What’s Better Than Healing? Health!
3 John 2:
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
God’s will for you is health, not simply healing. Here we see that God’s desire is for you to be in health. This is far better than getting sick, getting healed, getting sick again, getting healed again, and so on. Thank God, healing is available to you when you get sick, but health is available to you so that you don’t have to get sick in the first place. It is not God’s perfect will for you to get sick and need healing!
1 Peter 2:24:
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
Here we see that by Jesus’ stripes (the damage to His body from His flogging) you were healed. It is important to recognize this as a statement, not a promise. Peter did not say that by Jesus’ stripes you were promised healing when you get sick. Peter put your healing in the past tense. You were healed. If your healing is in the past tense, you have the right to walk in health at all times, because healing has already been accomplished for you as far as God is concerned.
Of course, if any among you is sick (notice the if), that person can call for the elders of the church and receive healing through the prayer of faith (James 5:14-15). But James’s very use of the word if shows that sickness is not something that has to be part of everyone’s life. It needs to be done away with. This is because the Christian is to walk in health, not simply healing.
Psalm 91:3,5-11,15-16:
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
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Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
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He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.
Here we see that the pestilence is not to come near you. It is not to come nigh your dwelling. That means that the latest flu strain does not have any business being in your home. If the pestilence does not come near you, you won’t get sick from it and then need healing. You will walk in health because you don’t get sick in the first place. We can see this even under the Old Covenant.
Romans 8:11:
But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
Here we see the ongoing quickening (life-giving) work of the Holy Spirit in your body. This life-giving force can keep you from getting whatever sickness is going around.
Exodus 23:25-26:
And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.
There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfill.
God promised Israel that He would take sickness away from the midst of the people. This goes beyond a promise to heal diseases if they came (which He did elsewhere), but shows that even under the Old Covenant, it was God’s will that there not be any sickness in the first place. Even if you want to interpret this as healing sicknesses when they come, it is still a health promise and can be interpreted no other way.