Over the years I have talked with a lot of people about healing. And it is surprising how often the conversations take the same paths over and over again. Many people suffer from the same misconceptions and wrong beliefs when it comes to the blessings of God and specifically healing. Sure they know that God is capable to heal, but they do not believe that he is willing to heal, and this can take many different forms, such as God is using a sickness to teach me a lesson, or that God is keeping me sick so that I can be a greater witness for Him – even though none of these ideas are supported in the scriptures. However, the fact that these wrong beliefs are not taught in this scriptures, has not really stopped them from spreading to many people in the body of Christ, and caused them to develop a wrong understanding of the nature and character of God as a result.
That’s why in this study today, we will be examining how healing is actually your right in Christ Jesus. He has paid for you to have it, and He wants you to be healed even more-so than you can possibly imagine. God is not withholding healing from you, nor is He your enemy. As you see these truths from scripture, they will expand and increase your ability to see the goodness and mercy of God, and will help you to replace the many misconceptions about God and healing with right believing founded on Biblical truth.
Someone asked me once in a discussion of God’s healing, why all this faith and belief stuff is even important. It was an honest question, and I am glad that the person had the courage to ask it. The simple answer is that faith and belief are important because the Grace of Christ gives you all things freely. Everything is laid open before you in Christ… faith and belief is how you receive each gift. Just the same as with salvation. Salvation is the greatest of all gifts, and you receive it by faith. So too, in the same manner do you receive every other gift in Christ as well. It really is that simple!
This fact about faith and the receiving of all of the blessings of God also illuminates to us how very dangerous these misconceptions and wrong beliefs are. If the enemy can cause people to believe wrongly regarding a thing, then he can effectively stop you from receiving it… not that God has stopped providing, but because you have stopped receiving due to wrong believing! That distinction is very important, because quite a number of people become angry at God due to their lack of receiving (caused by their wrong beliefs) and then they proceed to compound the wrong believing by accusing God of withholding from them whatever they are seeking. It is sad, but I have seen this happen on many occasions. This is why I made a point to say that God is not a withholder, and He is not your enemy. Turn to 3rd John 1:2:
“Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.”
Many important details can be seen in this one verse of scripture. First, that it starts with the word Beloved. I want you to take notice of how God sees you. You are not some worthless nobody. You are not an accident or a mistake. Misguided people may tell you that you are, you may even think that way of yourself right now, but that is not how God sees you! And His opinions are always correct. He addresses you as “beloved”. It is this revelation that you are actually God’s beloved that is so very important. Just this one bit of truth can totally change your entire outlook on life and your opinion about God. When you actually see that you are the beloved of God, you will suddenly understand exactly why He is not your enemy, and also why He is not withholding any good gift from you – including healing. Look at what the rest of the verse says:
I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health. This statement typically runs counter to what we generally think about God. It is flat-out opposite to what most pastors teach about God as well. We are typically taught that God really doesn’t care that much, and He will not think twice about inflicting sickness on us if it furthers his agenda. We are taught that if we fall sick, it’s because God is punishing us or teaching us a lesson, or that he “moves in mysterious ways” and that we should just accept it as his will. However none of this actually fits with what the Holy Spirit reveals to us regarding healing in the scriptures. Look at this verse again. Beloved, I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health. God wishes above all things… how many things? All things! God wishes above all things that you – His beloved – would both prosper and be in health, the same two things that most traditional churches recoil at the mention of… prosperity and health…. Do you think that is just a coincidence? Not a chance! It is a coordinated effort by the enemy against the revealed will of God for you. God’s will for you is that you prosper and be in health, but the enemy has moved most church leaders to declare prosperity and health as some kind of false doctrine. However I would encourage you to read the scriptures for yourself and see the will of God in Christ. Jesus went around doing the will of God (John 6:38) and if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father (John 14:9), and Jesus went around from place to place healing all, and freeing all who were oppressed of the devil. (Matthew 9:35, Acts 10:38); and here God reveals His will for you in the scriptures that you prosper and be in health above all things. And then, He tells you how to receive it: …even as your soul prospers.
This last part of the verse is key. That little phrase “even as” means to the same degree as. In other words, to the same degree that your soul prospers, so too will you prosper and be in health. This is precisely why so many are not receiving, and this is why all of those wrong beliefs and misconceptions are so very destructive and dangerous.
Your soul is your mind and your emotions, what you think and feel is all a part of your soul. And here the verse says that to the same degree that your thinking and emotions prosper (line up with the truth of Christ) so too then will you prosper in every other area as well. Many people have the idea that what they think doesn’t really matter, but here the scriptures say that what you think matters very much.
So now let’s take a look at what Jesus says regarding healing, and let’s allow Him to teach us the truth. Turn to Luke 13:10-16:
“And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.
And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.
And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.
And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said to the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.
The Lord then answered him, and said, You hypocrite, does not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?
And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, see, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?”
Here we see an account of Jesus healing a woman, and the details in this account are wonderful. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, and when He sees this woman suffering with a spirit of infirmity, He calls her to Him. This is an amazing thing. Jesus shows His tender mercy, His divine care for the state of this woman. In verse 12, He says to her: Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. I like this a lot, because notice that He doesn’t tell her, do this to get healed or wait for this to happen to get healed – instead, He tells her what He has made her to be. He tells her what she is after encountering Him… she is loosed from her infirmity!
Then in verse 13 He lays His hands on her. This is pure love. His word would have been enough for her, but He showed His mercy in not being put off to love the unlovable… to touch the crippled. This is the love and mercy of Jesus. We see that Immediately she was made straight and glorified God. It was the healing that glorified God; God does not make you sick, nor does He take any glory or pleasure in you being sick or infirm – but He gets glory in freeing you from your sickness and disease. That’s why He says to go and heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead… the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of Life! God is a God of Life, not death!
Next in verses 14 through 16, the ruler of the synagogue, a Pharisee, got up and led the people in worship because of the amazing miracle that God had just done for this woman! Oh, wait… it says that he answered with indignation. He was mad that Jesus healed on the sabbath. And notice, the pharisee didn’t address Jesus, he addressed the people! He tried to refocus the attention off of Jesus and the miracle of God’s healing, back onto the rules and legalism of men! And we see the same type of thing happening today. Where instead of introducing people to Jesus who can and is willing to heal them, we have leaders in churches today who are more interested in rules and Law-keeping rather than the Savior who came to set the captives free and loose burdens. We load the people down with more rules, when Jesus came to free them.
In verse 15, Jesus rebukes the synagogue leader, and it’s interesting to note that He uses the analogy of leading an ox or a donkey to water, loosing it from its stall. This statement by Jesus is profound, because Jesus manages to make a reference that any person from Biblical times would understand. The Ox was a ritually clean animal, while the donkey was not. The Ox represented the Jewish people, while the donkey represented the Gentiles, but here Jesus is consolidating both, saying that the healing and freedom of God is for both – and look at what He says in verse 16:
And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, see, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
This woman was a daughter of Abraham, and therefore healing was her right. This is why Jesus said, ought not this woman being… do you see it? Ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham. Her position required her status to change.
Now, how does this help us today? Galatians 3:28-29:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you be Christ’s, then are you Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Christ Jesus has made you a seed of Abraham, and an heir according to the promise of God. Healing is just as much your right today, as it was for the woman back then, and even more so. Turn to Matthew 15:22-28:
“And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried to him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, you son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and sought him, saying, Send her away; for she cries after us.
But he answered and said, I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.
And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
Then Jesus answered and said to her, O woman, great is your faith: be it to you even as you will. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.”
Here we see another account of a woman. What’s interesting here is that she tries two different approaches. First in verse 22, she tries to entreat Jesus using a covenant title that was not hers to use. She calls Him O Lord, Son of David. And we see that Jesus did not answer her. She was a Canaanite woman, a Gentile and she had no right under the Old Covenant to use that name by which she called Him.
In verse 23, Jesus’ disciples try to get Jesus to send her away… no surprise there! Yet as we see in verse 24, Jesus does answer her, but not in a way that she expected. He says that He was not sent, except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This may seem like a very exclusive statement; but in a round-about way He was telling her of her error in the way she was seeking Him before… at first she was a Gentile trying to entreat Jesus as if she was a Jew, but now after hearing what Jesus says, and knowing of her unrighteous state as a Gentile, without a covenant, in verse 25 she humbles herself, simply worships Him and cries Lord, help me!
Now at this point, Jesus seems very rude and off-putting in verse 26, but in a moment you will be glad that He told her what He did in this verse. He says It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. You see in the time of the Old Covenant, the Jews were the children and the Gentiles were the dogs. The Greek word their for “dogs” is not an outside kind of mangie mutt, but a “puppy”. The Jews were the ones who had a covenant with God, and anyone outside of the covenant would be dependent on them to minister blessings, which is what the Jewish people were originally supposed to be, a nation of ministers, holy to God. So Jesus’ analogy here is very apt… the woman does not deny this, and with a stunning display of faith, says that even the puppies get the crumbs that fall from the masters’ table. In other words, sometimes the puppy gets some food before its regular feeding time.
Jesus recognizes this faith and grants her request.
Now I stated that you will be glad that Jesus said to her what He said about the blessing and healing of God being the children’s bread. What I am about to show you from scripture is extremely important, because many believers still see themselves as the dogs – they still see themselves as the little puppies waiting for crumbs to fall. Those who were observant earlier may have already seen this, but do you remember our verse from Galatians 3:28? Go back to Galatians 3, and go up two verses to 26 and 27:
“For you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
You, dear beloved, are a child of God in Christ Jesus! Today in Christ, the blessing and healing of God is your bread! It is yours; it is for you. You are absolutely entitled to it in every way, because as verse 27 says, you have been baptized into Christ and have put on Christ. This is not an action that you take in order to get – this is telling you what your status in Christ is! You have put on Christ and because of that you are entitled to all the rights and privileges of a child of God! That definitely includes healing, health and prosperity of every kind!
So I encourage you today, let these truths sink deep into your soul. Let them cause your soul to prosper, and as we read at the start of this study, you will prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers. It is your right in Christ Jesus.