Objection: Matthew 8:17 Means That Jesus Was “Bearing” the Consequences of Sin

Matthew 8:16-17:
When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick:
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.

The objector is basically saying that Jesus “bore” sickness and disease as He was healing them only in the sense that He had to put up with them because they were consequences of sin.  And let’s give this website some credit for at least acknowledging that sickness is a consequence of sin.  This bolsters the argument in this book that when Jesus paid the consequences for our sin, He had to be made sick as our Substitute to redeem us from sickness, which is one consequence of sin.  (That was definitely not the point the objector was trying to make!)

Even a simple reading of this passage should dispel this objection.  Matthew did not say that Jesus “put up with” or “bore with” our infirmities and sicknesses, which we know are consequences of sin being on the earth.  He took them and bore them.  This was possible because of His future sin-bearing and sickness-bearing at the end of His earthly life.  If the chronology troubles you, it probably should trouble you that Jesus forgave sins while He healed the sick, yet He did not atone for sins until the end of His life.  The same concept applies.  The Hebrew in Isaiah 53 makes clear that Jesus did the same thing with sickness that He did with sin, as the same word (nasa) is used to describe what He did with both.  Did Jesus “put up with sin” on the cross or did He put it away?  The latter, obviously.  Did He “put up with sickness” or did He put it away?  It’s the same Hebrew word, so He put away sickness just as He put away sin.

You can visit my main write-up on Matthew 8:16-17 and click on several of the related objections for more information about what Matthew was and wasn’t saying.