The Holy Spirit · The Gifts
Healing
The God of the Bible introduces himself at a bitter spring as “the LORD that healeth thee” — and when he walked among us, healing was not an occasional wonder but the daily shape of his mercy: “he… healed all that were sick, that it might be fulfilled … Himself took our infirmities.” This page holds the whole subject the site’s way: the texts first, the positions with their holders, the honest verses beside the strongest promises — and one floor that never moves: the sick are never, ever to be blamed for their sickness.
The LORD That Healeth Thee
— from Marah to Matthew — the healing threadHealing enters Scripture as a name of God before it is ever a gift of the Spirit: at Marah, three days past the Red Sea, “I am the LORD that healeth thee” — Jehovah-Rapha. Matthew then does something bolder than any healing evangelist would dare: he takes Isaiah 53:4 and spends it on Jesus’s healing ministry— “himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” said over an evening of casting out spirits and healing “all that were sick.” The apostles’ own summary of the whole ministry runs through the same anointing: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing.”
saying, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Jesus, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases.”Matthew's own use of Isaiah 53:4 — the evangelist applies it to bodily healing.
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him.How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth--rather, "Jesus of Nazareth (as the burden of that 'published word'), how God anointed Him." with the Holy Ghost and with power--that is, at His baptism, thus visibly proclaiming Him MESSIAH, "the Lord's Christ." See Lu 4:18-21.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Acts 10:38
Barnabas was full of the Holy Ghost and faith, chap. xi, 24. The disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost, chap. xiii, 52. And here, where his mighty works are mentioned, Christ himself is said to be anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Acts 10:38
By His Stripes — the Atonement Question
— Isaiah 53:4-5 — the readings, held honestlyEverything in the modern healing conversation eventually stands before Isaiah 53. That the Servant’s work touches sickness is not in question — Matthew 8:17 settles it. What the camps weigh differently is the when and the how much now: whether bodily healing is provided in the atonement for this age the way forgiveness is, or secured by the atonement and paid in full at the resurrection, with real but sovereign installments now. Athanasius’s line below is the oldest anchor either camp can claim — he carries our infirmities in his own body, not remedying from a distance.
Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.It did not say, "He remedied our infirmities," lest, as being external to the body and only healing it, as he has always done, he should leave people subject still to death. Rather, he carries our infirmities, and he himself bears our sins, that it might be shown that he has become human for us, and that the body that in him bore them was his own body.
Athanasius of Alexandria· Discourses Against the Arians 3.31 (373), on Isa 53:4
Wounds and bruises were the consequences of sin, what we deserved and what we had brought upon ourselves, ch. i. That these wounds and bruises, though they are painful, may not be mortal, Christ was wounded for our transgressions, was tormented or pained (the word is used for the pains of a woman in travail) for our revolts and rebellions.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Isa 53:5
The positions, each at its bestnamed with their holders — the gracious rule governs
Healing in the atonement, normatively available now— the classical Pentecostal reading: Isa 53:4-5 with Matt 8:17 and 1 Pet 2:24 provide healing as the gospel’s companion promise. Smith Wigglesworth lived it (Ever Increasing Faith, 1924); Reinhard Bonnke taught it (Mighty Manifestations, 1994) and his crusades reported healings following the preaching — reported here as the ministry’s own documented testimony; Mahesh Chavda (The Hidden Power of Healing Prayer, 2004) grounds the laying on of hands in the same promise; Kenneth Hagin and Bill Johnson stand in this stream.
Secured, with sovereign installments — healing is purchased at the cross and guaranteed at the resurrection; in this age God heals really and sometimes remarkably, at his pleasure, and Scripture never promises exemption from sickness before glory. John Piper and J.I. Packer (Keep in Step with the Spirit) hold here; 1 Peter 2:24’s own context (sin-wounds healed) is this reading’s exegetical anchor.
The sign-gift ceased; providence continues— R.C. Sproul’s cessationism: the gifts of healings authenticated the apostolic era; God still heals in answer to prayer, but through providence rather than gifted healers. Note what even this position keeps: James 5 remains standing church order, and prayer for the sick is never optional in any camp.
What all three confess together: God heals; Christ’s atonement is the ground of every mercy the body will ever receive; and the resurrection — not any ministry — is where “by his stripes we are healed” is paid in full and forever.
Gifts of Healings, and the Standing Order
— 1 Corinthians 12 and James 5Paul’s Corinth list includes “gifts of healing” — in the Greek both words are plural, gifts of healings, as if no single endowment covers the field — distributed as the Spirit wills and, by Paul’s own rhetorical question, not to all. James, meanwhile, wrote the instruction that belongs to every congregation in every century, whatever its theology of the gifts:
JAMES 5:14-16 — THE CHURCH’S STANDING ORDER
written to every congregation, in force since it was posted →THE SICK ONE CALLS
“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church”
the initiative belongs to the sick — no one is ambushed with prayer, and no one need be a celebrity to be prayed for
THE ELDERS COME
“and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord”
ordinary local shepherds, ordinary oil, an extraordinary Name — the power is in none of the first three
THE PROMISE IS GOD'S
“and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up”
the Lord raises — not the elders, not the oil, not the intensity of anyone's praying
SIN IS DEALT WITH, IF PRESENT
“and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him”
IF — James refuses the equation the whole book of Job refuses: sickness is not proof of sin
THE CHURCH KEEPS PRAYING
“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed”
healing prayer is congregational weather, not a crisis measure — and honesty is part of its climate
to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit,Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.Faith may here mean an extraordinary trust in God under the most difficult or dangerous circumstances. The gift of healing need not be wholly confined to the healing diseases with a word or a touch.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on 1 Cor 12:9
Have all the gifts of healing?.... No; when these gifts were in being, all had them not.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament (1746-1748), on 1 Cor 12:30
This was the whole process of physic in the Christian church, till it was lost through unbelief. That novel invention among the Romanists, extreme unction, practiced not for cure, but where life is despaired of, bears no manner of resemblance to this.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Jas 5:14
And let them pray over him, anointing him, etc. We read that the apostles did this in the Gospel, and now the custom of the Church holds that the sick are anointed with consecrated oil by the presbyters, and are healed with accompanying prayer. Not
Bede· Commentary on the Catholic Epistles (735), on Jas 5:14
And the prayer of faith; shall save the sick - That is, God will often make these the means of a sick mans recovery; but there often are cases where faith and prayer are both ineffectual, because God sees it will be prejudicial to the patients salvation to be restored; and therefore all faith and prayer on such occasions should be exerted on this ground: If it be most for thy glory, and the eternal good of this mans soul, let him be restored; if otherwise, Lord, pardon, purify him, and take him to thy glory. The Lord shall raise him up - Not the elders, how faithfully and fervently soever they have prayed. And if he have committed sins - So as to have occasioned his present malady, they shall be forgiven him; for being the cause of the affliction it is natural to conclude that, if the effect be to cease, the cause must be removed. We find that in the miraculous restoration to health, under the powerful hand of Christ, the sin of the party is generally said to be forgiven, and this also before the miracle was wrought on the body: hence there was a maxim among the Jews, and it seems to be founded in common sense and reason, that God never restores a man miraculously to health till he has pardoned his sins; because it would be incongruous for God to exert his miraculous power in saving a body, the soul of which was in a state of condemnation to eternal death, because of the crimes it had committed against its Maker and Judge. Here then it is God that remits the sin, not in reference to the unction, but in reference to the cure of the body, which he is miraculously to effect.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Jas 5:15
Wesley’s note above is its own exhibit: the founder of the site’s mother tradition read James 5 as “the whole process of physic in the Christian church, till it was lost through unbelief” — a Methodist’s lament, a century and a half before Pentecostalism, that the church had stopped expecting what the text plainly orders. And Clarke’s long note carries the other honest weight: there are cases where faith and prayer do not bring recovery, and the prayer of faith has always known how to end — if it be most for thy glory… if otherwise, Lord, take him to thy glory.
The Honest Texts
— the thorn, and Trophimus — what the strongest healing theology must sit besideThe New Testament’s greatest healer left a co-worker sick at Miletum, told Timothy to treat his stomach with wine rather than a word of command, and himself asked three times for a thorn to be removed — and received, instead of removal, a sentence the church has leaned on ever since. These texts are not embarrassments to a healing theology; they are its guardrails. They prove that unanswered healing prayer is not a faith failure — it happened to an apostle — and they forbid forever the cruelty of blaming the sick. On this site that floor is absolute: sickness is never treated as evidence of weak faith or hidden sin, and no sick reader will ever be handed condemnation here in place of oil and prayer.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.the prayer God answered with grace instead of removal — to an apostle.
Erastus has remained at Corinth, and Trophimus I left sick in Miletus.'Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick' — one clause, and a whole theology of humility.
Closing
A God named Healer; a Messiah who healed them all and bore what he healed; gifts of healings scattered as the Spirit wills; a standing order of elders, oil, and honest confession; and two honest texts keeping every promise humble. Pray boldly, call the elders, use the physician without shame, blame no one — and let “by his stripes” mean everything it means, all the way to resurrection morning.