A brief teaching on healing

One of the tragedies of this age is that we always have sick people among us. Over the last year we seem to have had more deeply valued members of CV falling foul to more serious sicknesses. There are, of course, even more people outside of faith who are desperate for a miraculous healing touch of Jesus in their lives. We really want to see a marked increase in how much healing we see. Therefore, as leaders, we want to use this space to give a quick bit of training on how we might see that happen.

We should expect healing

When God came to earth in Jesus, he spent huge amounts of time healing bodies. The Kingdom brings healings with it. Every person who has the Spirit in them can be used by God to bring healing to others. We would really love to see more people in CV growing in confidence and expectation for healing. Wouldn’t it be amazing if in the next month over 50% of people in our church see God memorably and surprisingly heal a body through them. If all of us expect that God will use us to bring healing then we will try more and we will see more.

We should approach healing with compassion and understanding

Even though we continue to use it because Jesus used it, we have noticed that the word “healing” can at times be unhelpful. We just want to clarify what the New Testament teaches us about what the healing is that we are praying for. Healing is not someone receiving their resurrection body. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul addresses the error that seems to have emerged in the Corinthian church. There, people began to claim that they already had received their resurrection body; and then others countered them by saying that there would be no resurrection for believers. This caused great hurt to many. Paul lays it out clearly: When Jesus died and rose he guaranteed that all who are united to him by faith will receive a resurrection body. Their perishable body will be replaced by an imperishable body that will never get sick; their body defined by the earth will be replaced by a body defined by the Spirit that is always fully well (1 Cor 15:42-49). However, he clearly shows that receipt of that imperishable body will only come when Jesus returns at the general resurrection (v50-53). Only at that point will Christians have bodies that are no longer perishable and will no longer die (v54-57). What this means for us is that we must help people see the reality of God’s profound and miraculous work in their lives even if their symptoms do not improve after praying for them. Salvation and healing is never primarily about this life - it is always just firstfruits of the true life of eternity that has already been won for us. It also means that, even when someone is healed, we can never tell them that their body will not get sick again. The same sickness or problem may well resurface as part of the perishable nature of their being. The healing they receive is a recovery in their perishable body, but their body will remain perishable. All healing will be temporary and may be required over and over again until the day when Jesus consummates his defeat of death - the Day when he returns.  

We should not claim that every healing was purchased in the atonement. 

A classic Pentecostal teaching is to take Peter’s quote from Isaiah “by his stripes you are healed” and to say it means that all healing was won for Jesus on the cross and therefore can be claimed by faith right now. This is not at all a good understanding of the New Testament teaching on healing. When you read 1 Peter 2, it is very clear that he does not understand healing of stripes to refer to physical recovery of bodies in the present age; instead the healing he speaks of (drawing on Isaiah 53) is the ability for the church now to live pure and sinless lives and to have “a portion among the great” (ie to be royal priests in the Kingdom). What was purchased by Jesus on the cross was not all healing of our perishable bodies in this age but the guarantee that we will receive from him resurrection bodies, which we will inherit when he returns. This is guaranteed for all who have faith in Jesus. What this means for us is that even though we can and should expect many, many healings (see below), we can never guarantee healing for people’s bodies and we should discourage Christians from believing that they have already received a healing on the cross, if they could only stand strongly enough in faith to receive it. Instead, in every moment of healing and sickness, we want to gently remind people that our true hope and true life will come to us when Jesus returns. Every sickness is a reminder of how much we want Jesus to return to deal with all that is wrong with the world and (perversely) they can bring us joy because they remind us of our eternal inheritance which will be far greater than anything we could experience right now (Phil 1:23).

But we should know that healing of this perishable body is available in the Kingdom by the Spirit. 

All the physical healings that Jesus performed and very many of the healing that Jesus’ disciples performed occurred before the cross. Jesus himself explains what enables those healings - it is his authority (Mt 10:1); his Kingdom Coming (Luke 10:9); his Spirit being poured out (John 20:21-23, Acts 1:8). This is the basis for the very helpful maxim “the power is in the presence”. The practice of the early church was to continue to connect healing (recovery of the perishable body) to the presence of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:4-11) and to authority given by Jesus to bring healing (James 5:14). Therefore whenever we come across sickness we should seek to draw the person into the presence of Jesus, to connect them with the King of the Kingdom and to see them filled with the Spirit. The more we can draw someone into the presence of Jesus and to fix their eyes wholly and totally on him (rather than on their faith or their illness or whatever), the more they will receive healing. This is why we encourage people not to pray themselves when we are praying for them; we advocate they “wait” on Jesus and just give him attention. This is also why we follow the 5-Step healing model, because it forces us to let Jesus lead the prayer time, opening us up to minister into not only the obvious symptoms but all the broad thrust of God’s saving work that he wants to release into that person. Sometimes people can talk about healing like a transaction - like they are ordering a package off Amazon and they can’t understanding why it hasn’t arrived. But seeing healing in the Kingdom means that we always draw people into inviting Jesus into their lives, to sit and be with him, to share with him, and - in the midst of that - to have Jesus release them from pain and suffering through the coming of his Spirit.

We should accept the mystery of healing in this now, not yet age

Jesus healed shocking numbers of people. But Jesus did not heal every sick person in Israel. Sometimes it was obvious why he didn’t heal people (like the lack of faith in his own town), but sometimes it was just a mystery; he needed to move on to a new town or to withdraw or he just didn’t reach out to them, like the other invalids at the pool (John 5). Jesus told his disciples that they would do greater things than he had done and yet Paul had eye problems in Galatia (Galatians 4:13), Epaphroditus was sick to the point of death (Phil 2:27). Timothy was encouraged to use wine for his frequent stomach ailments (1 Tim 5:23). There is a mystery to the coming of the Kingdom in this Age which no person should ever claim they can explain. Our role is to keep on expecting healing, to keep on pushing for healing and yet to be able to cope with the mystery that sometimes Jesus does not come and heal like we want him to. In those moments the Lazarus story is helpful. Jesus does not heal Lazarus when Mary and Martha want him to. We do not know why Jesus doesn’t heal Lazarus other than Jesus connecting it to a revelation of his glory (Jn 11:4). But we do see what Jesus does in the midst of Lazarus not being healed; he weeps (Jn 11:35). If we are to embrace the mystery around healing in this age we will make space for people to hear and feel Jesus weeping alongside them when they (or their loved ones) aren’t physically healed. We will want to confidently encourage them that the great hope of our faith is that we will all ultimately be resurrected and fully healed on the Day when Jesus returns. These are tricky conversations and must be led by compassion and humility And, even while we are doing that, if we understand the mystery of the Kingdom we will be keen to try to pray again the next day, believing that perhaps that will be the day Jesus releases a miraculous recovery of the person’s perishable body. 

We can learn to see more healing 

As we said at the beginning. We should see more healing than we are doing. We must ask God for more of this greater gift and commit to trying to learn to use it. The truth is that using the gift of healing is like using the gift of a piano - the more we commit to learning how to do it the more we will see beautiful and life-changing things come out of it. All of us can and should expect the Spirit to give us the gift of healing when sick people are around. All of us can and should see ourselves learning and progressing in our use of the gift as we commit to practicing it and doing it better. The 5-step Model of praying for healing is the most helpful tool we have found for learning how to minister healing. In particular we have found Randy Clark’s teaching on it (and on healing in general) to be incredibly well done. If you google “5 Step healing” you will find many very helpful videos and articles. Equally you could look at Bill Johnson and Randy Clark’s book “Essential Guide to Healing”. They don’t distinguish between the perishable and imperishable body quite as neatly as we might and I’m not convinced they do enough to flag up the mystery of the Kingdom like but the book is still hugely helpful.