Revd David W John.

'Why does God only sometimes Heal ?'

  Can God be limited by Us? 

Can the actions and will of God be limited by us? Now, many might seem surprised by such a suggestion after all we all believe that God is all powerful, all knowing and of course the master of his own decisions and will, to suggest then that God could be constrained in some way by mere human beings seems ridiculous of course but I have heard it taught nevertheless and interestingly enough, most often, in relation to the context of the Christian healing ministry.

So I thought that as these two issues seem inextricably linked we could look at them both together.

So Can Gods actions be limited by us and why does God only sometimes heal?

There is amongst many Christians of the Charismatic persuasion (of which I am one) the belief that, if you are sick, God automatically wishes to make you better. This belief stems from a number of theological pre-suppositions. 

1. That God wants to heal us all because all of our infirmities were carried away by Christ on the cross (a theology developed from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah’s description of the ‘Suffering servant’)

2. That God wants to heal us of all sickness because he wants us to have abundant life. ( a sort of off-shoot of the prosperity Gospel)

3. Because sickness is a part of the ‘Old order’ of things which in their view has been completely overtaken by the presence of the new kingdom of God

4. And finally and perhaps most importantly because these particular Christians see the miracles of Jesus in the N/T as an end in themselves.

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 The problem with holding this sort of view, of course, comes naturally when God doesn’t heal (which of course, if we are honest, covers most situations most of the time,) And when this happens the struggle then begins to find out why and usually various explanations are offered:

“God cannot heal them because the victim has un-confessed sin in their life” (adding guilt to the sufferings of the already sick!)

‘We’re not praying with enough Faith’ (making both the sick and the ministers praying, guilty!)

‘God has withdrawn from this situation and is punishing us’ well, as discussed previously, this is just a ludicrous.  

Each suggestion, you will realise of course stating obviously that Gods ability to do what he would really like to do has been constrained or stopped by US. The 2nd issue for today. Now, within this train of thought… three massive assumptions are being made.

Firstly, that Gods role within the world actually includes, at this point in his kingdom plan, the healing of all our sicknesses! (Which by the way would ultimately and logically mean that we would never die?)

Secondly, as I have just said, that God is being frustrated / limited by us!

And thirdly, that the physical healing of sickness is and was in Jesus own ministry an end in itself i.e. that when Jesus healed there was no context or reason for doing so outside of the benefit received by the person healed, a mistaken assumption which in my view misses the point of Christ’s healings altogether and when corrected, as we will indeed do in a moment, provides at least one answer to this whole dilemma.

The first assumption:

This is actually based on a misunderstanding of Christ’s own ‘Kingdom teaching’ a misunderstanding battled out years ago between two theologians Weiss and Switzer. Now one taught that the Kingdom of God had come IN ITS TOTALITY in Christ’s ministry, So all the benefits of the new Kingdom are available now! ---- by extension then that we should all be healed all the time…..as we would be at the end of days!  The other taught that the Kingdom of God was still ALL YET TO COME and would arrive only at the end of time when God would act to re-create the universe etc So nothing was available.

Neither of these two chaps were right of course, what Jesus actually taught was that the ‘coming’ of the kingdom was a process which although had started in him and his ministry would not conclude until the end of days.

In Jesus teachings the kingdom starts and then grows like a mustard seed or like a bit a yeast in some doe etc, you get the picture, and logically of course the same applies to the ‘benefits’ of the kingdom, like Healing! they, like the kingdom itself have come ‘in part’ as a ‘foretaste’ of that which is to come thus the possibility of physical healing has arrived but to assume that God wants everyone to be healed all the time assumes a role for God which he has yet to initiate, we will all be healed of course one day, but at the end of days when the kingdom and all its benefits arrive in their fullness, when the tree is full grown, when God restores all things etc.

The second assumption; ‘God is limited in what he can or can’t do by us, by our sin or by our lack of Faith.’

To me this just seems just a bit silly. I know, there’s that one example where the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus performed no miracles in one town because they had no Faith; but can we really build a whole theology of ‘God being limited by man” on the basis of one decision that Christ made in one situation?  Surely if this was a major theological consideration, if Jesus or the N/T writers had seen this as a major problem, the bible would be full of warnings about it. And further more, in most cases, if we look, we find in fact that a person’s faith actually seemed to have little bearing on the miracles that Jesus and his disciples performed.

Take the healing of the beggar outside the temple gates by Peter in Acts 3:1--10 the beggar didn’t even know of whom he was asking for money and Peter doesn’t spend hours counselling him on his need for faith prior to the miracle, the man wasn’t even a Christian at the time, Peter just reaches down tells him that he has no Gold or Silver and commands him to get up and walk!   

Or take for example Christ’s own healings; on one occasion Mark 2: 4--12 Jesus tells a cripple that his sins are forgiven and then heals him purely in response to a challenge by the Pharisees who doubted his right to forgive sins. In this case Jesus healing has nothing at all to do with the man’s sickness and everything to do with proving to a disbelieving crowd the nature of his own person.

Our ability to have a strong enough Faith then seems irrelevant.

This leaves the suggestion that God doesn’t heal because of un-confessed sin! To this I would ask three questions;

1. Do any of us actually remember or even know ALL of our sins?

2. Are we suggesting here that un-confessed sin stops God working and if so are these then the sins that God forgot to deal with on the Cross?

And

3.Do we really believe in a God who would punish us as well as Jesus?

Isn’t the WHOLE POINT of the cross denied by such a suggestion?

This idea is of course then just non-sensible and completely counters the teachings of scripture at its most basic of levels.

 So why did Jesus heal and why might he still heal some today?

The mistaken idea mentioned above that God wants to heal us all, all the time, seems also to presume that physical healing from illness was for Jesus an end in itself or in other words that there was no other motive for the miracles than the well being of the person so healed.

This assumption seems to me to fall at the very base of the problem;

If Jesus healed simply to make people better or if it was the natural consequence of the kingdoms presence, then one can see how some would come to believe that it should continue to happen for the same reasons today, however what if Jesus reasons for healing people were completely different, what if his motive behind them was specifically something else? How would this help us to place the whole complicated question of healing today in a clearer context?

Well for an answer let’s go back to the examples we just discussed, why did Jesus heal the crippled man?.......... In order to silence the doubting Pharisees, in order to prove that he had the authority to forgive sins, in other words in order to prove that he was Divine / the messiah. The motive then was evangelistic.

In regard to the first Post-Easter miracle by Peter, if you read the context it is clear why the miracle happened, after he was better the formerly crippled man ran through the Temple courts praising God, those seeing him questioned Peter and John who of course, yes you’ve guessed it, used the Miracle as the means of preaching CHRIST AS MESSIAH.

The New Testament miracles then have much less to do with the people who benefit from them and everything to do with EVANGELISM they were the visual aids for the Gospel in a time when the early Church needed to set itself up with authority and credibility! This they were for Jesus and this they were for the Early Church and, I would suggest that when God heals today, he does so for the same reasons when he wants to advertise the truth of his Gospel to an un-believing world this is why miracles always accompany revival but don’t always accompany the day to day living of the Church.

The point is that miracles are not automatically a part of the life of the Church ‘simply because’ we are the Church, or because the kingdom has come, they occur, biblically speaking, it seems for the specific reason of evangelism.

And if people are not healed when we ask for it this does not mean that the activities of God are limited by us as individuals or that God is ‘punishing us’ for our sin or lack of Faith. God is God and he intervenes within our history and within our lives simply when he feels that it is right to do so and most often in order to promote the truth of the Gospel message.

For those who aren’t healed we need to remember that if we can the church must seek always to communicate its faith and the love of God, his comfort and our hope to those who are suffering and sadly we must remember that we are all also a part of a decaying existence, we are all a part of a universal chaos brought about by our universal abandonment of God but regardless of this that God is restoring all things including us to perfection one day and when the kingdom does come in its fullness we will all live forever and will all be healed, we will be restored, God really does love us, and has sent his son to save us.

Despite the current limited nature of our physical state The Church must always bring a message of hope from God.

For far from being limited… God is working his purpose out as age gives way to age and one day all will be well.