Speaking Ill of Illness

In my last blog post I expressed doubt about people who believe Jesus promised to take away all our sickness: “By His wounds we were healed…” Ironically, the day after I published that, my wife and I both came down with a virulent flu (COVID?) that laid us out for a week. It would be a double comic irony if I thought God put that on us as a lesson because I denied that all my sickness was taken on the cross. I say comic because the same people who say Jesus took our diseases say that God never uses sickness as a disciplinary tool. That’s not funny?

In any case, I wanted to circle back and be more specific as to why I don’t think Isaiah or Peter who quoted the prophet meant what the prosperity gospel preachers think they meant. The misinterpretation of this verse displays the kind of knowledge gap I was lamenting in the previous post. There are two bits of knowledge missing from the thinking of those who apply this verse to physical healing. They both concern context. It is a cardinal principle of Bible interpretation to look first to the original context when deciding what is being said. The context of both Isaiah’s original statement and Peter’s quote is about one’s spiritual condition not physical health. Isaiah was speaking to people who were being plagued (literally) with physical difficulties because of their spiritual infidelity to God. (Wait! God used sickness as a tool?!) Peter was talking about salvation in Christ.

Isaiah was speaking of a time when God’s Servant, the Messiah, would take away the spiritual sickness of His people. This would parallel Peter’s link with salvation. This same idea is what Ezekiel and Jeremiah were talking about when they said God would replace His peoples’ heart of stone and it with a heart of flesh. This is not literal, physical language; this is not a literal heart transplant. This is a metaphor for what salvation would do after the price for sin was paid on the cross. “He bore our iniquities.” He took away the iniquitous heart of stone. Until God came to dwell among us, then in us, stony-hearted people would continue to rebel against Him. Until He “shed His love abroad in our hearts” to soften the heart of stone. Isaiah was describing the spiritual work the Messiah would do, not promising physical healing.

Knowing the immediate context is the first bit of knowledge the prosperity preachers miss. The second miss is knowing the broader context of the entire Bible record. God is shown to use physical conditions as discipline throughout the entire Scriptural record. It began when He kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden for disobedience. Instead of free food and sweet fellowship they got blood, sweat, toil and tears, and it was a life sentence. The history of God’s chosen people is a record of one smack-down after another. God used every kind of calamity known to man, including physical disease, to discipline His wayward children.

The prosperity preachers like to say that that all stopped when Jesus came and died for us. They like to point out that He healed all who came to Him. While this is true, it is also true that there were plenty of lepers besides the ten He healed; there were plenty of other sick folk at the pool of Siloam; there were lots of daughters besides Jairus’ who died and weren’t raised. If it was Jesus’ earthly mission to heal all disease, He failed miserably. The story of Lazarus is instructive. Jesus let His friend die so He could make a point. He told the dead man’s sister that He is the resurrection and the life. I think his point was that real life – real healing – was related to resurrection: His resurrection being the first fruits, as Paul called it. In our resurrected bodies, we will have the complete physical healing the prosperity preachers clammer for.

Until then, we live in the already-not yet state where death has been defeated, but people still die. Jesus has borne all our diseases, but we still get sick. I have two sisters who starkly portray the contrast. One sister died at thirty-three of a curable cancer because she was trusting that Jesus took her disease on the cross, so she wouldn’t seek medical treatment. The other sister was badly injured in an explosion, and her lungs were so severely burned that she was not expected to survive the night. To the doctors’ surprise, she awoke in the morning with two completely new lungs. The same group of people was praying for both my sisters; one died, and the other was miraculously healed. The cross of Christ was not in play in those situations; God’s will for my sisters played out as He intended.

The prosperity preachers are trying to fast-forward God’s plan to the New Day when Jesus comes again to put all things right. Their knowledge of God’s timetable, His big-picture context is mistaken. At this point in history – post Eden, post-Egypt, post-Calvary – God is more concerned with our character than our comfort. To demand physical comfort (healing) is to sidestep His plan. It doesn’t work. That is not what the biblical record teaches nor does life experience bear it out.

Ask Ananias and Saphira if God punishes disobedience. Ask the writer of Hebrews what he meant when he said God chastens those He loves. Ask what Paul meant when he said that some had died because they despised the Lord’s Table. If Christians are supposed to be heathy and wealthy at all times, explain why Paul said we should count it a blessing to suffer for Christ. Explain why he had to go through stoning and hunger and shipwreck to accomplish his work for Christ. Explain why all Jesus’ Apostles died martyrs’ deaths except one. Explain the thousands upon thousands of Christians who have been persecuted and died following Jesus. Explain why Christians are still being persecuted and killed in China or any Muslim country around the world today.

The prosperity gospel only works in a country like America where people have bought the lie told by preachers who despise the knowledge which would allow them to interpret the Bible correctly. We Americans are filthy rich, and the prosperity preachers have the audacity to claim it is by God’s blessing of our tremendous faith. We would do well to read what Jesus said to the church at Laodicea. “You say you are rich… I say you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked…. As many as I love I reprove and discipline. Be zealous therefore and repent.”

I don’t know how I got the flu last week. I probably bumped into someone carrying the virus. Ordained by God? Maybe – certainly allowed by His sovereign will. What I do know is it’s a fool’s errand to go to Christ’s work on the cross to handle my flu symptoms. My salvation was assured at Calvary as well as my ultimate healing in my resurrected body when Christ returns. In the meantime, I’ll take Tylenol, drink plenty of fluids and get all the rest I can. I’ll take care of my physical body, but I am much more interested in preparing for the new one I’m getting one day, the one Christ died on the cross to provide for me.