Your Authority over Sickness
You have authority over all sickness and disease through the name of Jesus. Jesus said that in His name, you (the believer) will lay hands on the sick and they will recover. See Mark 16:15-18.
He said that it was to our advantage that He went away and sent the Holy Spirit (John 16:7). How can this be, given all the miracles that Jesus did? Anyone who was sick could go to Him and get healed while He was walking on the earth. How can it be better NOW?
It is better now because Jesus can be everywhere through His Body, the Church. Every member of His Body is authorized to do the works that He did in His name. What the multitudes could get from Jesus they can now get from us. This includes physical healing.
Too often we underestimate the power in the name of Jesus. A man who was not a regular disciple cast out demons in the name of Jesus during Jesus' ministry, to the consternation of the disciples. (See Mark 9:38-39 and Luke 9:49-50.) Jesus then spoke of a person doing a miracle in His name. This person was not even explicitly commissioned as far as we know. He simply used the name of Jesus!
In Luke 10:17-20 we see the disciples rejoicing over the fact that even the demons were subject to them through Jesus’ name. Jesus said that He gave them power to trample on serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and that nothing would by any means hurt them. Of course, sickness is one example of the “power of the enemy,” so we must have power over it.
Now God works with us, just as He worked with the disciples, confirming His word with signs following (Mark 16:20).
Ephesians 1:15-23 contains many powerful truths, one of which is, “God has placed all things under His [Jesus’] feet.” All things would include sickness. Sickness is under Jesus’ feet. But wait a minute. Jesus is the Head and we are the Body of Christ on the earth. Your feet are not part of your head, assuming that you are not some alien on Star Trek or something. They are part of your body. If all things are under His feet, they are under us. And if sickness is part of all things, sickness is under us. We have authority over it.
Acts 3:1-16 contains an account of a man who was made whole when Peter commanded him to get up and walk in the name of Jesus. Peter said that Jesus’ name, through faith in His name, had healed the man.
Read Acts 4:29-33 and see how the disciples prayed. They asked for boldness and that signs and wonders would be done by the name of Jesus. (The bolder you are about proclaiming the full gospel, the more signs and wonders you will see.)
In Acts 16:16-18, Paul case out a fortune-telling spirit in the name of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 2:9-11:
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus has the name above every other name, yet He has never used that name in the earth. Believers use His name. At His name, every knee must bow in heaven, on the earth and under the earth. This passage does not say that every knee will bow to Jesus. It says that every knee bows at His name. They will not hear Jesus’ name from His own mouth; they will hear it from believers’ mouths! (People who glance at this passage often completely misunderstand it.) The knees bow when we use the name of Jesus, the name above every name.
Plenty of things have names on this earth. AIDS, cancer, pneumonia, diabetes and other diseases have well-known names. The name of Jesus is above these names. We have authority over these things in the name of Jesus.
James 5:14-16 contains New Testament instructions for ministering to a seriously ill person. (If you just have a cold, you can go to church. You don’t have to call for the elders to come to you.) This is just as much a command as being baptized, participating in the Lord’s Supper and walking in love, yet regrettably, this passage is almost never obeyed today. Rather than visiting the sick and praying the prayer of faith to raise them up, we too often “remember” the sick on a list of sick people read from the pulpit. No, these people are to call for the elders of the church, who are to anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord and then pray the prayer of faith for them that will raise them up.
If we did not have authority over sickness in the name of Jesus, how could the elders be expected to pray “the prayer of faith?” If (as some say) we should ask for a direct revelation from God concerning His will before praying, there must be no Bible verses on which to base the prayer of faith. Because faith comes from hearing God’s Word, if you have no Scripture for something, you have no faith for it. Your prayer becomes just so much wishing and begging and pleading. Yuck.
When you understand your God-given authority, it clears up issues such as why God “doesn’t do anything” about a certain case of sickness. God isn’t going to do what He gave US the authority to do. WE are supposed to do something about it in the name of Jesus. Pleading with God to heal someone is like asking Him to send an angel to take out the household trash for us rather than taking it out ourselves.
Jesus started a parable this way:
Matthew 25:14:
For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.
Jesus is now seated with God, but He delivered to us His goods, which in this case includes authority over sickness.
John 14:12-14 promises us that Jesus will do whatever we ask in His name. He did not qualify this by saying, “unless you ask for healing.” The “works of Christ” that are mentioned in this passage would specifically include, not exclude, healing!
See also: