The Victorian Anglican poet Henry Twells wrote the hymn: ‘At even, ere the sun was set, The sick, O Lord, around Thee lay; O in what diverse pains they met! O with what joy they went away! … Thy touch has still its ancient power; No word from thee can fruitless fall: Hear, in this solemn evening hour,And in thy mercy heal us all.’ He healed all and there were many there. Do you suffer from diseases of the soul: spiritual blindness, deafness, lameness, paralysis? If that is still true of you, you have never been forgiven. You must come to him earnestly and urgently. Believers, if you have lost the love you had for Christ, and become ensnared by the world, neglecting devotions, and careless about the way you live, then come to him; he restores the backslider.
We can pretend all we like that all conditions of men and women are normal, but God defines what is normal, and he made our bodies to function in a healthy state; he knows that the curse has brought sickness and illness, and it must be taken away to restore us to a healthy state. The sick in Christ’s day saw the need of healing and did not want to remain in a state of sickness, and so they brought their sick to him.
These words are from Isaiah 53:4, the great chapter about the atonement of Christ. How did the healing miracles of the Lord fulfil this prophecy, and were they a complete fulfilment, or is there more to Isaiah’s words than these historic events? Matthew definitely says that the physical healings which Christ did fulfilled this prophecy, but these sign miracles were only done by the Lord and his apostles, and were part of the gifts only given to the early church. Only the early church experienced these things, and then only a minority of them, and yet all other elements of Isaiah 53 continue and we all believers in Christ receive the benefit of them throughout the gospel age and then on into eternity. Why does Isaiah speak of Christ taking our infirmities and bearing our sicknesses if only the first generation of Christians enjoyed this benefit? We could ask it a different way: is healing in the atonement? Many cessationists are quick to say, no. Christ did not die to provide healing from physical sickness of all God’s people in all ages. But it is better to see this another way. Yes, healing is in the atonement, but not all the benefits of the atonement come straight away. Some of those benefits have to wait until the end of time. The resurrection of the body is also in the atonement, but e do not receive it immediately. The same is true of healing. We will be raised incorruptible and our glorified bodies will not be capable of sickness. Christ by his death has removed all trace of the curse, and there will be no sicknesses in heaven. But these healing were a token of what is to come. They show that part of the benefit we receive from hi is the end of all bodily illness. The recipients of Christ’s healings still died, but their illnesses did not return. They were tokens not only of spiritual renewal, but even renewal of the body of this death (Romans 7:24).
The miracles of Christ were not only signs of his divinity, and evidences of his great compassion and mercy, but they were also pictures of his saving work. The physical miracles pictured what Christ does in the souls of those who are converted and saved. Many people understand this when it comes to the parables, but not the miracles. The Puritans however used to say of Christ, ‘As he wrought, so he taught’, and they applied it to the miracles. How do we prove that? By looking at the lessons Christ draws from some of his miracles. In Mark 5:25 a woman with an issue of blood comes to touch Christ in order to be healed, and he says to her, ‘Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace and be whole of thy plague.’ He makes it clear that her touch was a demonstration and a picture of faith, and her being made whole was the consequence. Following the feeding of the 5000 Christ says to the Pharisees, ‘I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, but I am the true bread … if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.’ Then in John 8:39, after Jesus gives sight to the man born blind, he says, ‘For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind’ (John 9:39). What he did for this man was a picture of his giving sight to the blind soul. Speaking with Martha before the raising of Lazarus, Jesus links what he is about to do for her dead brother with what he does for the souls of all who believe: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Following the healing of many on evening in Capernaum, Matthew quotes from Isaiah 53, ‘That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.’ Why does he do this in connection with healing miracles? Isn’t Isaiah 53 about the atonement? Yes, it is, but those healings of the body were in turn pictures of the healing of the soul.