Objection: If We Really Had Authority over Sickness, We Would Not Need GIFTS OF HEALINGS
At first this seems like a logical argument – if ANY believer can take authority over ANY disease, why would the Holy Spirit need to use some believers in a special way to heal the sick? In other words, why would there be a special “grace gift” to do what all believers can do anyway?
The problem here is a misunderstanding of what happens when “gifts of healings” are operating.
It is a true statement that all believers have authority over all diseases. We tread on snakes and scorpions and over ALL the power of the enemy, including sickness (Luke 10:19). However, the people who need healing still have a part to play in this. They need to believe in this authority too. Otherwise, the fact that you are anointed to heal the sick will not help them.
A servant is not above his master. Jesus COULD NOT do much in a place where everyone was in unbelief, so you won’t be able to do much under those circumstances either. Is there any question that Jesus had authority over all sickness when He went to Nazareth? After all, when He went to places that believed that He was the Anointed One, people were ALL healed. The difference was not in Jesus’ anointing; it was in the people. They were “bad ground” at Nazareth and they rejected Him. In other places, people received Him and received from Him and He declared that their faith had made them well. So faith or unbelief in a person is what makes the difference. Jesus was, is, and always will be the Anointed One. And so it is today – it is up to people whether they will receive or reject what God offers.
However, there will be cases where someone will get a “freebie” from the Lord without exercising faith. These are the circumstances related to gifts of healings. For example, the man at the Pool of Bethesda did not seem to be exercising one bit of faith in Jesus, but he was healed anyway. (In fairness to him, he at least DID believe that he could get healed if he could be the first one in the pool after the angel stirred the waters, so he kept hoping that someday he’d get someone to help him be the first one in.) Sometimes God will make an exception and heal a person irrespective of his faith (or lack thereof). I have seen God heal people in cases where I knew they that were not believing much of anything. When “gifts of healings” are in operation, the Holy Spirit will sometimes use a believer to bring about a cure in someone’s body whether the sick person is in faith or not.
This is a different situation from taking authority over sickness in someone’s body. I do not just run around finding sick people and randomly commanding sickness to leave their bodies. You need the sick person’s consent first. While we have authority over sickness, we do not have authority over someone else’s free will. Some people want to stay sick to get attention, get government assistance, or even because they actually want to die. We cannot heal such people; God honors their choice.
Please understand that if someone is sick, it does not mean that he has a sinister reason for wanting to be sick! Most sick people want to be well. The great amount of time and money they spend trying to get well attests to that. However, it is important to preach the Word to the sick so that they have a basis for faith so that they don’t just expect you to do everything. In the case of a nonbeliever or a new believer, if you can just get the person into “neutral” to allow you to exercise your God-given authority over sickness, you can see results. However, God expects that believers will grow in their faith. If you have a young child, you do not have an issue with tying his shoelaces for him. However, if Junior is now 34 years old, it would be unreasonable to tie his shoelaces for him. That does not mean that you love Junior any less! You just have different expectations. You don’t expect Junior to have other people do his work for him for the rest of his life.
This is why “gifts of healings” seem to be directed mostly toward unbelievers and new believers. Some believers get upset when a healing minister “calls out healings” for people who are known sinners while the more mature Christians don’t get called out. God doesn’t love mature believers less than other people, but He has higher expectations for them.
Even people who have been believers for a long time but are weak in faith will find that God doesn’t offer “gifts of healings” freebies much. Ignorance is not bliss. You can’t just leave your Bible on the bookshelf collecting dust and then think that God must heal you through a special manifestation of “gifts of healings” because you don’t know the Word well. You would be accountable for not taking the opportunity to spend time in the Word and learn what it says. That is different from someone who isn’t a Christian or just became one and hasn’t had time to read his Bible much yet.
Ideally, EVERY believer would take authority over EVERY condition in his own body, as he has the right to do. (He could speak to the sickness, or He could lay hands on himself if he is “the sick” and believe Jesus’ promise that he will recover, or he could believe that he receives the healing that Christ already provided for that sickness when he prays.) But not everyone is ready to operate at that level. So thank God, He made provision to minister healing in some cases by the Holy Spirit when people are not at that level.
The Holy Spirit can and does use some people along these lines more than others. We ALL can share the Word, walk in faith and command sickness to leave people with their consent in the name of Jesus, but that doesn’t detract from the idea that the Holy Spirit will use some people more than others to bring healing in cases where the person’s faith isn’t always involved. Taking authority over sickness and ministering through “gifts of healings” are two separate things that don’t contradict each other. We all as Christians DO have authority over ALL diseases, but only some Christians are specially used to minister healing even when the recipient isn’t really aware of how healing is supposed to work. God has the right, but not the obligation, to heal some people just as a sign and a wonder even if they were not believing for much of anything.
As believers, we do not need gifts of healings to get healed. We can believe for and receive our healings by faith. If we are having trouble, the gifts of healings may then get involved so that we can get healed anyway even if we are not in faith. But the fact that there are gifts of healings in no way denies our authority over sickness. These gifts simply provide an alternate means of getting healed when the sick person does not exercise faith.
However, you can NEVER be sure that healing will be ministered to you through the gifts of healings, even if you go to a service where someone who flows that way is preaching. You can ALWAYS be sure that healing can be received by FAITH. Thus, receiving by faith is far superior to expecting to receive through “gifts of healings.”