Objection: Exodus 15:26 Only Applies to You If You Keep the Whole Law of Moses

Exodus 15:26 opens with the condition, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes…”.  Thus, the statement that God would put none of the diseases of Egypt on them depended on their meeting this condition.  So with apparent logical consistency, the objector asserts that if you don’t keep the whole Law of Moses, you don’t qualify for exemption from sickness or enjoyment of the statement, “I am the Lord who Heals You.”

God undoubtedly DID heal the Israelites on many occasions, but it is noteworthy that they never reached the point where they kept the whole Law of Moses!  Consider the people in Hezekiah’s day – they definitely (through ignorance) did NOT keep the letter of the Law regarding the Passover (a symbol of Christ who was to come), but God healed the people anyway.  So somehow you CAN enjoy healing from the Lord Who Heals You without actually keeping the entire Law.  Otherwise, no one in the Old Testament would EVER have been healed of ANYTHING based on this verse, because aside from Jesus, NO ONE ever kept the WHOLE Law of Moses!  Also, God knew that “all have sinned” and that NO ONE other than Jesus would ever keep the whole Law of Moses.  So what good would this promise have been if there had been no way for imperfect people to receive it?

The key is to understand something about both covenants.  Under both covenants, God provided FORGIVENESS through the shedding of innocent blood.  In the New Testament, your sins are washed away so that God can treat you as if you had never sinned.  Under the Old Testament, a blood sacrifice could be made that would COVER (but not wash away) your sins so that God could treat you as if you had never sinned.  Under the Old Covenant, you retained your sinful nature, but you could still receive forgiveness on the basis of shed blood and enjoy the blessings, including Exodus 15:26, that would have applied to you if you had never sinned.

Sometimes we forget that even the Law provided a means of forgiveness, thinking that everything back then was received on the basis of human effort.  But if human effort to keep the Law would have worked, the mandated sacrifices for sin, and in particular, the Day of Atonement, would have been unnecessary.  It was those blood sacrifices that enabled people to regain God’s favor as if their sins hadn’t been committed.

Today, it is Jesus’ blood sacrifice that has WASHED AWAY, not just COVERED, our sins.  Because of that blood, we are entitled to receive any promise God ever made to people if they never sinned at all.  That includes Exodus 15:26 and many other Scriptures.

Finally, Exodus 15:26 contains a declaration of who our unchanging God IS.  He isn’t just the God who has made a promise to heal you; healing is His very nature.  He IS the Lord Your Physician.  That is true for us today as forgiven Christians who walk in right standing with God as if we HAD kept the whole Law of Moses.