The Cost Of Healing

It Is Free

The title to this teaching series probably got your attention. It may even sound like it conflicts with Scripture because we have been taught to believe that God's healing is a free gift to the body of Christ, which leads us to assume that there is no cost to it--at least no cost to us.

In a way, that is very true. Healing was purchased by Jesus on Calvary through His suffering, death and resurrection as a sacrifice for our sins. Isaiah 53:5 tells us, "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed." 1 Peter 2:24 says some- thing very similar: "[Jesus] Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness-- by whose stripes you were healed."

The New Testament makes clear a tie between Jesus' ability to heal the sick and His suffering/dying for us. For example, Matthew 8:16-17 says, "When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon- possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses'" That reference in Isaiah is Isaiah 53:4, and the next verse (Isaiah 53:5) explains how Jesus bore our sickness and infirmities--by His stripes. That refers to the fierce whipping He received at Pilot's command just before He was crucified (Mark 15:15, John 19:1).

One of the things that Jesus purchased for us was physical healing. The price tag was huge: it required His suffering, death and resurrection, as per Isaiah 53.

Jesus got access to this physical healing before His death, but it was His upcoming death/resurrection that gave Him access to it. Think of it this way: The Father (Who sees in all times at once) granted Jesus "advanced" access to the healing that He was about to purchase. Jesus was allowed to heal the sick BEFORE He died (and rose again) because He had come to this earth explicitly to become the sacrifice for our sin.

Everything in His life from the moment He was born until the moment He faced Calvary was explicitly to redeem us; so in a manner of speaking, He had begun to pay the price when He was born. All of Jesus' life and ministry on the earth was a part of Jesus redeeming us, and that gave Him access to forgive sins and heal the sick before He died and rose from the dead.

Putting it another way, Jesus made the first installment of the purchase (our salvation and healing) when He has born. He completed that transaction when He died for our sins and rose from the dead. But He had access to the "goods" (e.g., healing and to the ability to forgive sin) from the point where He made the first installment. That is why He as able to say to the paralytic in Matthew 9:2, "Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you." That is why He was able to say to the thief on the cross, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).

Once Jesus had access to healing, He gave it away very freely. The New Testament is full of example after example of this. Let me give you just a few examples. Matthew 4:24 says, "Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them." Matthew 21:14 says, "Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them." Mark 3:10 says, "For He healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about Him to touch Him."

So the gift of healing (along with the gift of salvation) were not free to Jesus--He purchased them at a very great price. But once He had them, He gave them away freely to anyone who was willing to receive them at His hand.

God Expects The Body Of Christ To Heal The Sick

Jesus did not just give away physical healing to those who need it--He also gave away the authority (or ability) to heal the sick to each of His followers.

Jesus started this with His followers when He was still living on the earth. We see it in Luke 9:1-2, where Jesus sent out the 12: "Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." Then a little later, He sent out seventy of His disciples with the same mandate. Luke 10:1, "After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go."

Then in the great commission of Mark 16:15-18, Jesus expanded this mandate to ALL of His disciples in all times:

15And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 16He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.

17And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; 18they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

It should not surprise us that Jesus gave each of us the mandate to "heal the sick," since one of His main ministry activities had been healing the sick. We must not forget what He said to us about this in John 14:12: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father."

In short, Jesus fully expects us to do the same works that He did when He walked on this earth. He spent a lot of His time healing the sick, and He expects each of us to likewise heal the sick.

If this is the first time you've heard this, then don't panic. Jesus did not give us an impossible mandate. Rather He gave us the very same thing (e.g., the indwelling Person of the Holy Spirit) to empower us in this that He used when He did it. Acts 10:38 tells us that Jesus healed through the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It says, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, Who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him."

He has given the same Holy Spirit Who anointed Jesus to each of us. In short, He made a way for each of us to be able to live up to His mandate to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. Then He commanded each of us to do the very things He empowered us to do.

But There Is Still A Cost

But there is still a cost to heal the sick. That cost comes in the form of increased spiritual warfare against us as we more actively start to do with God what He is doing. The more we advance God's kingdom, the more we become a threat to the devil, and the more he will fight back against us. I will talk about this more in the next lesson.

But I do want to address one thing...we don't have the option of not doing it just because there is a spiritual warfare counter-attack price tag attached to it. Jesus has commanded us to be His witness, to cast out demons and to heal the sick. We don't get an option as to whether or not we do these things, we are expected to obey God and to do with Him what He is doing.