Objection: Like Any Loving Parent, God Sometimes Has to Tell His Children NO for Their Own Good
God never says NO to His own promises. He can’t. He has already promised to heal all your diseases (Psalm 103:3). He declares you legally healed in your body by the stripes of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24). If He were to say NO to a request for healing, He would be a covenant-breaker and a liar like Satan.
2 Corinthians 1:18-20:
But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay.
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea.
For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.
God does not say yea to some people and nay to other people, or yea some of the time and nay the rest of the time. That is just religious nonsense. Whoever says that sometimes God says Yes, sometimes God says No and sometimes God says Wait when you go to Him to receive something He already said is yours doesn’t know God very well according to His Word. (That particular Yes/No/Wait objection has its own section.) God is covenant-bound to heal you when you come to Him in faith.
Paul told us that Jesus Christ is not a mixture of yes and no! Look in the gospels and see where God or Jesus ever said NO to a request for healing. (The case of the Syrophonecian woman is covered in another objection, and she got what she came for anyway.) You’ll see that those who came to Him were healed. They were never sent away with a NO. We know that Jesus always did the will of God and said what God wanted Him to say. Therefore, we know that God Himself would never say NO to someone who comes to receive healing. Neither Jesus nor God can change (Hebrews 13:8, Hebrews 1:12, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17), so Jesus could not possibly say NO today to someone who comes to receive healing.
Whoever makes this objection is assuming that sickness is somehow good and that God would say NO because He knows that we would be better off sick. IMPOSSIBLE. In no case in the New Testament did God or Jesus tell people that they were better off sick. (If you’ve been mis-instructed that Paul begged God to heal him and was told NO, read the objection about Paul’s Thorn and be set free from that nonsense.) When sickness is called “evil” (Deuteronomy 7:15), “the oppression of the devil” (Acts 10:38), “captivity” (Job 42:10), “bondage” (Luke 13:16) and “a curse” (Deuteronomy 28:15-68), how can it possibly make you better off? The devil has nothing that will make you better off.
If someone is not healed, it is not because God said NO to his healing. It is most likely because the person did not meet the qualification of asking in faith without wavering. That is God’s standard for asking. If you waver, you must not think that you will receive anything from God (James 1:5-8). A way to waver is to think that God sometimes has to tell His children NO for their own good! To avoid wavering, feed on what the Word says about healing. Then you won’t believe silly objections like this one.
God IS a loving parent, and that is precisely why He is always willing to heal. If you had the power to heal your child, would you withhold his healing because you felt that he would learn valuable lessons while sick? No, you wouldn’t, and if you say that you would, you’re a hypocrite and a liar. If you’ve ever given your child medicine to relieve his suffering, you have just proved that you would do what you can to take away your child’s suffering. You would not withhold your medicine to “teach” him something, and the thought probably never crossed your mind. Now do you think that God, who has the best medicine of all to give you (His Word that He sent to heal you – Proverbs 4:20-22, Psalm 107:20), would be meaner than you are? Are you a better parent than God? No, you’re not. God never tells His children NO when they ask for healing – precisely because He is a loving parent!