The Healing Power of God
Introduction: In our journey through the Book of Acts we come today to a text where we find the Apostle Peter in an itinerant ministry in the areas lying outside the city of Jerusalem. He preaches the Gospel and performs two remarkable miracles: in Lydda he heals a man who had been paralyzed for eight years, and in Joppa he raises a woman from the dead. We are going to look briefly at both of these miracles, but rather than preach an expository message on this text I am going to use it as a springboard to speak on the very important topic of “The Healing Power of God.” Next Sunday, Lord willing, we will follow up with a message entitled, “When God Does Not Heal.”
It’s one thing to believe that the power of God was available to heal and even raise the dead in the first century. But is that power available today? Some, obviously, believe it is, for there is no dearth of faith healers and claims of supernatural healing in our generation. So what I want to do today is to ask several questions:
Can God heal today?
Does God heal today?
And what about the great number of alleged miracles we hear about from such diverse sources as Catholic shrines, Philippine revivals, and faith-healing meetings? Let’s begin with our text, Acts 9:32-43:
Now as Peter was traveling through all those regions, he also came down to the saints who lived at Lydda. 33 There he found a man named Aeneas who had been bedridden for eight years, because he was paralyzed. 34 Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your own bed.” Immediately he got up. 35 And all who lived at Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.
36 Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which when translated means Dorcas); this woman was excelling in acts of kindness and charity which she did habitually. 37 But it happened at that time that she became sick and died; and when they had washed her body, they laid it in an upstairs room. 38 Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, having heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Do not delay in coming to us.” 39 So Peter got ready and went with them. When he arrived, they brought him into the room upstairs; and all the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing all the tunics and garments that Dorcas used to make while she was with them. 40 But Peter sent them all out and knelt down and prayed, and turning to the body, he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up. 41 And he gave her his hand and raised her up; and calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. 42 It became known all over Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. 43 And Peter stayed in Joppa many days with a tanner named Simon.
Peter continues the healing power of Christ. (Acts 9:32-43)
When Jesus was about to go to the Cross, He met with His disheartened disciples and encouraged them with these words in John 14: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”
That promise, spoken to the disciples, received direct fulfillment in miracles like the ones Peter performs here in Acts 9. There is a sense in which we see fulfillment in the church today, too, but perhaps not in the same way. I’m thinking of the fact that more people have come to personal faith in Christ at some Billy Graham crusades than Jesus won during his entire earthly ministry. But I do not believe we should necessarily assume there should be great healing miracles in the church today than Jesus performed during his earthly ministry.
The first healing miracle recorded for us in Acts 9 occurred at Lydda, which is today’s city of Lod, where the Tel Aviv airport is located, approximately 25 miles east of Jerusalem. Peter finds a paralyzed man there and announces that Jesus Christ is healing him, while he also engages the man’s faith by asking him to arise and make his bed. He is healed immediately and completely. Not surprisingly many turn in faith to the Lord as a result.
About twelve miles away was the town of Joppa, modern-day Jaffa, where a woman lived who was abounding with deeds of kindness and charity, which she did on a continual basis. The woman, whose name means “gazelle,” got sick and died. Stimulated by the report of the paralytic’s healing in the neighboring town, her friends call for Peter to come quickly—not to conduct a funeral but, presumably, because they believe his power might extend even to resurrection this dead woman. As though to convince him that the woman was a worthy candidate, they show him all the things she had made for others. Peter sends them out, kneels down and prays, and turning to the corpse, says, “Tabitha, arise.” She does just that. Once again, not at all surprisingly, many believe in the Lord.
I think it is interesting how very closely these two miracles in Acts 9 resemble miracles that Jesus performed, as recorded in Mark and Luke. Jesus healed a paralytic, asking him to rise, take up his bed and walk. Later He raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead, asking the family and friends to leave the house, and taking her by the hand and saying, “Child, arise.” In fact, the Aramaic words for “Child, arise,” given in Mark 5:41, are “Talitha, cumi.” The words that Peter would have spoken in Acts would have been, “Tabitha, cumi,” only one letter different.
These observations of parallelism have caused some liberal theologians, not surprisingly, to suggest that Acts borrowed the stories from the Gospels in order to enhance Peter’s authority. It is far more likely that Luke chose these two among many miracles Peter performed to show us how the power of Christ is still working through His apostles in the same way it was operative during Jesus’ own ministry.
I’m sure few of us here today have trouble believing these two miracles actually occurred just as they are reported. The reason you attend this church is probably that you believe the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God, and when God says it, that settles it for you. However, I want us to bring the whole issue of healing out of the New Testament era and into our own day and time. And I want to begin with the question,
Can God heal today?
The question is almost impertinent. Of course, He can. He’s God and He can do anything He wants. Nevertheless, to remind you of what you already know, I want to highlight two truths:
God can heal today because He is still omnipotent and can heal anyone anytime He wants. Though there are a number of verses we could use to establish this truth, I want to employ just three. Gen. 18:14 is the first. Sarah and Abraham have been told they are going to have their first child at a ripe old age and Sarah laughed in unbelief. Then came the Word of the Lord to Abraham in the form of a question: “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?” A negative answer was, of course, expected.
Matt. 19:26 is our second passage. Here Jesus is talking to His disciples about salvation, which is the greatest miracle of all. And Jesus says to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Finally, Hebrews 13:8. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” If Jesus healed in the first century, and if He’s the same Jesus today, then He can certainly to it today, too. I like the title of one of Kathryn Kuhlman’s books (though not necessarily her theology), God Can Do It Again, with emphasis upon the “can.”
God can heal today because He is sovereign and is answerable to no one but Himself. (I Sam. 2:6-8) What I am trying to establish with this point is that God can’t be put in a box. We have no right to decide for Him what He can or cannot do. Let me read to you from 1 Sam. 2:6-8:
The Lord kills and makes alive
He brings down to Sheol and raises up
The Lord makes poor and rich
He brings low; He also exalts.
He raises the poor from the dust,
He lifts the needy from the ash heap
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s
And He set the world on them.
Or try Job 23:13: “He is unique and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, that He does.” God is absolutely sovereign.
The answer to our first question, then, is a resounding “Yes!” God can heal today. But to be consistent we must also say He can also not heal if He wants to. So, we come to our second major question:
Does God Heal Today?
On this question there is room for considerably more difference of opinion. I want us to begin our search for the answer by first observing that …
There are two extreme viewpoints to avoid. These views are very common, but nevertheless I believe they are both wrong. The first is this:
God is willing and anxious to heal anyone who exercises sufficient faith. This is one of the most popular viewpoints in the church today, often called health-wealth theology. It teaches that God wants every Christian healthy and wealthy, and if you aren’t both, it’s only because you lack faith. Healing is viewed as part of the atonement and as a guaranteed right of the believer. I know of no better way to explain this view than by means of a quotation from one of its advocates:
“In the Word there is a perfect theology of health and prosperity. From Genesis to Revelation run the glad tidings that the atonement covers the entire scope of human need. The more than 32,000 promises assure us that all we need for body, soul, and spirit for both time and eternity is provided in the atonement. Nothing could be more sweeping than Phil. 4:19, ‘My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.’ Also 3 John 2, ‘Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.’ These promises are amplified and supported by thousands of others guaranteeing health and prosperity to God’s obedient people….
How could it be otherwise? The Lord taught His disciples to pray: ‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.’ We are sure there is no sickness or poverty in that fair land. Since these are the result of sin, they cannot be God’s preferential will because sin and all of its effects are against the will of God. HALLELUJAH! The entire universe is moving toward a social order called the kingdom of God, where none of these can exist. Therefore, they cannot be God’s choice at any time for any part of His dominion. All of God’s universe-wide activity is directed toward the total elimination of sin and all of its consequences from all spheres of His redeemed creation. Since all of these things are true, why should any obedient child of God suffer?”
Now we are going to address this view in more detail next Sunday, but let me just observe that the principal mistake this writer makes is that his interpretation is selective. Even in NT times not every faithful believer was healed of every illness. (The Apostle Paul, for example, prayed three times for the removal of his thorn in the flesh but to no avail). Furthermore, God is not bound to operate today as He did in the first century. There is no Scriptural warrant for expecting healing to continue at its NT pace after the Church was founded, and there is substantial evidence that it did not. The second erroneous viewpoint is this:
God is not in the healing business today because the gift of healing ceased, along with other sign gifts, in the first century. There are many in the evangelical church who affirm this, but I personally find it to be unsupportable either by Scripture or by experience. There is no place I know of in the Bible that indicates that any of the gifts of the Spirit have ceased. Nor is this position supported by experience. I am aware that there are probably a great many more alleged miracles than actual ones today. But I do not believe that justifies the categorical rejection without investigation of all reported healing miracles.
Some evangelicals seem to take the same approach as Matthew Arnold, who wrote that “healings cannot happen today, therefore healings do not happen and will not happen.” That’s a very simple way to dispense with the whole problem, but, of course, it’s neither logical nor honest. There is simply too much evidence from intelligent, objective men of God, Christian doctors, missionaries and others that healing miracles do occur. We cannot categorically deny it except by a total disregard for the facts.
But if these two extreme positions are both without Scriptural merit, with what are we left? Well, I believe …
There is a sensible (and Biblical) medium between these extremes. I would like to express this by means of three propositions:
Even medical healing has its ultimate source in God. This is a fact that I believe we tend to overlook: every time anyone is healed, whether by a doctor or by drugs, or by the person’s own antibodies, the healing ultimately comes from God. He is the one who created us, and it’s because of the predictability of the human body that medicine has become a science. We must also not forget the tremendous power the human body has to heal itself. I believe it was well illustrated by a Christian doctor I know. I asked him for medication to get rid of a cold and bad sore throat. He told me I had two options: I could take an antibiotic and be well in seven days or I could just go about my business and be well in a week. There’s a lot of truth in that.
One renowned physician has written, “Effective medical treatment would disappear overnight were it not for the fact that the body has been divinely endowed with the capacity to restore itself when disease and disorder strikes it. God has endowed our bodies with the power to heal wounds, to overcome infections, to develop immunity, to compensate for deficiencies and adapt to loss of function. As doctors we do not ourselves heal patients, although we may at times be able to alter conditions within the body so that healing can occur.” So even natural healing is God’s gift.
God also heals miraculously on occasion today. I have no doubt in my own mind that in addition to the natural healing that we all experience to some extent (and that some people experience to an unusual degree), God also heals some people miraculously. Such healing might be defined as “complete, instantaneous recovery from organic disease which takes place without the use of any therapeutic agent whatever.” Dr. Kurt Koch has personally witnessed and documented many such cases during the revival of recent years in Indonesia. But we probably needn’t go so far from home. Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter, an eminent scholar and conservative theologian has described a number of such cases known to him personally in his book, Divine Healing of the Body.
Nor should this surprise us, for the Church has been assigned a healing ministry, according to the NT. “Gifts of healings” are mentioned several times in 1 Cor. 12 & 14 as among the gifts that God has sovereignly given to His church. (Interestingly, this gift is always mentioned in the plural, as if to say that no one has a permanent gift of healing, but rather the Holy Spirit may give gifts of healings at various times).
In addition, James 5:13ff tells us that the elders of the church have a prayer and anointing ministry for the sick, and that healing results from that ministry. I don’t see how such passages can be ignored or twisted to exclude healing altogether from the church today, as some want to do.
But by any reasonable accounting I believe divine healing is relatively rare today, and that causes us to ask, “why?” and brings us to our third proposition in describing our happy medium.
Miraculous healings are relatively infrequent today, as compared to New Testament times, since some of the NT reasons for healing are no longer valid. This again is a very important point, and we must, in order to understand it, ask ourselves, “Why did Jesus heal?” I personally see four reasons behind His healing ministry in the NT. They are as follows:
He healed out of mercy and compassion.
He healed to stimulate faith.
He healed to establish His credentials as a revealer of God’s truth.
He healed as a sign of the Messianic Kingdom.
Now I believe that the first of these four reasons, namely that He healed out of mercy and compassion, is still a valid reason for healing miracles today and it probably explains most of those that occur. God is a God of mercy and compassion and He takes delight in helping those who are helpless.
The second reason probably also had some validity today, namely healing to stimulate faith. Jesus said to His disciples, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; otherwise believe on account of the works themselves.” There was great evidential value in the healing miracles. And that is still true today, especially in areas of the world where Christianity is a new movement, such as Indonesia. In our own country, however, where people are skeptical and Gospel-hardened, and where the claims of Christianity are so widely known, I doubt whether God often uses miracles to stimulate faith. Even Jesus refused to perform miracles where the people were skeptical.
When we turn to the third reason as to why Jesus performed miracles, we find that it was to establish His credentials as a Revealer of God’s truth. Think with me for a moment about this. Do you realize that there were three great periods of revelation in the Scripture and that there were also three great waves of miracles, and the two correspond exactly. One was the time of Moses. Another was at the time of the major prophets. And the third was during the ministry of Jesus and the apostles. By far the vast majority of the Bible was written during these three periods, and by far the vast majority of biblical miracles were performed during these three periods.
The logical explanation is that when God was speaking to His people, He attested or validated the message of those who spoke for him with miracles. See if that isn’t what the book of Hebrews says in regard to the message of salvation which came through the apostles: “… it was at the first spoken through the Lord and confirmed to us by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.”
Now one of the most basic assumptions of orthodox Christianity is that God is no longer speaking to His people in the sense of giving normative revelation. That does not mean that He doesn’t give personal guidance through the Holy Spirit or that He doesn’t speak to us through His Word, but He is no longer giving new revelation for the whole Church. If that is true, then perhaps we should no longer expect the same level of miraculous activity that was evident in the three great periods when revelation was being given.
The fourth reason for Jesus’ healing was that He healed as a sign of His Messianic kingdom. When John the Baptist was languishing in prison and his circumstances began to cause cracks in his armor of faith, he sent a message to Jesus, asking, “Are you the Messiah or do we look for someone else?” And Luke 7:22 gives Jesus’ reply: “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over Me.'”
Jesus’ answer to the question, “Are you the Messiah?” was, in effect, “I’m performing miracles, aren’t I? I’m healing people, aren’t I? And I’m healing them immediately, completely, permanently, and publicly. Who else can do such things? The Kingdom is upon you.” Had they accepted His kingship over them, I. believe the Messianic Kingdom would have been instituted at that time. But they didn’t and it wasn’t. By the way, we may yet see another wave of miracles immediately preceding the Second Coming as a sign of the final fulfillment of Jesus’ Messianic Kingdom, but I do not see significant evidence of that yet.
My point in this discussion of the purposes behind Jesus’ healing miracles is to show that some of those purposes do not apply today and that therefore we shouldn’t expect the frequency of miracles to be the same today as it was in the first century.
There is a final question I want to touch upon briefly this morning.
What about the great number of alleged healings performed by faith healers or at sacred shrines?
What do we do with all this? Is it really legitimate? If not, why are so many people being deluded by it? I personally believe there are at least six possible explanations for any alleged healing that might come to our attention.
Some are genuine and divinely supernatural. When the healer is preaching Jesus Christ and salvation by grace, I know of nothing that would keep God from working in such a context. J. Sidlow Baxter and Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, who was both a prominent physician and a conservative theologian, investigated carefully some of the healings at Kathryn Kuhlman’s services and pronounced them genuine. I can accept that.
Some are genuine and psychosomatic. There are many who attend healing meetings or visit sacred shrines who are suffering from functional rather than organic disorders. Many of these illnesses can be traced to emotional or psychological causes. By that I do not mean to imply that the patient is not really sick, but rather that the cause of the illness is not organic.
Well, if an illness or infirmity is caused by an emotional or psychological problem, it can probably also be cured by emotional or psychological treatment. And there is no question but that emotions and psychology play a large part in the average faith healing service. Many people get well because they believe they are going to get well. Such a frame of mind won’t replace an amputated leg or repair a torn ligament, but it sure can cure gastrointestinal disorders or psoriasis or stiffness in the joints. This kind of healing is even biblical, for the writer of the Proverbs says, “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” Some faith healers merely change people’s attitudes, and the people heal themselves.
Some are genuine and are medical oddities. Medical doctors have long been aware of the phenomenon of spontaneous remission. Martin Lloyd-Jones writes of medical research done recently in Chicago on 244 cases of spontaneous cures of advanced stages of cancer in the U.S. Some of these cases may have been genuine healings by God, but certainly not all of them, because many of the individuals were not even religious, either before or after their cures. Many are simply medical oddities. Since doctors run into such cases from time to time, it should not be surprising if a faith healer does as well. The difference is that the doctor says, “I can’t explain it,” while the faith healer says, “I healed him.”
Some are genuine and Satanically supernatural. Let us not forget that not every genuine miracle comes from God. The magicians of Egypt, through the power of Satan, were able to imitate several of the miraculous plagues God wrought through His servant Moses. And Satan is still in the business of counterfeiting God’s work. Jesus said in Matt. 7 that on the Judgment Day many would say to Him, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles.” And Jesus does not dispute their claim. He simply says to them, “I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” The miracles they performed, the healings they produced were Satanically supernatural. I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to what percent of the alleged miracles being performed today fall into this category, but I believe it would be significant.
Some are simply not genuine. That is, the person may feel better for a few days, but he is shortly right back where he was. At many a faith healer’s campaign, one will find people who were supposedly cured at the last campaign, and now they are back to be cured of the same disease.
Some are downright phony. That is, they are staged for the purpose of drawing larger crowds and getting more money. There are well-documented cases of this kind of deceit in many healing circles. And that raises what I believe to be an interesting and valid question: “Have you ever known a poor faith healer?” Faith healers invariably claim their authority from Matt. 10:7,8, “As you go, preach saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; freely you received, freely give.'” But they also invariably fail to apply the very next verse to themselves: “Do not acquire gold or silver or copper for your money belts.”
A word of caution: Neither theology nor methodology is properly validated solely by results. There are many people whose faith is so experience-oriented that when they see healing occurring under someone’s ministry, they automatically assume that person’s doctrine must be correct and his methodology right. We dare not assume that, in light of the six possible explanations we have just looked at.
Just because some remarkable healings took place at Kathryn Kuhlman’s meetings does not mean that God is placing His stamp of approval on her entire theology or on women preachers. If some have been healed at Lourdes, that does not vindicate Roman Catholic theology. If God heals someone after a faith healer has grasped his head and yelled, “In Jesus’ name, heal” several times, that doesn’t mean that preacher has discovered the biblical formula for healing.
We need desperately to derive our theology and our methodology from the Scriptures: “To the Law and to the Testimony” was Isaiah’s battle-cry, “If they do not speak according to this Word, it is because they have no light in them.” (Isaiah 8:20)
Conclusion: What we need today is a greater openness to the working of the Spirit of God, but we also need greater discernment at the same time. We need to quit putting God in our little theological boxes, telling him what He can and can’t do in our day. But we also must test the spirits to see if they are of God. Jesus warned in Matt. 24:24, “False Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.” May this message help to keep us from being misled.
Tags:
Healing
Faith healers