Objection: We Know That God Did Not Heal Paul, Because He Said that He Bore Marks in His Body (Galatians 6:17)

The idea here is that God had completely healed Paul, he would no longer be bearing marks in his body.  After all, if he were completely healed, the marks would be gone, and his skin would be like that of the models on the lotion ads on TV, right?

Galatians 6:17:
From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.

Where did Paul get his marks?  Plenty of them probably came from Galatia itself (Lystra in particular), where he was stoned and left for dead.  Paul wrote to believers in this same general area.  This adds additional insight into the infirmities of the flesh that he discussed earlier in Galatians (Galatians 4:13).  They were inflicted by men who persecuted him for preaching the gospel.  Even then, God kept healing Paul so that he could preach in other places.

So why didn’t God heal Paul and give him perfect skin with no marks left in it?  I don’t know; ask God when you get to heaven if you want.  Whatever these marks were, they surely didn’t stop Paul from preaching the gospel as a serious illness would have done.  Of course, you can’t even tie this in to colds and flus because these marks were from persecution, not from diseases.  Chicken pox scars are definitely NOT the marks of the Lord Jesus.  Cold sores are NOT the marks of the Lord Jesus.  Acne pimples are NOT the marks of the Lord Jesus.

If it weren’t for God’s healing power working in Paul’s life, he wouldn’t have been walking around with marks at all – he would have been dead at Lystra and that would have been it.  Paul may have had some scars left, but nothing serious enough to stop his preaching.  I personally have a scar from an operation in the third grade, and I don’t plan to pray that God will remove it – I have better things to do (like writing this).  Paul’s physical infirmity at Galatia was stated to be “at the first,” implying that it did not continue.  He spoke of a trial that was in his flesh, not one that he still had when he wrote Galatians.  Paul’s healing says a lot more about what is available to us than the scars that may have been left by his beatings and stonings.  Besides, there is reason to think that Paul considered bearing these external marks to be an honor, just as the other apostles considered it an honor to be beaten and mistreated for the sake of the Lord Jesus.  Because Jesus and Paul were both flogged, Paul may have considered it an honor to bear marks like those of his Lord.

We should consider one other fact.  Galatians is by far the earliest letter that Paul wrote in the Bible according to church historians.  So even if he had the marks of the Lord Jesus then, Paul never indicated in any of his later letters that he still had those marks, so it’s a little presumptuous to assert that God never healed him when the rest of the Bible is silent on the matter.