TEXT: Matthew 8:16-17

SUBJECT: The Passion of Jesus Christ #19: Heal Physical Sickness

For the last several months, we have been studying a short book by John Piper called The Passion of Jesus Christ. It seeks to explain why our Lord went to the cross. We know why men sent Him there—because they’re evil. But why did God concur with their judgment? Had He wanted to, He could have stopped the crucifixion. But He didn’t want to! In fact, it was His idea all along. When trying to defend his Lord, Peter was sharply rebuked,

The ‘cup’ He has in mind is the cross and all the suffering that goes with it. As guilty as they were, it was not Judas, the Rulers of Israel, or Pontius Pilate who handed the cup to Him. It was God. The Father sent His Son to the cross. He didn’t just permit it; He decreed it.

Why would He do this? The Jews of the First Century had their answer. He is stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. In other words, He got what was coming to Him. But Isaiah knows better. He got what was coming to us.

God sent His Son to the cross to save you.

This brings up an interesting question. When we say Christ came to save you, what do we mean by…you? Most Christians would say ‘He came to save my soul.’ That’s true, He did. They’re often fuzzy about what they mean by ‘soul’, but whatever they mean by it, they don’t mean their body.

The most important Greek philosopher was Plato. He thought of the human body as ‘the prison house of the soul’. For him, salvation meant freedom from the body. A great many Christians feel the same way. They think of heaven—chiefly—as the place your spirit goes when your body dies.

When the believer dies, his spirit does go to heaven. Paul said, To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, which is far better. But, as important as this is, it is not the chief meaning of ‘heaven’ and it is not the believer’s final goal. ‘Jesus Christ died to save you’ means He died to save all of you! God is not only the Creator of body and soul, He’s the Savior of body and soul. Your body matters to God—and what you do with it matters—because Jesus Christ died for your body. His body died so that yours may live.

This brings us to Chapter 18 of our book, which is titled,

A quick word is in order. I don’t why Piper placed the word, ‘moral’ in the title. In the two pages, he has only one passing reference to ‘moral’ healing. The chapter, therefore, is not about healing your sin or your guilt or your habits or your memories or your relationships, and so on. It’s about healing your body. Our Lord suffered and died to heal our physical diseases.

For a hundred years, Pentecostal Christians have taught Physical healing is in the Atonement! Believers from other backgrounds have, mostly, denied this. He died to save us from diseases of the soul, not of the body. When the Pentecostal brethren ask us about all the healings in the Bible, we clear our throats, shuffle our feet, and say they’re pictures of salvation. It’s spiritual leprosy He came to heal or blindness of the soul.

The fact is, the Pentecostals are right on this one. I don’t agree with what they do with the doctrine, but the doctrine itself is true. Just look at our text.

The first half of Matthew, Chapter 8 is all about physical healing. First, a leper is healed (vv.1-4); then the servant of a Centurion is healed of paralysis (vv.5-13); next, we have Peter’s mother healed of a high fever (vv.14-15; finally, every sick person in town is healed (vv.16-17a).

All of this healing took place, Matthew tells us, to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 53:4,

If you look at the chapter in Isaiah, and cross-reference it with I Peter 2:24, you see He took our diseases onto Himself at the cross. Thus, healing of the body is a fruit of the Atonement. Jesus Christ not only died to save our spirits, but He also died to save our bodies.

Where does disease come from? Piper says,

This may sound funny, but it’s true: Disease is unnatural and death is abnormal! We were created to live in good health and forever. Had our parents obeyed the Lord, they would have—and I suppose—we would have too.

But they didn’t. By choosing disobedience, Adam and Eve also chose sickness and death. For themselves and for everyone else.

Their sin did not cause sickness and death in the same way hitting your thumb with a hammer causes pain. The latter is a natural result. As long as you have nerves in your thumb, a hammer blow is going to hurt it. If Adam had hit his thumb with a hammer, I suppose he would have felt the same way we do, though he wouldn’t have said a bad word!

Sickness and death, however, are not natural results of sin. They are judgments from God. Most of the time, they are not direct judgments: you can’t look at a healthy man and say ‘he must be good’, and then look at a sick man, and say, ‘he must be bad’. That is the theology of Job’s friends, who are fools! It’s also proud and heartless.

There’s a line in the New Testament that I can’t read without getting mad. It’s in John 9:2,

The judgments of sickness and death are spread out over the whole human race. Including believers in Christ. There’s not one set of illnesses for unbelievers and another set for believers. Go to the hospital and you’ll find both Christians and non-Christians in every ward.

If sickness was natural and death was normal, we could not be saved from them without becoming something other than we are. But, in salvation, we don’t become gods or angels; we remain human.

That’s good news! Because it means—Piper says—

If sickness and death are punishments on sin, then if sin is gotten rid of, sickness and death will be too!

Thus, if Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins, He also came to save us from our sickness and death.

He’s doing just that. Piper says,

A couple of Sundays ago, I told you, every now and then, the Kingdom of God breaks into the world with special power. The best known example is the Transfiguration, where an ordinary looking Man took on the splendor of Heaven for a few minutes. Peter, James, and John saw a flash of our Lord’s Divine Glory. What they saw way back then, we shall all see some day.

The healing miracles we find in the Bible are the same thing. A woman is bent double for eighteen years, until Heaven comes down and sets her right! A man is crippled for thirty eight years, until the Kingdom puts him back on his feet. Piper found the right word. The healing ministry of Christ is a preview.

Just as previews at the theatre show five minutes of a two hour movie, so the healings that took place in Israel are only a small part of the full and final healing that occurs when the Lord comes again!

How wonderful the healings will be then! They won’t be selective, for one thing. How many lepers did the Lord heal? Quite a few, of course, but how many lepers were there in the world at that time? Must have been many thousands, the great majority of whom died of it. And what happened to the ones who were healed? Eventually, they got sick and died.

But the healing of the Resurrection sets all of God’s People right and for good! No more sickness; no more death; the former things have passed away. And Good Riddance!

How will our Lord wipe out all sickness and death? Piper says,

If sickness and death are punishments for sin, then either sinners or their Substitute will be bear them. The Gospel says our Substitute bore them in His own body on the tree. And that means, we won’t—not forever, I mean.

When will this occur? At the Second Coming of Christ.

One of the key themes of the New Testament is the Already/Not Yet Kingdom of God. In one sense, the Kingdom has come. But, in another way, it hasn’t come. In short, it has come in part, but not in whole. This means, although our salvation is real and cannot be taken away from us, we don’t have it all right now. Nobody does—not even our loved ones in heaven. Though they’re free from all disease, even they’re waiting for the Regeneration of all things and the Resurrection of the Body.

So, we wait. And wait. And wait some more. The waiting is not pleasant, but it is good for us. We know that because, if it were not, the Lord would come already. He hasn’t done that. But He will. And when He does, broken bodies will be put back together; the sick will be well; the old will be young; the tired will be fresh; the insane will be in their right minds; the fat will be thin; the weak will be strong; the bald will be hairy. In short,

Knowing all this, it’s no wonder the Bible ends,