From Matthew 8:14-17 / Healing in The Atonement

This passage is turned to by many to establish that as part and parcel of the atonement, physical healing is promised to all Believers. Of course then the question remains, if physical healing is the automatic extension of our salvation, then why aren’t all God’s people perpetually healed? Some would answer, that such healing (like salvation itself) is dependent upon our faith. So if we do not have faith to be healed, we will not be. But the 3 healings in this chapter seem to militate against that conclusion.

Note in the first case, the Leper’s faith only extended to Jesus’ ability to heal, “if you will”, and not that he had confidence Jesus would heal him. In the second case, the ill person’s faith is totally irrelevant, it was the Centurion that believed Jesus could heal. And once again, he only believed Christ COULD, not that He would. And in the 3rd case, we read nothing of Peter’s mother-in-law’s faith at all. Jesus simply healed her. So the faith theory does not seem to hold up – here at least.

But what do we do with the quote from Isa. 53? How does what happened here filfill the prophecy that “he took our illnesses and bore our diseases?”

In the first place we note that whatever it means, it happed prior to the Cross, not as an effect of the Cross. Such healing seems to be connected with the atonement in 2 main ways. 1 – In the atonement, Jesus would do all that was needed to reverse sin’s effects. So there is the promise of total physical healing for all who are His – to be realized fully in the resurrection. 2 – The healing we need above all others, is that of our souls. To be delivered from sin’s effects there. Many commentators locate the entire weight of the healing in Isaiah’s prophecy then only in the spiritual sense. But even there, we have to reckon with the reality of the remnants of indwelling sin. The old adage that we have at present been delivered from the penalty of sin, are in the process of being delivered from the power of sin, and in the end will be delivered from the very presence of sin is true.

In regard to both of the above, what we see is that there are parts of the fullness of Christ’s “healing” both physically and spiritually now, but there is a fullness yet to come. We indeed ought to pray for one another in terms of healing (physically AND for one another’s souls) because God is merciful and gracious and countless times we have seen Him heal and deliver from sins. These are indeed privileges of the saved. What we cannot do is assume a stance of “healing on demand.” We have many gracious foretates of what is to come by His grace.

Lastly, and perhaps most overlooked in this passage, is that in all 3 healings, they share the common thread that each was ceremonially unclean, and yet 2 cases, Jesus still touched them. In Judaic thought, to touch and unclean person, was to make oneself unclean – in a manner to take their uncleanness upon oneself. Only Christ could take on our uncleanness, and not become unclean Himself. Instead, He makes us clean and righteous with His rightouesness. A total reversal of how it worked prior to His incarnation.

W.G.T. Shedd said that as a sunbeam can shine on the most putrid substances, warming them and affecting them, but the beam itself is never soiled. So it is with the Son of God – the Light of the World – He can shine on us, touch us, have the most profound effects upon us in our defilement, and yet remain in His perfect, unsullied holiness. What a Savior!