03.68. What Saith The Scripture?

What Saith the Scripture? The teaching of the Scriptures is the final authority on this subject, as on every other question of faith and life. The teaching of the Bible is for me the last word. I accept it whether I understand it or not. Faith can wait. It is humbling to have to bear the reproachful pity of those who speak with the confident authority of science and philosophy, learning and psychology, but the yoke of Christ is easy when faith is assured and meekness is content to wait God’s time. When evolution and revelation seem to be at variance, faith banks with revelation. The difficulty is not, however, with the hostility of science and learning, but with the, contradictions among those who believe. There are differences of interpretation, but we may leave the disputants to their contentions, and seek to know the truth for ourselves as far as we can.

There is no doubt that the Scriptures teach that the Lord is our Healer. That is one of the names by which He is revealed. It is also beyond dispute that our Lord and Savior regarded healing as an integral part of His ministry. He was a Physician who healed without medicine all kinds of diseases. He commissioned His apostles to heal the sick. The gift of healing was, and is, among the gifts of the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:9) Healing was part of the apostolic ministry. The gift has never been withdrawn from the church. Through all the ages there have been witnesses to its power. The promise in the Epistle of James is for all time: "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." The Bible associates sickness with Satan. God did not make man to be sick. Sickness came with sin. Jesus attributed some sicknesses to the devil. He said of one woman that Satan had bound her eighteen years (Luke 13:16). In Acts 10:38 we read that "Jesus. . . . went about doing good, and healing the diseases of all who were oppressed of the devil." At the same time, he rebuked those who traced sickness and calamity to personal sinfulness. "Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, that he should be born blind." Sickness and sin are associated in redemption and healing. Saint Matthew sees in the healing ministry of our Lord the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. "He cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses" (Matthew 8:16-17). He bare our sicknesses as He bare our sins, for they were part of the same burden. It cannot mean that they were transferred to Him, for, so far as we know, He was never sick, but in sympathy and at great cost in physical and mental virtue He lifted their burden and bore it away. The sick-less Christ bare our sicknesses, as the sin-less Christ bare our sins. When He healed the palsied man who was let down through the roof, He began with his sin. Others whom He healed He commanded to sin no more, and the passage in Saint James links healing with forgiveness. There is a passage of Saint Paul’s (1 Corinthians 11:31-32) that traces sickness and even death to spiritual dishonor.

There is sickness in which there is no sin. It may be true theologically that all sickness came from sin, but experimentally there is a sickness that is of grace. Scripture must interpret Scripture. The affliction of Job was of grace. It was to the glory of God. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was not of sin. Satan took advantage of it, but God gave it for the glory of His grace. Paul healed others, but he accepted his own sufferings as part of the afflictions of Christ. Epaphroditus was healed of the Lord (Php 2:27), Trophimus he had to leave at Miletum sick (2 Timothy 4:20), for Timothy’s stomach he recommended a moderate use of wine (1 Timothy 5:23), and on his travels there went with him Luke, the beloved physician.