HEALING THE SICK
[p. 184] HEALING THE SICK
My dear Brother,
In answer to your letter I am glad to send you a few remarks on the subject of divine healing, though it be simply to call attention to what Scripture sets before us.
The healing of the sick, accompanying the preaching of the glad tidings of the kingdom, was one of the great characteristics of the presence and service of the Son of God in this world. Every form and fruit of the power of evil had to give way before Him; every result of sin — disease, and even death itself — had to bear witness to the greatness of divine power which was active here in compassionate goodness to men. It could not be otherwise in the presence of God manifest in flesh. The power was present which could and did relieve men of every pressure, so that it was manifest that He was here who will in a coming day “swallow up death in victory” (Isaiah 25: 8) and bring about such a state of things that the inhabitants shall not say, “I am sick” (Isaiah 33: 24).
And not only was every act of healing a testimony of what was in God’s heart in loving-kindness to His ruined creature, but it was a figure of an even greater deliverance by which men should be set free from every moral disease so as to be for God’s pleasure, serving Him “without fear in piety and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1: 75). The works of power of the age to come were illustrative of the moral healing by which alone man could answer to God’s will as set forth in the teaching of the Lord, And it is very touching to see that every act of healing was at the cost of suffering to the blessed Healer, for, as the prophet had said, “Himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases” (Matthew 8: 17). He did not remove any infirmity by His power without bearing the burden and sorrow of it in [p. 185] His spirit, and this was true of “every disease and every bodily weakness” (Matthew 9: 35). He thus understands perfectly, and can sympathise with every form of bodily suffering, and this is a sweet comfort to all His “brethren” who are sick. For that such might be sick is clearly intimated in His own words, “I was ill, and ye visited me”, explained by “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me” (Matthew 25: 36, 40).
We see Him giving the twelve, and then the seventy, power to heal diseases. They had not need to talk about the power, or to write books about it, or to try to make people believe they had it. They had it, and they exercised it in the simplest possible way. When we pass from the gospels to the Acts we find the same divine power accompanying the service of Peter and Paul, in testimony to the name of Him who was no longer here but glorified in heaven, though it may be noted that neither in the Acts nor in the epistles do we find any instance of a Christian being restored from bodily sickness by a miracle. Then we learn from 1 Corinthians that “gifts of healings” were set, amongst other gifts, “in the assembly”. And James says, “Is any sick among you? let him call to him the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall heal the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be one who has committed sins, it shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your offences to one another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed” (James 5: 14 - 16).
We are also told that “the body is ... for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6: 13), and again, “He is Saviour of the body” (Ephesians 5: 23). All this is to be weighed and valued as a blessed witness of what divine power and goodness can effect in the way of preservation or healing of the body. It has encouraged the faith of God’s people to count upon Him in innumerable instances, so that I suppose there are very few of His children who have not known [p. 186] personally of cases in which prayer has been most distinctly answered in regard to the body. It is simply a question of faith counting upon God and getting its answer. In each case it is a matter of individual exercise and faith on the part of the sick one, or of those concerned about him. One would wish to encourage in oneself, and in one’s brethren, more simple piety and confidence in God as to the body and its health.
Remarkable sign gifts, such as “tongues”, “gifts of healing”, “miraculous powers”, existed in the assembly at the beginning; God bore witness with His servants to His great salvation “both by signs and wonders, and various acts of power, and distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his will” (Hebrews 2: 4). There was one blessed company presenting a united testimony on God’s part in the midst of a hostile world, and He was pleased to accredit that testimony in a public and unmistakable way. But where might we expect such credentials to be found today, compelling the attention of men by manifesting His power miraculously, even to sight? It is a day of departure and ruin, and it could hardly be expected that God should accredit in a public way a condition of things which is contrary to His mind. If, on the other hand, sign gifts were bestowed on such saints as were individually approved of God, it would put such saints publicly in an extraordinary position, as being distinguished from the church generally — from all other saints — by the possession of miraculous powers.
I think a heart that felt aright the true condition of the church would shrink from the idea of such a position. The assembly has departed from first love and is in a fallen state; Christ and the Spirit have lost Their place; and man’s will and order (which is really confusion) are seen on every hand. We are in 2 Timothy days, and the Spirit shows us there the path of righteousness and faith for those who are found calling on the Lord out of a pure heart at such a time. There is no word of sign gifts being recovered or miraculous powers [p. 187] being conferred on the faithful. There is a call to be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus, to be prepared for suffering, to strive diligently to present oneself approved to God, to shun profane vain babblings, to withdraw from iniquity, to separate from vessels to dishonour, to flee youthful lusts, and to pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. All is put on moral and vital ground, and though the servant addressed had frequent illnesses, and another valued brother is mentioned in the epistle as being left behind sick, Paul drops no hint as to their being healed by faith.
We are in a day of ruin, with utter and final apostasy close at hand. There cannot be the smallest question as to God’s power: He can heal the bodies of His saints today, as at any time, if it pleases Him to do so. But the condition of the assembly — the vessel of testimony — is such that faithful individuals would be concerned rather as to spiritual healing — that the saints should be found walking together according to truth, and in holy separation from the world, and from everything that is not according to the will of the Lord; that full place should be given to the Holy Spirit and His ministry of the glory of Christ; that the relations of Christ to the assembly and of the assembly to Christ should be known and entered into; that the members of the body of Christ should recognise their corporate bond with one another, and be found acting happily and healthfully in their mutual relations as such; that the joints of supply should be in such living contact with the Head as to minister of His fulness continually so that the body may be united together and increase with the increase of God; that saints may hold the truth in love, and “grow up to him in all things, who is the head, the Christ: from whom the whole body, fitted together, and connected by every joint of supply, according to the working in its measure of each one part, works for itself the increase of the body to its self-building up in love” (Ephesians 4: 15, 16).
[p. 188] These are very great subjects for exercise and desire, and it is to be earnestly wished that saints were more concerned about them. There is a danger of missing the distinctive character of christian blessings — of being diverted from the spiritual and the heavenly — and we have to see to it that we do not lose our crown.
Any pretension to miraculous powers in such a day as this would need to be tested in every way by the Holy Scriptures: the spirit of those claiming to exercise such powers would need to be discerned to be as being of God, and their teaching judged by the truth.
We are drawing near to the moment of apostasy, and we read of one to come “whose coming is according to the working of Satan in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteousness to them that perish, because they have not received the love of the truth that they might be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2: 9, 10). Alleged cases of healing have been found in connection with grave error as to the truth, and this renders it necessary that the children of God should exercise spiritual judgment, and apply the test of truth to those who assume to exercise healing powers. The desire for signs was one marked feature of Jewish unbelief (Matthew 16: 1 - 4, etc.; 1 Corinthians 1: 22). Man naturally loves the marvellous, without desiring in conscience or heart to be brought near to God; and in the last days the enemy will gain power over men by gratifying this desire (Matthew 24: 24).
In considering the scripture in James 5 we have to remember that when he wrote the assembly was a distinct and united company, and the elders were known individually who could be sent for as being officially in a position to act administratively for the Lord. The assembly cannot be found today; it is fallen, scattered and submerged in the world. Elders, as of divine appointment officially, there are none. Does this tremendous change of conditions make no difference? The very first exercise of a sick saint brings [p. 189] home to him that on the administrative side all is changed through man’s failure. But he can still pray, and if anything is on his conscience he can confess his offences to his brethren, and saints can pray for one another that they may be healed. We can go fully on the ground of James 5: 16, though probably few spiritual persons would care to take the ground of acting officially as elders according to verse 14. It is all a question of exercise, spiritual uprightness, and faith, and I suppose we have all known instances in which the Lord has come in to heal and raise up the sick in answer to prayer. But it is a great thing not to suffer our thoughts of things to get out of proportion. If we are more concerned about physical health than we are about spiritual health we need adjustment.
It is clear from 1 Corinthians 11: 30 that bodily weakness and even death may be the discipline of the Lord upon that which is displeasing to Him. John also refers to this when he says, “If any one see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life, for those that do not sin unto death. There is a sin to death: I do not say of that that he should make a request” (1 John 5: 16, 17). It would evidently be an exercise from the Lord as to whether sickness were of this nature or otherwise, and if a believer felt in his conscience that it was so, and was brought to repentance, it would be good for him to confess his wrongdoing. Such conviction and confession would lead to prayer for the sick one and his sins would be forgiven, and, generally speaking, he would be healed and raised up. There might indeed be the solemn case of sin unto death — which would be spiritually discerned — when there might be no faith to make request for recovery, but such a case would probably be exceptional.
But there is much sickness that is not discipline for unfaithfulness. Epaphroditus was sick close to death “for the sake of the work”, and his sickness was the cause of much exercise to Paul and also to the Philippian saints. If healing [p. 190] had been the normal thing in Christianity we should surely have found an example of it in this instance, but there is no suggestion that he was thus healed. Paul records with much thankfulness, just as we should of any sick brother who had been raised up, that “God had mercy on him, and not indeed on him alone, but also on me, that I might not have sorrow upon sorrow” (Philippians 2: 27). There is something peculiarly touching in his case: the reason for his sickness, the exercise of Paul (and no doubt others also) about it, the concern of the Philippians when they heard of it, and his own distress because they had heard of it. I venture to believe that all these exercises, and the activities of sympathy and love in the saints called forth by his sickness, were a sweeter expression of the love and “bowels and compassions” of the Christ than any act of miraculous power by which he might have been instantly healed.
How many thousands of saints have been happy to assert that they would not have missed for anything the exercises of prolonged sickness and suffering! They have so learned the grace and sympathy and succour of Christ as the living Priest, and they have been the subjects of so much precious and tender interest and consideration flowing from the spiritual affections of His saints, that they have become conscious of infinite gain and enrichment. And surely the development and exercise of such affections as these, eternal in their nature, though called into activity by circumstances connected with conditions of weakness and time, are a greater triumph of divine love and power than restoring the sick ones to health. I cannot but feel it is a real loss for the attention of saints to be turned from the spiritual dealings of the Lord with His saints, and from all that is the moral result of those dealings, to be concentrated upon the thought of bodily healing.
The experience of weakness and suffering may not only be of the greatest advantage to the spiritual welfare of the sufferer, but it may be absolutely essential to his preservation [p. 191] in service. We see a striking example of this in Paul himself, who suffered intensely from some form of physical infirmity. He was deeply exercised as to being relieved of this pressure, and besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from him. However, it was not the Lord’s will to remove the infirmity, whatever it was, but to make His grace sufficient for His servant, and to perfect His power in His servant’s conscious weakness. Is it not apparent that the removal of the infirmity by divine healing would have meant a real loss to Paul’s soul and service, and not a gain? To suppose that relief from physical weakness and suffering is the greatest good is a profound mistake. To prove the grace of the Lord and the power of Christ in the suffering is very often greater gain than to be relieved of it.
We are called to walk in the truth. If God is pleased to give physical healing in answer to prayer, as He has done in thousands of cases, we thankfully acknowledge His mercy and goodness. If it came to our knowledge that He has been pleased to confer a distinct gift of healing, manifest as such to sober and spiritual persons, we should thank Him for this also. But apart from the difficulty which we might have in verifying the truth of any claim to such gift, we ought not to allow even divine gift to divert us from the truth, or from a path which we have learned to be according to the truth.
Many true and divine gifts — evangelists, pastors, teachers — are found labouring in connection with things which we have seen to be contrary to the will of the Lord. We own them as gifts, but we do not walk with them, and we discern that even as gifts they suffer loss, and the church fails to receive the full measure of edifying through them because of their association with systems which are of men’s ordering. To have gifts for ministry or miraculous powers for healing is not the crowning glory of faithful saints in a day of ruin. It is rather to be addressed by Him who is the Holy One and True in these words: “Behold, I have set before thee an opened door, which no one can shut, because thou [p. 192] hast a little power, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name ... . I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee out of the hour of trial, which is about to come upon the whole habitable world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. I come quickly: hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown” (Revelation 3: 8 - 11).