ArticleBlog | A whistle-stop tour of what the Bible says about healing
A whistle-stop tour of what the Bible says about healing
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 12.09.20
A hunger for healing
When our youngest daughter was about eighteen months old, we travelled to the US with her. She became very sick on the plane, and on arrival we called a doctor, who took one look at her and said ‘Get her straight to hospital, she needs to go on a drip. She’s dangerously dehydrated.’ We had not recognised the severity of her condition, and neither of course had she. It is so easy to be completely unaware of our perilous situation. In the same way, many people are unaware of their need for the life giving Spirit of God, and so exist rather than live. They are physically alive but spiritually dead. Yet, he has set eternity in the hearts of men, so while a person may be unaware of God, or unwilling to search for him, we see tremendous spiritual awareness and hunger right across the globe in these strange and dark times.
In a sense, healing is the grand theme of the Bible, as the universal story of humankind’s salvation unfolds across its sixty-six books. The Collins dictionary defines the word ‘heal’ as ‘to restore or be restored to health; to repair by natural processes; to treat by assisting in natural repair; to restore or be restored to friendly relations, harmony.’ Immediately we see that healing has to do with wholeness and health, but not just of the body. In our individualistic western culture, our reflex is to think of healing as being connected primarily with a person’s physical health.
Whenever healing occurs in the Bible, and in whatever form, it signals the inbreaking of God and his kingdom. God created a beautiful, orderly world, placing man and woman in an idyllic garden. All is well until Adam and Eve choose to mistrust and compete with God. From Genesis onwards, sickness and alienation of one kind or another beset the human race, creating their perpetual need of healing. And so we follow the fortunes of humanity through thousands of years, until God became a man called Jesus who gave himself up to death, but in rising from the dead opened the way for humanity to follow him. The f inal sickness of death is overcome, and healing and wholeness become possible through eternal life.
