Objection: Jesus Bore Our Sicknesses in Matthew 8:17 Due to the Exertion Involved in Channeling God’s Healing Power
This is a desperate attempt to prove that Matthew 8:17 does NOT mean that Jesus healed on the basis of His coming atonement, but rather that He “took” our sicknesses while He healed people of them. While it’s hard to take this seriously, the objector was serious about it.
Remember that Jesus also sent out the 12 and then the 70 to heal. Did they “take” sicknesses due to the exertion of channeling God’s healing power? Did the 12 get so sick from being channels that they had to find members of the 70 to then heal them, whereupon the 70 got sick too? No, nothing in Scripture says that you have to get sick when you minister healing to others. Jesus did not promise, “They shall lay hands on the sick, and the sick will recover while they who laid hands will get sick and need hands laid on them.”
Many other replies to similar objections will take you back to Isaiah 53 where you can be assured that Christ’s bearing of sicknesses was at the end of His life, not on one evening in Capernaum.
John 4:6 proves that Jesus COULD get weary (He was human, after all, as well as divine). But there is NO reference proving that Jesus ever got sick before His atonement, despite what another objector said. It is quite possible that He got weary while healing the sick, but that is not the same thing as getting sick. His weariness would NOT constitute TAKING (bearing) our sicknesses. Besides, He would not have taken OUR sicknesses (as Isaiah said) if He had been sick in Capernaum; He would only have taken THEIR sicknesses. I’m glad that He also bore OUR sins, not just THEIR sins, as well as OUR sicknesses!
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