We are currently discussing the promise of healing in the New Covenant. If, in fact, healing is promised in the covenant we have through Christ and he purchased healing for us as well as the forgiveness of our sins through his suffering, then healing and divine health are available and desirable for every believer. It is part of our inheritance in Christ so that we should believe as easily for healing as we do for forgiveness.
To underline this covenant aspect of healing, we need to look a little further into the past to see if health and healing were typically part of God’s covenants before the cross. When we look at the beginning of all things, health was obviously God’s will in the Garden of Eden. No one would suggest that illness or infirmity existed in the Garden. As long as Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Life, they would live and apparently not be subject to disease or infirmity of any kind. I would say that disease did not exist in the Garden environment any more than it exists in heaven so that, in many ways, it was never to be part of the equation of life.
Many believers today hold the position that God is not willing to heal everyone because sickness or infirmity often draws people closer to God. They hold a theology that asserts that suffering often purifies us and makes us more spiritual. They say that when people suffer and maintain their faith, God is glorified. Since suffering draws us closer to God and often glorifies him, it is, therefore, God’s will for some believers to be sick or blind or paralyzed. They would suggest that God sends disease and infirmity to make us better Christians. In that case, why did God not create Adam and Eve with some disabilities or cause them to suffer from some exotic disease in the Garden to mature them spiritually?Why do we never see Jesus laying hands on some person in order to impart disease so that the man or woman could draw closer to God or become more spiritually mature?
I am not saying that God can’t use suffering to mature us, but that is a different thing from wanting us to be sick or willing us to be sick. We must also acknowledge that sickness has often been part of some judgment that has come on God’s people when they have forsaken him. However, it was never what God wanted for his people and repentance brought healing or the cessation of some plague. God never sent disease, tragedy, or war on his people when they were serving him in order to upgrade their spirituality. In the Garden, health was his desire for his people.
Now, let’s go to the other end of the timeline. In John’s vision of the end, he sees a river of water flowing out to the nations from the throne of God. He says, “On each side of the river stood the Tree of Life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse” (Rev.22:2-3). In the beginning, God provided a Tree of Life to keep his people walking in divine health and at the end of time he does the same. My point is that God’s perfect will for his people is health. How many of us would believe that heaven is full of disease and paralyzed people? The very idea seems like a contradiction. Why? Because we know that disease and infirmity is not a blessing and that God does not want illness, birth defects, or disabilities for his children. Can he use it? Yes. Does he want it? No. Not only that, but we are to pray for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Since there is no illness in heaven, we are to pray against illness here.
When we look at the patriarchs, we see them sick and infirm at the end of their days, when they are greatly advanced in age, but never get a sense of them struggling with illness or infirmity before their appointed days had been fulfilled. Part of God’s blessing was health along with a fullness of days.
The fact that God’s blessings do not include illness or infirmity is very apparent in the covenant he made with Israel. To Moses, the Lord declared, “Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span” (Ex.23”25-26).
A consistent expression of God’s love for his people has always been health. In another place he says, “If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease” (Dt.7:12-15). In fact, God reveals that it is his very nature to heal those he loves. He said, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you” (Ex.15:26).
God’s blessings always include health. The curse of sin is alienation from God, eternal suffering, and disease and infirmity if anyone is not delivered from the curse by the blood of Jesus. When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they became subject to death and those things that produce death. They were removed from the Garden of Eden so that they could no longer eat of the Tree of Life and walk in perpetual health. Sin changed all of that. As sin impacted the soul, illness impacted the body. Disease is a manifestation of sin in the human race.
Sin and a fallen nature became a gateway to disease and infirmity. It became the natural state of man….unless man entered into a covenant with God in which he promised to take away sickness and infirmity as part of his covenant blessings for his people. Under the Old Covenant, the presence of plague or disease that was not was not being healed, were both signs of rebellion and disobedience and a call to repentance. When repentance came from the heart, however, both forgiveness and healing followed. If that was true under the Old Covenant, how much more should it be true under a better covenant? If that was true under a covenant where the blood of bulls and goats opened the door to healing, how much wider should the door be under the blood of the Lamb?
More in my next blog about the healing found in the New Covenant.
