Lesson 15. Christ the Healer. F. F. Bosworth. A Classic on Divine Healing.
1. If the seven compound names of Jehovah, one of which is Jehovah-Rapha (I am the Lord who heals you), reveal His redemptive relationship with every person, do they not all point to Calvary?
2. If all the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Him, then do not these seven names, including the name Jehovah-Rapha (I am the Lord who heals you), owe their existence and power to Christ’s redemptive work on the Cross?
3. Do not all believers have an equal right to call upon Christ as Jehovah-Rapha (the Healer of the body), just as they call upon Him as Jehovah-Tsidkenu (the Healer of the soul)? Is His name not given for healing in exactly the same way as it is given for salvation?
4. If physical healing is to be obtained independently of Calvary, as its opponents teach, why could none of the blessings of the Jubilee year be proclaimed at the sound of the trumpet before the Day of Atonement?
5. If the healing of the body was not part of Christ’s redemptive work, why were types of Atonement given in connection with healing throughout the Old Testament?
6. If there was no healing in the Atonement, why then were the dying Israelites required to look at a type of Atonement in order to receive healing for their bodies? If both forgiveness and healing came at the moment people looked at the type, why can they not come through the embodiment of that type?
7. If their curse was destroyed through the lifting up of the type of Christ, was not our curse likewise destroyed through the lifting up of Christ Himself (Gal. 3:13)?
8. Why does the passage “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses” (Isa. 53:4) use the same Hebrew verbs as verses 11 and 12 (which say that He bore our sins in our place), if they do not have the same substitutionary nature?
9. If healing was not provided for everyone in the redemption, then how did so many people receive from Christ what God had not provided?
10. If the body was not included in the redemption, then how can the resurrection take place, how can corruption put on incorruption, and how can mortality put on immortality? Did God’s people throughout history, anticipating the coming redemption, not expect physical blessings just as they expected spiritual ones?
11. Why can’t the “last Adam” take away everything the first Adam brought us?
12. If the Church is the Body of Christ, does God really desire His body to be sick? Is it not His will to heal every part of the Body of Christ? If not, then why does He command that all the sick in this Body be anointed for healing?
13. Are human imperfections of any kind, whether physical or moral, God’s will, or are they the result of human error?
14. If the body is “for the Lord, a living sacrifice to God,” would He not prefer a healthy body to a sick one? If not, how can He make us “perfect in every good work to do His will,” or thoroughly equip us “for every good work”?
15. If physical healing in the New Testament was called mercy, and mercy and compassion moved Jesus when He healed all who came to Him, has God’s promise, “The Lord is merciful to all who call upon Him,” now ceased to be true?
16. Does not God’s glorious purpose in the Gospel offer more mercy and compassion to those who suffer than in darker times? If not, why would God remove this mercy and this Old Testament privilege from the better purpose of the “better Covenant”?
17. If, as some teach, God has a different method of healing today, why would God use a less successful method under the better covenant?
18. If Christ came to do the Father’s will, was not the universal healing of all the sick who came to Him a revelation of God’s will for our bodies?
19. Did Jesus not emphasize that He would continue to do the same works in answer to our prayers while He is with the Father (John 14:12, 13), and is not this promise alone an absolute refutation of all opponents?
20. Why would the Holy Spirit, who healed the sick even before His ministry began, do less after He entered into His ministry on the day of Pentecost? Or did the Miracle Worker begin His ministry in order to put an end to miracles?
21. Is not the Book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit a revelation of how He wants to continue working through the Church?
22. How can God justify us while at the same time requiring us to remain under the curse of the law from which Jesus redeemed us when He bore our sins on the cross (Gal. 3:13)?
23. If “the Son of God appeared for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil,” has He now abandoned this purpose, which He upheld even in the Garden of Gethsemane, when blood dripped from Him instead of sweat, and amid the suffering at Calvary?
Or does He now want the devil to continue his works in our bodies, which He once wanted to destroy? Does God want cancer, “affliction,” “the curse,” and “the works of the devil” to be in the members of the Body of Christ? “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor. 6:15).
24. Are the proofs of divine healing among the one hundred eighty-four people who testified during the last two Fridays any less vivid and convincing than the proofs of spiritual redemption among today’s supposed Christians?
Is not the physical condition of these one hundred eighty-four people who were healed better than the spiritual condition of the same number of supposed Christians?
If we compare the physical health of these one hundred eighty-four people with the spiritual health of the same number of contemporary church ministers, would not the comparison favor the former?
25. If we used the same argument that is usually used against divine healing—namely, reasoning from certain failures—as a justification for regeneration and everything else, it would be simply irresistible, would it not?
26. Does the fact that Christ could not perform miracles in Nazareth prove anything other than the people’s unbelief, or would it be right to conclude that healing the boy when Christ’s disciples had failed to cast out the epileptic spirit was not God’s will? By healing him, Christ proved that God’s will was to heal even those who could not receive healing themselves.
27. Does God not desire to show His followers as much mercy in healing as He showed His enemies in forgiveness (Rom. 8:32)?
28. If Paul, as a minister from New York says, was one of “the sickest people, suffering from ophthalmia of the eyes,” or, as others teach, his “thorn in the flesh” was physical weakness rather than “an angel of Satan,” as Paul himself writes when listing all the troubles arranged by this angel, how then could Paul labor more than all the other apostles? Or if he had the strength to accomplish more work than all the others, how could his “weakness” have been physical? If Paul’s “thorn” did not hinder his faith for healing all the sick on the island of Malta, why should it hinder our faith? Would not Paul’s failure to be healed, if he was sick, have hindered faith for the healing of all these Gentiles? Why do traditional teachers put “ophthalmia of the eyes” or illness—neither of which Paul mentions—in place of “insults,” “needs,” “persecutions,” and all the other works of Satan’s messenger that Paul mentions immediately afterward? If Paul’s “thorn” was illness, why does he not say that he takes pleasure in illnesses? How could Paul, sick and suffering from “ophthalmia of the eyes,” an unpleasant condition from which he could not be healed, “bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders” (Rom. 15:18, 19)?
29. If illness is God’s will, then is not every physician a lawbreaker, is not every qualified nurse denying the Almighty, is not every hospital a house of rebellion rather than a house of mercy, and are we not then obligated to do everything possible to close them instead of supporting them?
30. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus never once sent anyone to preach without also commanding him to heal the sick. So how can we obey His command if there is no Gospel (Good News) of healing to give the sick as a foundation for their faith? Or if healing means expecting God to keep His promise, what faith can there be for healing if God has not promised it? Yet the Bible is full of promises of healing, so are they not the Gospel (Good News) for the sick? If “faith comes by hearing the Word,” how can a sick person have faith for healing if, in reality, there is nothing for them to hear?
31. “Could the loving heart of the Son of God, who had compassion on the sick and healed them all, have ceased to care about the suffering of His people after He was taken up and seated at the right hand of the Father?” (Kenneth McKenzie).
Author: F. F. Bosworth
