Big Healing Book - Jesus Redeemed Us from Disease, But the Fulfillment of That

Objection: Jesus Redeemed Us from Disease, But the Fulfillment of That Won’t Come Until We Get Glorified Bodies

An alternate wording of this objection is, “Healing Is Provided in the Atonement but Guaranteed Only in the Resurrection.” This has become a cliché in some circles. Actually, it’s a backpedaling statement made by churches whose founders believed that healing is provided in the atonement, but whose current leaders aren’t so sure. Wording it this way lets them continue to stick with the LETTER of the church’s original statement of faith while actually turning it into a statement of unbelief.

At least the objector admits that Jesus did redeem us from disease, which is clear to everyone who checks out the Hebrew in Isaiah 53:4. What should also be clear to anyone who reads Isaiah 53 is that Jesus bore our diseases in our place as our Substitute. Surely He has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains. You won’t be able to have sicknesses or pains in your glorified body. There will be no diseases that He could take away from you then. The only time you can experience “your sicknesses” and “your pains” is in this present life! These, then, are the very sicknesses and pains that Jesus bore in our place as our Substitute. Redemption from sickness will be unnecessary in heaven because no one in heaven ever gets sick! There are no sicknesses or pains there. It is only in THIS LIFE that we need this redemption.

It is clear from Matthew 8:16-17 that the present-day healing of the sick is what fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy of healing, not our future healing. If this redemption were only for the future, there would be no way the multitudes could have received healing from Jesus Christ in their lifetimes. It is obvious that multitudes were healed during their own earthly life-spans.

The fact that healing is a present-day ordinance in James 5:14-16 should serve as proof that healing is for this life, not just the next one. Actually, there are many, many other promises cited in this book that are meaningless if healing is relegated to heaven.

We are redeemed from sin and the punishment for it in this life, so there is no reason to think that God would require us to bear any part of the punishment for sin, including sickness. You cannot separate healing and forgiveness, as is made clear elsewhere in this book.

Walking in divine health is like living victoriously over the flesh. Your FINAL victory over the flesh will coincide with your FINAL victory over sickness – when you get a new, immortal, spiritual body. In this life, I don’t know anyone who always walks in victory over the flesh, but that doesn’t mean that Paul lied when he wrote to the Romans that we are not debtors to the flesh to do after the flesh (Romans 8:12). We don’t have to ever do a single work of the flesh for the rest of our lives. We have the victory NOW. “Sin shall have no dominion over you” (Romans 6:14) is a promise for now, not later. (There will be no sin that could have dominion over you in heaven!) We can always overcome sin. Likewise, we can always overcome sickness because we are healed by the stripes of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24). Many people will not enjoy the victory in this life even though it was provided in Christ. It may be that all of us fall short of what we could have in both the areas of sin and sickness. But this does not prove that we cannot walk in the Spirit and walk in health now. God says that we can do both.