Faith Healing

Jesus performed many healing miracles throughout his ministry. For example, Jesus told the haemorrhaging woman (Matthew 9:21), “your faith has healed you.” This and several other passages in the gospels show a relationship between faith and health and that Jesus was willing to attribute healing to the faith of individuals. This article examines a growing movement spreading from America which has influenced the faith of millions who believe that divine healing is a gift granted to all of us by Christ’s crucifixion.

“If you just have faith, Rita, God will enable you to walk.” For Rita, this was no small task. A victim of cerebral palsy, Rita had never been able to walk without leaning heavily on crutches. It was friends from a Christian fellowship campus who encouraged her to step out in faith. If she only believed, they said God would heal her legs and raise her up from the wheelchair. After they prayed with her, she stood up and walked twenty steps unaided — a personal record — before stumbling. These fervent Christians persuaded Rita not to lose heart, assuring her that God would manifest a complete healing in the days to come if she would continue to walk in faith. She strove to do just that. But despite her determined efforts, Rita never again matched her original achievement.

The story of Rita describes the situation that confronts many ill or physically disabled Christians: the struggle to reconcile their apparently incurable disability with the goodness of a loving, personal God. Does God want me to stay this way? they wonder. Or does he really want to heal me? These questions become particularly real and relevant when the person encounters someone who believes, like Rita’s friends, that Christians who have faith can be healed of all their physical diseases by Christ’s atonement. This view is the best known of a group of distinctive doctrines being preached by a growing contingent of “faith teachers” within American Christianity. The faith movement as it is known has three main teachings:

(1) divine healing.

(2) prosperity — primarily financial prosperity, available to those Christians who are obedient and willing to believe for it.

(3) positive confession — a statement, spoken in faith, of what one desires or is requesting from God. God will honour that expression of faith.

These aspects of the faith movement have led opponents to use terms such as Prosperity Theology and the Health and Wealth Gospel. No aspect has been more controversial than the teaching and practice of healing and it is on this which the article concentrates.

Although the faith movement has manifested itself in the States it has European roots. The story begins in 1828, with Edward Irving — a powerful and popular Scottish preacher who believed that miracle healings and other spectacular gifts “were not exceptional, or for one period alone, but belonged to the church of all ages, and had only been kept in abeyance by the absence of faith.” Although Irving’s faith revival receded into oblivion news of miracle healings throughout Europe inevitably overflowed into the New World and the doctrine of divine healing advanced rapidly to its present form.

The faith movement bases its argument that bodily healing was granted for us all by Christ’s atonement on three biblical passages.

Isaiah (53 : 4–5) “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed.”

Matthew(8 : 7) “This was to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: He took up our diseases and carried our illnesses.”

1 Peter(2 : 24) “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

Those who disagree with the interpretation of these passages argue:

(1) Isaiah 53 refers predominantly to sin rather than sickness and the Hebrew words used for “infirmities” and “healed” do not always refer to bodily needs.

(2) Matthew interprets Isaiah with reference to healings actually performed by Christ while on earth, not his atoning sacrifice.

(3) The passage as a whole in 1 Peter has nothing to do with the physical body.

(4) If bodily healing were part of the atonement, one would have expected Paul to state this doctrine clearly in his epistles, but he nowhere does so.

The critics’ arguments are well constructed and persuasive yet a number of eminent biblical scholars have adopted interpretations compatible with the faith movement’s teachings. Therefore, the complex issue of healing in the atonement cannot be lightly dismissed. However, even if healing is in the atonement, that fact alone does not make healing a universal, immediately available privilege.

We have already been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20), but we are not yet fully redeemed and need to renew our spiritual commitment daily. We who are in Christ have been freed from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2) and can be confident of eternal salvation, but we still sin and are not yet experiencing the fullness of redemption. These examples suggest there are fruits of Christ’s atonement not fully available to us yet. The reality of sick and dying Christians ever since New Testament times suggests that physical healing may sometimes be a “not-yet” benefit of Christ’s atonement and is not immediately available. Whilst the faith teachers may exaggerate about the availability of healing they are probably closer to the truth than those who stress the total unavailability of healing.

The faith movement takes a confident, demanding approach to prayer for healing. However, to say that faith can always bring healing causes the movement to run into controversy. The link between faith and healing must not be exaggerated. Jesus showed that faith can be a crucial factor in some instances, but the process is more mysterious than we can explain, at least at the present time.

Gloria Copeland, a preacher of the faith movement, states “The whole church could be walking in divine health were it not for false traditions that have taught that God does not always heal.” However, such preachers neglect key biblical passages which threaten their message. For example (Galatians 4:13), (2 Kings 13:14, 20) and (1 Timothy 5:23) all describe cases in which faithful men of God were sick.

However, the Health and Wealth Gospel’s theology of healing is not as inflexible as it first appears. It includes a willingness to bend in two major areas: it reserves a place for doctors and medicine and it recognises that healings may not occur instantly.

Preachers unanimously support the use of medical aid, knowing full well the dangers of adopting more extreme views which has resulted in fatalities within some churches, yet in the same breath suggest that doctors and medicine should only serve as a stop-gap measure for Christians until they reach a higher level of faith. Such a view raises the question: how do we decide when we have enough faith to “live in divine health” and stop taking medicine or seeking a doctor’s help? Surely God always wants us to use the gifts of medical science he has granted us. By establishing dive healing as superior to medical healing, acceptance of medical aid is equated with weakness. In that case subtle peer pressure within a church might compel the sick to claim their healing and receive admiration for their faith rather than go to the doctor and risk disapproval.

The acceptance of doctors softens the faith movement’s doctrine of healing as does their admission that healing may not appear instantly. This is not surprising since all Christian healers must deal with the reality that many for whom they pray do not appear to be healed. For those who maintain that divine healing is ours, the only remaining solution is to assert that in many cases healing will not be evident until some indefinite, future time.

While granting that healing can be gradual, the faith movement continues to see its work as a replica of Jesus’ own healing ministry. However, its methods are quite different from those of Jesus:

(1) Jesus healed some diseases that today’s healers tend to avoid.

(2) Jesus’ healings were instantaneous, but most of today’s are not.

(3) Jesus healed in response to specific requests or touched those whom he happened to meet, but many of today’s healers set up large meetings promising healing in advance.

These differences don’t necessarily invalidate the healing ministry advocated by the faith movement, but the faith movement and its critics have failed to distinguish clearly between gifts of miraculous healing as done by Jesus and the less spectacular ministry of healing that according to the New Testament seems to be the privilege of the church at large.

There seems to be a place for healing through the prayer of faith — even if one is sceptical of widely publicised, controversial mass healing rallies. Though their language at times is extreme, faith teachers by affirming gradual healing and by approving of doctors, become in practice little different from other Christians taking a more moderate line on healing. In short the faith message instructs sick people to pray with confidence, believe for the best and keep the doctor’s phone number handy. Few Christians can object to this.

The key difference lies in the fact that they imply Christians ought always to be healthy. They insinuate that the sick are to blame for their illness — this can be devastating. It also becomes difficult to exercise strong faith in God’s healing power if one begins to attribute failures to causes beyond our control. The path between these two dangers is an extremely narrow one though it can be followed, without engaging in the expressions of positive confession and denial of symptoms (the belief that this will demonstrate the faith which works the healing).

Most Christians believe that God can heal miraculously and the the faith healers admit their healings are often delayed, therefore, surely a common ground can be developed:

(1) God wants us to be healed. When we need healing we should ask God for it and trust him to answer.

(2) Physical healing does not always appear quickly in the sense realm. This implies that medicine should be welcomed and used, and that in some cases physical healing may actually be the ultimate healing — the obtaining of a glorified body through death.

(3) The sick should be encouraged to root out all possible obstacles to healing, including weakness in faith.

(4) If not immediately healed, the sick should trust that God is working in them and should get on with their lives. If God reveals to them a new approach or a problem area in their lives, they should not hesitate to resume prayer for healing, if not, they should be free of guilt and trust that God will use them as they are.

Although still principally in America the faith movement is beginning to emerge in Britain and gain a sense of permanency with an estimated membership of fifteen thousand. The faith movement presents Christianity as a “comfortable package”, but being a Christian does not ease our lives, rather it involves carrying a cross in Christ’s name. The extremes of the movement are heretical and should be rebuked wherever encountered.