Is Sickness Ever God’s Will?
Healing Is a Part of Salvation
The well-known verse in Romans 10:8-10 says that all who believe with their hearts and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord and that God raised Him from the dead shall be saved. It seems fairly easy for us to trust that when we say this prayer and receive Jesus, we have eternal life in Him. And this is for ALL who believe!
What we often have trouble realizing is that the same redemption that saved us also healed us. The Greek word sozo is used interchangeably in the New Testament to speak of salvation and physical healing. Salvation includes healing. It’s part of the “package” Jesus provided for us on the cross!
If we want to know God’s will concerning something, we need to look at Jesus. Jesus healed all who came to Him and never once turned anyone away. He never told a single sick person that it was God’s will that they suffered a little longer. He never made anyone sick “to teach them something.” These are terrible lies that the enemy has sown to keep God’s children in bondage to sickness and doubt.
We also see God’s will for healing in James 5:14. James asks, “Is any sick among you?” The question reveals that there should be no sick people among us. The word sick is the Greek word astheneo and means “to be feeble, be diseased, impotent folk, (be) sick, (be, be made) weak.” James then declares, the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up!
God REALLY wants you well!
Healing Is God’s Will for All
To suggest that it’s not God’s will to heal some makes Jesus’ suffering on the cross of no effect. Yet the Word shows us His sacrifice was tremendously effective! “By His stripes, we were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Jesus bore all sickness,so we wouldn’t have to—just as He bore all sin for us. The power of sickness is sin, and if sin is defeated, sickness has no legal right in any believer.
The True Nature of God
God does not change. Look at the Word concerning who He is: He is the Lord that heals us (Ex. 15:26), the Lord who sent His Word to heal us (Ps. 107:20), the Lord who forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases(Ps. 103:1-3), the Lord who bore our sicknesses on the cross (Is. 53:4-5), the Lord who healed all who came to Him (Matt. 8:16), the Lord who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil (Acts 10:38), the Lord who set the church against sickness and commanded us to go and to heal the sick (Matt. 10:8), the Lord who told us that greater works would we do ( John 14:12), the Lord who gives us power to lay hands on the sick and them recover (Mark 16:18), the Lord who confirms His Word with signs following (Mark 16:20), the Lord who healed the sick through the ministries of Peter, Paul and other believers (Acts), the Lord who gives gifts of healings to the church for the church age (1 Cor. 12:9), and the Lord who asks through James if there are any sick among us (James 5:14).
Through the Word, we can clearly see that healing is for all and available to all through faith in God’s abundantly wonderful grace!
(Source: Charis Bible College)
