metaphor that shows the spiritual
condition of the Servant’s people: they are spiritually sick because of sin,
destined to be afflicted by Jehovah.
What is the ultimate result of the Servant’s bearing our sins and
transgressions? He will “make many be
counted righteous” – that’s the gift of justification. How will he accomplish this? He “shall bear their iniquities” (v. 11).
So, when you look at the overall
context, it is clear that the prophet has in mind our spiritual status before
God, not our physical status on earth.
2. This View Makes Satan The Ultimate Victor
In Our Earthly Pilgrimage
“The thief comes only to steal and
kill and destroy.” (John 10:10) This is
another passage that people who claim physical healing as a divine right of the
redeemed and a product of the atonement love to quote. They create the following syllogism: Satan
comes to kill; death kills; therefore, death is always a work of Satan. They argue that death is never the will of
God; it is always the work of Satan.
That may sound well and good, but when you follow this logic to its
ultimate conclusion, it is one that they will not accept: Satan ultimately wins the battle with every person on the earth. Last time I checked, everyone dies. Death runs in my family. If they are correct, who stands over each
dead body with victory? Satan. How can he do this? Because he has victoriously killed another
person. Either God wasn’t powerful
enough to heal them or they didn’t possess the faith they needed to be
healed. Either way, Satan has the last
laugh with each earthly life. This
doctrine gives Satan too much power, glory, and victory.
3. The Lack of 300 Year Old Believers
If all sickness is the work of Satan
and if all death is the work of Satan, I would expect there to be some
believers on the earth who are 300 years old.
After all, if they had the faith, wouldn’t God heal them? If God can heal a person of at the age of 21,
can’t He heal someone at the age 95, 100, or 150? To attach physical healing to the atonement
and then agree that people still get sick and die is to make the atonement of
Christ ineffective.
4. It Overlooks the Fact that Jesus DIDN’T
HEAL EVERYONE
In Luke 5:12-16, Jesus cleansed a
leper. News of this healing spread
throughout the region. Immediately
crowds began to flock to Jesus for healing.
What would you expect Jesus do to; after all, in other places, He healed
everyone who came to Him. But how does
Jesus respond? He withdrew from the
people to a desolate place and prayed.
The people obviously had faith because they were coming to Him for
healing. Yet, Jesus withdraws from them,
goes to a desolate place by Himself and prays.
That seems somewhat offensive.
Another example is John 5. The Bible says that there were “a multitude
of invalids – blind, lame and paralyzed” (John 5:3) at a pool called
Bethesda. They are there for healing. They are hoping to be healed. So when Jesus passes by that pool, what do
you expect Him to do? You would expect
Him to heal everyone at the pool. But He
doesn’t; he only heals ONE man.
Jesus proves over and over again
in Scripture that He is sovereign over all things, including healing. He does what He wants, when He wants, and in
the manner He wants. That’s what it
means to be sovereign.
5. It Overlooks the Fact that the Apostles
Didn’t Heal Everyone
A quick survey through several New
Testament passages reveals that Paul didn’t heal everyone either; he couldn’t
even secure a healing for himself!
Consider:
- In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul had a thorn in the flesh that he, on three separate occasions, asked God to remove from him. God refused to remove that thorn.
- In 1 Timothy 5:23, Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach problems. He didn’t say – as I’ve often heard is said by those who believe divine healing is a right of the redeemed – to lay hands on himself and be healed or to just claim a healing for his stomach or to believe “by his stripes you were healed”. No, he instructed him to take medicine.
- In 2 Timothy 4:20, Paul admits to leaving a fellow-Christian, a devout laborer of Christ named Trophimus in Miletus. How as Trophimus when Paul left him? He was “ill”. Why didn’t Paul just lay hands on him? Why didn’t Paul tell him to believe and receive his healing? Why did he leave him at Miletus…sick?
6. It Produces An Overreached Eschatology
Eschatology is the study of the
end. Those who teach that Jesus must
heal every sickness and disease are overreaching in that they are trying to
bring blessings that are reserved for the Age to Come into this present age. When Jesus was upon the earth, the miracles
He performed were evidence that the Kingdom of God had broken into this present
evil age: “But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the
kingdom of God has come upon you” (cf. Luke 11:20). In Christ, the powers of the age to come were
visible. His ministry was a foretaste of
what life in the consummated kingdom would be like. When He raised the dead, He was showing that
death had no place in His kingdom. When
He healed the sick, He was showing that sickness and disease had no place in
His kingdom. When He cleansed the leper,
He was showing that uncleanness had no place in His kingdom. What the people experienced in part during
Christ’s ministry will be experienced completely when the Kingdom is
consummated at the return of Christ. To
demand these blessings in their fullness now is the have the “not yet” mixed up
with the “already”.
7. It Makes Faith the Object of their Faith,
Not Jesus
They teach that the key to healing
is the individual’s faith. “If you have
enough faith,” they say, “your cancer will be healed, your runny nose will stop
up, your arteries will unclog, and your brain tumor will disappear.” They have turned faith into the object of
their faith, which is nothing more than positive thinking. We are never told to have faith in faith; we
are told to have faith in God. When you
study the miracles in the New Testament, you will soon learn that many of the
people who were healed had NO FAITH whatsoever.
The following is an excerpt from John MacArthur’s book, “Strange Fire:
The Danger of Offending The Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship”:
“In Luke 17:11-19, only one of the
ten lepers expressed faith, yet all were made clean. The demoniacs of Matthew 8:28-29 and Mark
1:23-26 did not express faith before being set free, the crippled man beside
the pool of Bethesda did not eve know who Jesus was until after he had been
healed (John 5:13), and the blind man in John 9 was similarly healed without
knowing Jesus’ identity (John 9:36). On
several occasions, Jesus raised people from the dead, such as Jairus’s daughter
and Lazarus; obviously, dead people are not able to make any kind of ‘positive
confession,’ much less respond with any show of faith. Our Lord also healed multitudes of people in
spite of the fact that not all of them believed (cf. Matt. 9:35; 11:2-5;
12:15-21; 14:13-14, 34-36; 15:29-31; 19:2).
The healing ministries of the
apostles, likewise, did not require belief from the sick in order to be
effective. Peter healed a lame man
without requiring faith from him (Acts 3:6-8).
Later, he revived a woman named Tabitha after she had died (Acts
9:36-43). Paul likewise delivered an
unbelieving slave girl from demon possession (Acts 16:18) and later raised
Eutychus after he fell to his death (Acts 20:7-12). A profession of faith was not a prerequisite
for any of those healing miracles.” (pg. 163)
8. It Is Spiritual Cruelty
I was once rebuked at a hospital
by a preacher who claimed to have the gift of healing when I asked him to go
into the room and heal a person who was dying (a person both of us were there
to visit). He told me that I didn’t
believe God healed. I assured him that I
did. He told me that he had the gift of
healing. I asked him to heal the man in
the hospital bed. He explained that it
“didn’t work that way”. So, according to
him, a family lost a loved one that night because either they or the man who
died didn’t have enough faith. According
to him, if they could have exercised enough faith, then the man in the hospital
room wouldn’t have died. Do parents who
lose children to cancer really want to pack that burden with them – that their
child’s death was because their faith was so weak? Do children who watch parents struggle with
Alzheimer’s really want someone telling them that if they had enough faith
their parents would receive their right mind?
This teaching is abusive because when you follow it to its logical
conclusion, you’re left with this: Every bad thing that happens in your life is
the result of your weak faith, including the sickness and death of loved ones.
Before anyone accuses me of not believing in healing,
rest assured that I do. God is
sovereign: He can heal whomever He chooses to heal whenever He chooses to heal
them. I do believe God heals. I do believe that Jesus purchased my healing
on the cross. I just believe that Scripture teaches my healing
will be experienced completely in the Age to Come when I receive a new, glorified
body. Oh, make not mistake: I believe in
healing. I’m just not buying the snake
oil many “preachers” are selling.
