Do we have any right to believe everyone who gets saved will automatically get healed when they are saved?  Does God make a distinction between healing the inner man versus healing the outer man?

Faith needs to be built up in the hearts of the hearers. Faith can only be had where the will of God is known. That is why it is necessary to know God’s will, revealed in the Scriptures. That is why this entry will not cover everything there is to cover on this subject, but I will tackle other things in a few more entries after this one including one on aging and death, and another on the believer’s authority. I write these entries with the assumption in mind that many of you have already heard me say certain things, and I hope to only build on things I’ve already written–I strongly encourage newer readers or anyone struggling with the idea that it IS God’s will to heal all, to read this outline of Scriptures first before proceeding. And meditate on Scriptures to bring your faith to a certainty as to what God’s will on the matter is, or else this stuff in the coming entries will just be a bunch of theological opinions to you, and I doubt you’d benefit from it.

I’ve heard once that Kenneth Hagin said in later years of his ministry, he was seeing far less dramatic healings than in his earlier years of ministry. He believed this was the result of teaching only one night and taking less time on the subject before praying for people, as opposed to the days when he’d spend no less than three weeks in the same place teaching on it and building believers up on this subject. So even if and when I am being redundant, it’s for the specific purpose of hoping to make things clear and understandable. And the reason I’ve chosen to post these entries in the order I will, is to build upon things first, and say ‘this’, before I get to ‘that’. Comments are welcome, but don’t be disappointed if I don’t respond, but just continue to post the entries I’ve prepared. I’ve written these when I had some spare time, and will continue posting them a few days apart until I start traveling later this month, so it should wind up providing some stuff to go over.

When we think of Jesus as ‘Savior’, we think in spiritual terms and don’t give much thought to what else that also implies. When someone is drowning, and asked to be saved, they mean they want to be saved from drowning. In the West, we’ve made salvation exclusively spiritual. “Saved” has become some kind of term that guarantees people a way into heaven no matter how they live.

The Greek word “Sozo” means: to save; to preserve from harm; to keep; to rescue

When Peter was sinking into the waters, he cried out “Lord save me.” It was a physical rescue from danger he sought, and he received it. Luke 7:50 records Jesus forgiving the sins of a woman who lived an adulterous life, and says “your faith has sozo-ed you.” In Luke 8:48, Jesus heals the woman with the issue of blood, and tells her “your faith has sozo-ed you.” Sin and sickness are both forms of death, and Jesus delivers and saves from both. The same way one woman’s faith forgave her of her sins, the other woman’s faith healed her of her issue of blood. In Luke 8:50, Jesus tells Jairus, to not fear but only believe, and his daughter will be made well (sozo). This turned out to be a dead-raising, not a healing, so to speak, but the same concept is applied and the same word is used.

Jesus is the Savior, and He encompassed all these things in the Gospel accounts. The Gospel distinguishes in the New Testament, but it doesn’t ever separate healing and saving. See the prayer of faith in James 5 for example.

When Jesus told his disciples to go heal the sick, and cast out demons, and preach the Gospel, do you really think that was just for a special period, and now after the New Testament was written, preaching the Gospel of salvation in Christ would no longer include those things that it did in the Gospel accounts? Why wouldn’t it?

Jesus saves. Yes, correct. However, He saves people from what they need to be saved from. Asking if healing is apart of salvation is like asking if reconciliation is part of forgiveness or if redemption is a part of salvation. Of course they are, and you can’t have one without the other. Redemption has everything to do with restoration. It would not be restoration, if we were not restored. This cannot, by definition only apply to having sins forgiven, but being restored as well—spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, everything there is to be restored.

The instant one of us repents, and gets saved (I have phrased it repeatedly in this blog as “getting right with God” which I mean to say the same thing as saved), we have become born from above, and children of God. It is therefore a legitimate question to ask, “If I have been born from above, and my sins are forgiven, then how come I haven’t been healed yet?” Click here for some insight on why not all are healed, and here for some insight on how to position ourselves to receive healing.

Let’s look carefully at one of the key texts used by most to teach that healing is provided for in the atonement, and clarify some sacred cows and misunderstandings.

Isaiah 53:9 – the idea that Jesus’ body was whipped for our sicknesses, and that His blood was spilled for our sins—as if they are two separate things, with two separate goals is a false interpretation of the passage, one reason being it makes an artificial distinction between the two aspects of redemption, one from sicknesses and the other from sins.

Most Bible translations get away from the fact that in the Hebrew, Isaiah 53:4 talks of Jesus bearing our sins and our pains. The Hebrew word used here for “griefs” in most translations, comes from the root word for maladies and diseases (“choliy”, H 2483).

For blogging purposes, let’s compare two widely held views about this that are held in Evangelical circles.

View a) is that Matthew made his own translation when he brought out the differentiation of “diseases” from iniquities, to make his point in chapter 8:17 of his own writing.
View b) shows 1 Peter 2:24 to say this gives a picture of Jesus’ earthly ministry, but then He was nailed to the cross and died for our sins, but this verse has nothing to do with physical healing, therefore we have no reason to believe for healing through the atonement.

Problem: Matthew is quoting this in reference to the healing ministry of Jesus–the context of Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law. If Isaiah 53 was not talking about or including healing being in the atonement, Matthew wouldn’t have made this reference the way he did and say Jesus was fulfilling that passage [by healing]. View a) says Jesus did both, and fulfilled that passage, view b) says ‘yes of course’ Jesus did fulfill this stuff by His earthly ministry but that was only applicable up until He died on the cross and now it’s only spiritual healing we receive from His atonement.

Problem: Isaiah 53 is not either/or with physical & spiritual healing, but both/and. The passage describes both/and, therefore our interpretation of it cannot be either/or. When it says in this passage “we esteemed Him stricken” who is the ‘we’ in that sentence? If it applies to us, the New Testament believers, then when did we ever believe He was suffering for his own sins? This then has to be referring to the cross, and not Jesus’ earthly ministry alone. Since, the “we” Isaiah would be writing to was his own people, Israel, then we need to take that into account that all those involved in handing Jesus over to be crucified were the Jews, the people the Messiah came to save, and this then properly identifies who is the ‘we’ in Isaiah 53:9. So it would therefore be talking about the work on the cross, not exclusively His earthly ministry.

Possible Problem: Now in light of the above, if this applies to the cross, then how could Matthew quote it about Jesus’ earthly ministry if Jesus hadn’t been to the cross yet up to that point, if this passage in Isaiah is talking about his death?

Well, when Jesus has come down from heaven, and identifies with man, what does He do? He sees oppression, He ‘frees’ the captives; He sees sick people, He heals them; He sees people demon-possessed, He sets people free from demonic captivity. He entered into the sufferings of the people. He made people whole, and forgave them.

And He became a sin offering for us. And Matthew was writing in retrospect, significant time after Jesus’ death.

Check back for a follow up post, but in the meantime if you’d like to look into this further, check out some other examples of the way sozo is used interchangably to mean healing and saving in the New Testament here.

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