by Josh Kim
Does God always heal? I have personally struggled with this question for the majority of my life. We hear and read stories in Scripture about God performing miracles, being powerful, and even being willing to heal (Luke 5:13). Yet when we look at the world around us, there are still many believers and non-believers suffering with all different kinds of sickness. In this part one of a two blog posts series, I want to share with you my personal journey of God’s healing, give a biblical overview on healing and sickness, and confirm that God is good, powerful, and always willing to heal.
PERSONAL JOURNEY
Back in 1998, I was a normal second-grader who contracted chickenpox like most kids at that age. As I was quarantined in my house for 2 weeks, all I looked forward to was playing baseball outside with my friends once I was healed. Eventually, the doctors cleared me and I played outside all day. However, when I came back to my house, my mom freaked out because I had blisters all over my face and body. We went back to the doctors to get re-examined and we found out that I had a skin condition where my body reacted to the sunlight with fever blisters. I was no longer a normal second-grader, but a second-grader allergic to the sun of all things. It changed my life in many ways.
Initially, my parents and church members all prayed for healing over me saying, “God, you love him so out of your power, heal him.” But when nothing changed, the prayers eventually changed to, “God, you love him so out of your sovereignty, you allowed this skin condition to make him stronger.”
Even though that was said with good intentions to me and about God, as a kid, you can only imagine how much this distorted my view of God, his sovereignty, and his love hearing that God allowed sickness in my life. I started asking conflicted questions like, “Then does that mean God is not compassionate? Or does that mean God is not powerful? Or both?”
And so my journey of understanding healing over the past 20 years started with a sovereign God allowing sickness in my life and evolved to a loving God who desires to always heal me.
HEALING IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT
In order to understand God’s will to heal, let’s start with Scripture to answer questions like: What does God say about healing and sickness? What is God’s nature? What is satan’s role? Is sickness from God or from satan?
There are two important things from the Old Testament to answer those questions:
- Healing is not just something God does, but it’s who He is. In Exodus 15:26, God reveals himself to the Israelites as “the LORD who heals” (Yahweh-Rapha). God is always powerful to heal sickness and deliver people from suffering because that is his nature. Therefore, it isn’t due to the lack of his power that healing does or does not happen, because God is healer at the core of his being.
- Sicknesses was a result of people’s disobedience rather than God’s lack of compassion. In all three major Old Testament covenants with Abraham (Genesis 15:1-21), Moses (Deuteronomy 28), and David (2 Samuel 7), we see that God would bless his people with good health if they obeyed him. However, if they disobeyed him, God would allow satan to send sickness. Interestingly, “the state of the nation’s physical health was a reflection of their spiritual condition.”1 Lack of healing was due to people’s disobedience more than a lack of God’s compassion.
When we look at the New Testament, there is further revelation about God, healing, sin, and sickness:
- Sickness is simply no longer a result of obedience, but an extension and effect of sin. At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus announced that the Kingdom of God was near (Mark 1:15) and immediately began healing the sick. Jesus associates healing with the Kingdom of God and demonstrates his rule and reign by essentially defeating satan with each healing. Whereas sickness was viewed as something from and caused by God in the Old Testament, it is now “seen as an extension and effect of sin and is therefore evil in origin, representing the kingdom of satan”, in the New Testament.2
- Jesus came to defeat satan and all the effects of his kingdom. God is not the cause of sickness, but satan is. This is why Jesus came and brought his kingdom: to defeat satan’s kingdom and all the effects of it (Galatians 1:4; Ephesians 1:21). Therefore, healing is a tool of God’s Kingdom to defeat satan’s kingdom. God is not only compassionate to send His own son, but also powerful to defeat satan and his kingdom (Matthew 12:28).
HEALING IN THE ATONEMENT
So if healing is who God is, and the origin of sickness is from satan, is it always God’s will to heal? From my personal journey, readings, research, and struggle, I can confidently answer that question with a “yes”: it is always God’s will to heal because of Jesus and the atonement.
Jesus’ atonement, or sacrifice, is the foundation of Christianity as it purchased reconciliation between humanity and God, and the forgiveness of our sins. In relation to our topic of healing, his atonement is the foundation for healing as well. In addition to the two purchases I mentioned above, Jesus’ sacrifice also purchased physical healing for humanity as well. The fullness of Jesus’ atonement brings salvation to the whole person, which includes his or her spirit, soul, and body.
Therefore, his sacrifice not only heals the effects of sin in our souls and the effects of sins in our relationships to God, but also the effects of sin in our physical bodies as well:
- By his wounds we are healed (1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 53:5). Jesus bore our sins on the cross so that we may die to sins and its effects, which includes sickness. And instead, we may live in righteousness. His wounds purchased healing for us.
- He took our infirmities and bore our diseases (Matthew 8:16-17; Isaiah 53:4; John 10:10). Jesus took all our pain and suffering, which includes the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, so that we may experience life to the fullest.
REASONS FOR LACK OF HEALING
So if Jesus’ atonement purchased healing, how come some people are not healed definitively? If people are forgiven of their sins one hundred percent of the time due to the atonement, shouldn’t people get healed one hundred percent of the time as well?
In part two of this blog series, I will take more time to explain this mystery of why healing does not happen one hundred percent of the time like forgiveness. But some of the various different reasons why people do not get healed can be due to continual pattern of sin, generational bondages, lack of faith, curses, wrong timing, and more. All of these can play a factor in why healing does not take place all the time.
But this does not mean that Jesus did not purchase healing in the atonement nor that it is not always God’s will to heal. I want to propose and suggest to you that perhaps, the problem is not on God’s end, but ours
Bill Johnson says, “the lack of miracles isn’t because it is not in God’s will for us. The problem exists between our ears. As a result, a transformation – a renewing of the mind is needed [to increase our faith for the impossible]…The answer is not to lower the standard of the Bible to our level of experience, but to increase our faith until our experience matches the standard of the Bible.”3
GOD’S WILL TO ALWAYS HEAL
In the next half of this series, I will explain more why we might not see healing one hundred percent of the time, even though it is a definite blessing of the atonement and salvation. But first, I want to leave you with these three last thoughts of why it is always God’s will to heal:
- Jesus brought salvation (healing) to our entire being: spirit, soul, and body. It would not make sense for Jesus to pay such a costly price to secure our reconciliation with God and forgiveness of our sins, but not secure us healing for our bodies. Jesus is so compassionate and powerful that he would not limit the full effects of salvation and leave a person in sickness and pain. Jesus was willing to pay such a high price of giving up his own life so that our spirit, soul, and body would experience the full manifestation of His love and salvation through healing.
- Jesus came to destroy the rule and reign of satan’s kingdoms and its effects. It would not make sense for Jesus to bring salvation to our spirits and our soul, but not our body. If Jesus’ sacrifice did not bring salvation to the body and healing is not in the atonement, it would mean that satan and his kingdom were not defeated fully. However, we can be assured that Jesus saved, redeemed, and restored humanity and creation from satan in every possible way imagined.
- Jesus is the perfect representation of the Father (Hebrew 1:3). If we want to know if it’s God’s will to always heal, we only have to look to Jesus. When Jesus came to earth, he revealed the Father’s will by always healing every person that came his way. He represented the Father perfectly in power, goodness and willingness (Luke 5:13). And if we question whether it is God’s will to still heal today, we can be assured that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Healing is in the atonement. It isn’t just a possible blessing of salvation, but one of the surest blessings. Simply put, Jesus shows that is God’s will to always heal.
Read Part II
- John Wimber, Power Healing, (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1987), 35.
- John Wimber, Power Healing, (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1987), 36.
- Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth, (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 2004), 32.