Lesson 4. Christ the Healer. F. F. Bosworth. A Classic in Divine Healing.
“The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works” (Ps. 145:8–9).
I believe that by studying the Lord’s mercy, we can gain a complete revelation of the Lord’s readiness to heal us. During His earthly ministry, the Lord was always moved with compassion and healed everyone who needed it, and that same Jesus who said, “It is to your advantage that I go away,” is now seated at the right hand of the Father,
To be a merciful (compassionate) and faithful High Priest for us.
In Scripture, “pity,” “compassion,” and “mercy” mean the same thing. The Hebrew noun rachamim can be translated as “mercy” or “compassion.” The Greek verb eleeo is translated as “to have mercy” and “to show compassion,” and accordingly, the Greek adjective eleemon means “merciful” and “compassionate.”
To have compassion means “to love tenderly, feel pity, show mercy, and be ready to help.”
God Is Love
The passage of Scripture quoted at the beginning of the chapter begins with the words: “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion.” These qualities, which describe God’s nature, appear again and again throughout Scripture. Above all, God is love. The most striking statements in Scripture about our Heavenly Father are declarations of His love, mercy, and compassion. Nothing else can inspire faith as this does. At our revival meetings, I have seen faith grow stronger when the truth about God’s present love began to dawn on people’s minds and hearts. It is not what God can do, but what He longs to do, that inspires faith.
By demonstrating compassion everywhere as He healed the sick, Jesus revealed the compassionate heart of God in its true light, and crowds came to Him for help. Oh, how cunningly the devil has worked to hide this glorious truth from people. He spread the heartless, illogical, worn-out claim that the age of miracles had passed, until he nearly succeeded in changing the world’s view of God’s compassion. Modern theology exalts God’s power more than His compassion. Theologians are more willing to study His power than His desire to use that power for people’s good. But the Bible rejects this approach and emphasizes His desire to use His power, rather than power itself. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, “God is power,” but it does say, “God is love.” It is not faith in God’s power that makes His blessings available, but faith in His love and His will.
God’s Love Obscured by Modern Theology
The very first words of the passage quoted above, “The Lord is gracious and merciful,” mean that He “loves to show favor.” This glorious fact, so clearly illuminated throughout Scripture, has been so obscured by modern theology that instead of hearing, “The Lord is gracious,” we hear, “The Lord is able.” Hundreds of people in need of healing have come to us or written to us about their deliverance, based on the belief that “the Lord is able”; yet both their teaching and their lack of teaching prevented them from seeing that the Lord is willing. How much faith does it take to say, “The Lord can”? The devil knows that the Lord can; he also knows that the Lord is willing, but that is what he has tried to conceal. Satan wants us to exalt the Lord’s power because he knows that this is insufficient grounds for faith, whereas the Lord’s compassion and desire are entirely sufficient grounds for it.
Before praying for the sick, we should wait and teach them the Word of God until they say, “The Lord is gracious,” instead of “The Lord is able.” This is exactly what Jesus did before He healed the leper who said, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” He demonstrated His willingness to him so that this man could truly expect healing.
In the previous chapter, we presented much biblical evidence of the Lord’s willingness to heal us today. But even when we say, “The Lord is willing” and “The Lord is able,” it is still not enough. The word “willing” is too weak to fully express God’s gracious attitude toward us. “He delights in mercy” (Micah 7:18). His attitude is expressed more fully in 2 Chronicles 16:9: “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.” This passage shows us our Lord not only as One who is willing, but as One who eagerly desires to pour out His blessings abundantly on all who need them. “The eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth”; in other words, He seeks an opportunity to satisfy His good heart because He “delights in mercy.”
Benevolence is a great quality of God; therefore, if you want to please Him, remove every obstacle and allow Him to show benevolence toward you. He is boundlessly good and forever remains in a state of complete holiness, ready to pour out blessings on all who make this possible—and that is all Christians can do. Imagine that the vast Pacific Ocean had risen above us all. Then think of the pressure with which it would seek every crack to find an outlet and spread across the whole earth, and you will understand the picture of God’s benevolent attitude toward us.
A Serious Challenge
Now that you have read the above, I urge you, reader, to take your place where God’s mercy can descend upon you without violating His great principles of moral governance; then stop and experience for yourself the boundless expression of His love, mercy, and blessings, pouring over you beyond the limits of your expectations.
Cornelius took his place where God’s mercy could descend upon him when he said to Peter, “Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us,” and he discovered that God’s mercy was so great that He could not wait for Peter to finish his sermon. As soon as Peter had said enough to lay a foundation for their faith, the blessing descended.
God is not only able, but desires to give us abundantly everything we ask or think about. His love is so great that it cannot be satisfied with blessing all the saints in the universe, but extends also to all His opponents and enemies scattered throughout the earth. It seems to me that God would rather have us doubt His ability to do something than doubt His desire to fulfill our request. I myself would rather have a person in trouble come to me and say, “Brother Bosworth, I know you would help me if you could” (doubting my ability to help), than, “I know you can help me, but you do not want to.”
Returning to the beginning of the sermon, we read: “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great mercy.” When I think about how God fills our hearts with His tender love until, in intercession for others, our hearts overflow with a desire to express their feelings, which cannot be put into words, I stand in awe and marvel at the greatness of His compassion. A mother’s compassion for her sick child gives rise not only to a desire to relieve the child’s pain, but also causes her suffering when she is powerless to help. The Greek word sumpathes (translated “to have compassion”) means “to suffer alongside the one who suffers.” Isaiah says: “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
Is it not strange that this remarkable fact—the manifestation of His mercy toward the sick, so clearly seen and applied in the dark times of the Old Testament—should be ignored and cast aside in these better times, when the way is open for the fullest manifestation of His mercy to every human need?
God’s merciful heart reaches everyone
After all that has been said about the greatness of His compassion, let us draw the logical conclusion: “The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” In other words, He is so full of compassion that He shows no partiality in granting His mercies. Could He (whose merciful heart, not satisfied with blessing His holy creatures, extends mercy also to the ungodly of this world) withhold the blessing of healing from any of His obedient children?
How strange is the teaching that claims the sick do not seek the same healing in this age of grace that kings and prophets longed to see, angels observed, and sufferers received in the Middle Ages. Is God today more inclined to show the mercy of forgiveness to the children of the devil than the mercy of healing to His children? Certainly not. He loves His sick and suffering child more than He loves the sinner, and God’s mercy extends from eternity to eternity not only to sinners, but also to those who live in fear of Him. As a father pities his children, so the Lord looks with compassion on those who live in fear of Him. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who live in fear of Him, as well as toward sinners.
A Christian under the burden of illness can say with Solomon: “There is no God like You… You keep Your covenant and mercy with Your servants who walk before You with all their heart” (2 Chron. 6:14).
Not some, but “all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth to those who keep His covenant and His testimonies” (Ps. 25:10).
Examples of God’s Compassion
Now let us turn to several passages from the Gospels that provide examples of God’s compassion.
“And a leper came to Him, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and said to Him: If You are willing, You can make me clean. Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand, touched him, and said to him: I am willing; be cleansed. As soon as He had spoken, the leprosy immediately left him, and he was cleansed… And they came to Him from everywhere” (Mark. 1:40–42, 45).
As you can see, it was compassion that moved Christ to heal this leper.
“When Jesus heard this, He withdrew from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself; but when the crowds heard about it, they followed Him on foot from the towns. When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd and had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:13–14).
Here, as in other passages of Scripture, He was “moved with compassion” for “all who needed healing,” and His compassion is precisely the driving force.
“As Jesus and His disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed Him. Two blind men sitting by the roadside heard that Jesus was passing by and began to cry out, ‘Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David!’ …Jesus stopped, called them, and said, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ ‘Lord,’ they answered, ‘we want our eyes to be opened.’ Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed Him” (Matthew 20:29–34).
In this passage of Scripture, the two blind men asked Him in mercy to open their eyes, and Jesus granted them the mercy of healing, proving that healing is mercy just as forgiveness is. In those days, the sick sought healing by asking for mercy. Today, most people think of mercy only when it concerns sinners, not knowing that His mercy also extends to the sick.
God—the merciful Father
Paul, calling God the Father of mercies, demonstrated these words by healing all the sick on the island of Malta. Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Job was healed when he prayed for his friends. According to Scripture, he received mercy because he himself was merciful. Referring to Job’s healing, James writes in his epistle (5:11), “The Lord is very compassionate and merciful,” and continues with an instruction to the Church: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church,” and so on (see James 5:14). In other words, since “the Lord is very compassionate and merciful,” let every sick person in the Church today, just as in the days of Job, also receive healing. Meeting all our needs, Jesus still says today what He once said to the two blind men: “What do you want Me to do for you?”
After Jesus, moved with compassion for the man who lived among the tombs and, possessed by a legion of demons, beat himself against stones and tore apart the chains with which he had often been bound, healed him, the man rejoiced, “dressed and in his right mind,” and asked the Lord for permission to follow Him. “But Jesus did not let him, but said to him, ‘Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you.’ So he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And everyone was amazed” (Mark 5:19–20).
A Serious Challenge
The result of one person’s testimony
“Large crowds came to Him, bringing the lame, the blind, the mute, the crippled, and many others. They laid them at Jesus’ feet, and He healed them. The crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled restored, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel” (Matthew 15:30–31).
It was not an improvement in the sick person’s condition, as some teach today, but healing for the sick that caused the “large crowd” to “glorify the God of Israel.” Oh, how God would be glorified and how the world would be blessed if every minister today presented the biblical promises of healing to the sick and then, when everyone had been healed, in turn told of the Lord’s mercy in his own “Decapolis.” In a short time, thousands upon thousands of sick people everywhere would receive faith in Christ and His healing. And once again we would hear the “large crowd” “glorifying the God of Israel.” The leading critics and modernists would become unpopular, and the cults of false healing would be unable to lead away from the Church the multitudes now caught in their net.
Testifying about God’s goodness is not a sin
We read above that the man mentioned began preaching about the mercy of the Lord. Some people express their protest and write articles against us because we publish the testimonies of those who have been miraculously healed. What is the issue? Is there anything wrong with obeying the Lord’s command to “tell people about His works”? If Jesus died so that His mercy might meet every human need, then surely we should strive to bring this message to people. Reading some of the articles and books published today, one might think that telling people about the mercy of the Lord is a crime.
Notice that in the passages of Scripture quoted above, as a result of miraculous healings, the fame of Jesus spread: “they came to Him from everywhere,” “they followed Him on foot from the cities,” “a great multitude came to Him.” “A multitude!” “A multitude!” “A multitude!”
The same is true today. As soon as it becomes known in a city that “the same Jesus” truly heals the sick—as soon as His command to “tell people about His works” is obeyed and His mercy is preached—people begin coming “from everywhere.” I have never seen anything that could break down barriers and gather people from everywhere like the manifestation of the Lord’s mercy in healing the sick. We have found that as soon as people learn what “the same Jesus” is doing, they come—Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and Jews; poor people come, rich people come, people come from everywhere, and multitudes hear the Gospel. Those who would never have come to a meeting if there had not been miraculous healings demonstrating the Lord’s mercy give their lives to God.
The Effect of Healings Today
If Christ and His apostles could not attract multitudes without miracles, does He expect more from us? At “healing services,” which supposedly distract from the more important matter of the salvation of the soul, we saw more wonderful conversions in one week than during an entire year of evangelistic work over thirteen years. After this, the Lord led us to preach this part of the Gospel more boldly and to a larger audience. As soon as our revivals gained momentum, hundreds of people began coming every evening to give their hearts to God, and entire cities began talking about Jesus. Other evangelists who visited our revivals confirmed that this worked the same way in their meetings.
In Ottawa, Canada, at our last revival, which preceded the writing of this book, over seven weeks of meetings, six thousand people came to be healed, and approximately twelve thousand came to be saved. I think that if it had not been for the miracles of healing demonstrating the Lord’s mercy, scarcely more than one thousand people would have been saved. The city and its surrounding area were stirred as never before, and the largest crowds ever gathered under one roof for religious meetings in Canada’s capital filled the new Auditorium building—the largest building in the city. Ten thousand people attended each meeting. Before leaving the city, we received many hundreds of written testimonies of healing from all kinds of diseases and infirmities. To God be all the glory!
Healing as a Powerful Means of Evangelism
One Baptist evangelist wrote in a pamphlet he published on the subject that healing was the most powerful means of evangelism the Lord had ever used, and that he would not return to the old ways for any amount of money.
Let us now look at another passage that speaks about the mercy of the Lord.
“And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples: The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few; therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest. And having called His twelve disciples, He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal every disease and every sickness… And He commanded them, saying: As you go, preach… heal the sick” (Matt. 9:35–10:8).
Here, His compassion for the sick is so clearly manifested that the “harvest” becomes too great for ONE HARVESTER. His compassionate heart longed to help those who could not come to Him. “When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them,” as though He could personally minister to only some of them, and His compassion for the rapidly growing multitude now compelled Him to send out other workers to heal and preach. “His harvest” today is not merely as great as it was then, but far greater, and since His compassion has not changed, He wants the same kind of harvesters to gather His harvest by preaching and healing “in all the cities and villages.” His compassion, expressed through these twelve new workers, created the need to send out seventy more, empowered to preach and heal. There are few workers of this kind today as well, while the “harvest” is far greater than it was then. He wants us to do everywhere exactly what He “began to do” and teach what He “began to teach.”
A Strange Revocation of Christ’s Promise
In the Gospel of John (14:12,13), Jesus emphatically promised that this same mercy and compassion could reach people through our prayers when He would be our High Priest in heaven. In fact, His departure was to open the way for His compassion to be manifested on a much greater scale. Isaiah prophesied about Him: “He will be exalted to have mercy…” Jesus said: “It is better for you that I go.” It would be false to say that His departure revoked or even changed the manifestation of His compassion in healing the sick. Yet many ministers today completely revoke Christ’s promise: “…He who believes in Me will also do the works that I do; and he will do greater works than these” (John 14:12). They contradict His promise when they teach that the age of miracles has passed. Others do the same when they teach that God wants some of His godly children to remain sick for His glory, and present us with other worn-out ideas that contradict Scripture.
Anyone who teaches that healing today does not belong to everyone in need, as it did in the past, is actually teaching that Christ’s compassion for the sick has at least changed since His Ascension. It is even worse when they teach that His compassion in healing the sick has been completely annulled. To me, it is a mystery how a minister can take such a position—one that conceals and hinders the manifestation of the greatest quality of the Godhead: the compassion of God, which is divine love in action. When Paul earnestly called people to sanctification, he said: “I urge you by the mercy of God,” which is the manifestation of Km the greatest quality.
Two Important Questions
Jesus said: “When He comes, the Spirit of Truth… He will glorify Me.” Could the Spirit glorify Christ among the sick by telling them that the age of miracles was over, or that Jesus had ceased His ministry to the sick after His Ascension, even though He Himself promised that believers would do the same and greater works in the age to come? While Jesus carries out the ministry of the High Priest, would the Spirit on earth alter His ministry to sick and suffering brothers so that He would be glorified in exactly the opposite way from how He was glorified in the Decapolis after healing many people? If so, then the widespread practice in some places of praying for the sick to have the strength and patience to bear their illnesses, instead of praying the prayer of faith for their healing, is absolutely right.
It was precisely after He became our High Priest that He said seven times from heaven: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Today people say many things that the Spirit never said and that are contrary to what He says. Here are several examples of what the Spirit says in order to glorify Christ:
“Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brothers, that He might be a merciful (compassionate) and faithful High Priest…” (Heb. 2:17).
We have already shown that both words—“merciful” and “compassionate”—are given as the meaning of the Greek word eleemon, which is translated here as “merciful.” This verse has nothing to do with Christ’s mercy demonstrated during His earthly ministry; it refers only to His ministry from heaven and to the fact that His incarnation was complete, since He could show mercy as our High Priest after returning to heaven. “All that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up”—this is how, in His unchanging mercy, He promised that what had been promised would continue and increase after His departure. Then the Spirit glorifies Christ by saying that He now sympathizes with our weaknesses (the Greek word sumpatheo is translated as “sympathize” in Heb. 10:34), that He is still able to sympathize (Heb. 5:2), and that He is “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Let us worship Him, because His compassion has not changed today; and when He looks upon all our weaknesses and illnesses, He still sympathizes and longs to help us.
Of course, we appreciate and thank God that many who do not believe in divine healing truly cooperate with God in such important matters as the salvation of souls. But how wonderful it would be if all ministers and all Christians, instead of saying that the time of miracles has passed, would cooperate with the Spirit by telling those who suffer how the Spirit carries out His ministry of glorifying the exalted Christ. Instead of being like the priests and Levites who passed by, James chapter 5 calls the Church to be like the Good Samaritan, who compassionately ministers to the physical needs of the sick, binding their wounds and pouring on them the balm of wine and oil (the Word of God and the Spirit of God), for He “sent His Word and healed them” by the power of the Spirit. Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,” because they neglected the weightier matters of mercy and faith.
In Acts chapter 5, we have another miraculous proof that Christ’s compassion for the sick has not changed, for there we can read about the great multitude of people who were brought into the streets of Jerusalem in the days after His Ascension to the Father, and “they were all healed.” Here again, Jesus, as our High Priest in heaven, does the same thing He did before His departure. He sympathizes from heaven and heals all who are in need.
Even in the very last chapter of Acts, we find testimony of His compassion manifested from heaven when all the sick on the island of Melita were healed. He is our High Priest, and His compassion is so great that He “always lives to intercede for us.”
Again, it was His compassion that caused Him to establish the gifts of faith, miracles, and healing in the Church after He was glorified and while He is our High Priest forever and ever. After Christ’s Ascension, in the words of Reverend Stevens, “we find that the gifts of healing, as something natural and necessary, occupy the same place as they did in the days of the Lord’s personal ministry on earth.”
Any believer can pray for the sick
It was His present-day compassion for the sick that led Him, as our High Priest and Head of the Church, to command the elders to pray the prayer of faith for the healing of any sick person throughout the Church age (James 5:14). Reverend Stevens notes in this regard: “All preachers, teachers, writers, and everyone who distributes the Word of Life to people must follow this instruction (James 5:14) as long as sickness attacks people.”
Even during His earthly ministry, our wonderful Lord was willing to make any sacrifice and bear any curse in order to open the way for His mercy to reach even the most unworthy of His enemies. Both the bloody sweat in Gethsemane and the terrible agony at Calvary were nothing less than manifestations of His boundless compassion. After Judas kissed Him and betrayed Him into the hands of murderers, and Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus healed the ear of His enemy and commanded Peter to put away his sword. Then He, too, put His own sword into its sheath, so to speak, when He restrained the natural impulse of His holy soul and refused to pray, although by prayer He could have summoned twelve legions of angels to deliver Him from the agony of the cross. But then fallen humanity, with all its problems of body, soul, and spirit, would have had only the judgment seat, and there would have been no throne of grace. In His sacrifice for us, He provided for every need of Adam’s race and opened the way for His mercy to enter every area of human need. Then, as now, He had compassion on all who need His presence as Giver, Peace, Victory, Shepherd, Righteousness, and Healer—all blessings received through the sacrifice on the cross and revealed to us through His redemptive names. His covenants, including the covenant of healing, are given to us as His mercies, and “He keeps mercy and covenant with all who love Him to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9).
How Not to Grieve the Heart of Jesus
Ignorance of or doubt about His love and mercy grieves the heart of Jesus. That is why He wept over Jerusalem. In our day, many ministers say that we no longer need miracles, viewing miracles merely as signs that were meant to prove the Lord’s divinity, and so on. I said to them: “If cancer were eating away at your head, you would need a miracle, wouldn’t you?” Today, countless people are completely uninformed on this subject, and it never occurs to them that there is mercy for the sick as well. They never think of the gifts of healing and miracles as manifestations of Christ’s compassion; they do not think that hour after hour, day after day, for three years, He healed all who came to Him out of compassion. Are the needs of those who suffer today not the same as they were in those days? And do they not need just as much compassion as they did in the past?
When we think of the countless multitude of the desperate—those suffering such terrible pain that death would be a mercy to them—and of those to whom doctors, after doing everything in their power, say, “I’m sorry, there is nothing more we can do for you,” we understand how precious it is to know that Christ’s compassion is exactly the same at any moment as it was when He expressed it through His ministry of love here on earth. To know this fact is something we can rely on completely.
We have shown that physical healing is a mercy that Christ, expressing God’s will, extended to all who sought it; and we have this simple, clear statement: “The Lord is very merciful to all who call upon Him (including the sick),” because “His mercy endures forever” and it is “from everlasting to everlasting”; He is full of mercy “in all His works.” Does this not settle the matter according to these passages of Scripture? Instead of saying that the age of miracles is over, say: “It is written!” “It is written!”
Author: F. F. Bosworth
