February 6 - Healings Validate Jesus’ Earthly Ministry

“The news about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them” (Matthew 4:24).

Jesus’ miraculous healing ministry powerfully augmented the divine veracity of His teaching and preaching ministry. But any completely honest observer will concede that our Lord’s words alone provide sufficient evidence that He was the Messiah. The apostles left everything to follow Him before He did any healing or performed any other miracle. Many who heard and believed when Jesus taught in their villages had no need for healing, and neither did their relatives or friends. In that sense they were like those who believed John the Baptist’s message even though “John performed no sign” (John 10:41).

Yet in spite of the overwhelming adequacy of Jesus’ verbal teaching, His Father saw fit to provide a healing ministry to supplement it. Alexander Maclaren has written, “It may be doubted whether we have an adequate notion of the immense number of Christ’s miracles. Those recorded are but a small portion of those done. Those early ones were illustrations of the nature of His kingdom; they were His first gifts to His kingdom subjects.”

Concerning the gospel of the kingdom, Hebrews 2:3–4 says, “After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.” Like Christ’s words, His healings and other miracles provided a preview of His glorious earthly kingdom.

How dependent are you on the specific, visible, measurable acts of God on your behalf? How often does His Word alone brighten your heart, even when your prayers seem to be waiting on His answer? What does one do to get his or her heart operating this way?

Salvation and healing are one in the same and you cannot separate them. God gave us healing through Jesus’s stripes at his crucifixion. There can be many reasons people aren’t healed but it’s never ever because God doesn’t want it. He’s already given it to us, we are called to receive it and believe it. Healing doesn’t fall out of the sky like pixie dust we just must appropriate the word which promises that we are healed. It says it Myriad places in the Bible

Regarding the restoration that healing by the Great Physician brings:

Genesis 2:7 (AV)
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Never forget that the mind that reads this text resides in a temporal body, and any healing of that body--by Jesus, or a gifted apostle, or because of the ministrations of a medical practitioner of our time--is only a temporary effect, because of sin that penetrates it, the inherited final cessation of its function is inescapable.

When the entropy of sin exerts itself, the bodily assembly, already in a process of becoming disordered, enters the phase where the soul that God had placed in it separates, leaves, and is never to return. Then the temporal body by whatever natural process comes apart, and its elemental particles are left behind as "the dust of the ground."

Is that the only healing that Jesus was able to exercise?

The answer is "No!", for he is also able to heal the sin's damage to one's spirit, and to mend the disruption of one's relationship to his Creator.

When a human has become accountable for his or her decisions, and accepts the offer of healing that God presents to one's mind and spirit through His Word heralded by His ambassadors, the Creator fulfills His promise to accept each such a person as His child, as a citizen of His Kingdom, as a subject of His Son Who is the King, and as one that Jesus treats as His Intimate Friend.

It stands true that in His earthly ministry two millennia ago, Jesus certified the never-ceasing security of the healed relationship and fellowship with Him, His Father, and His Guiding Spirit:

John 10:27-29 (AV):

²⁷My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: ²⁸And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. ²⁹My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.

Are you, dear reader--or would you want to become--one of these (figuratively speaking) sheep of His beloved fold?

Actually, I think it was His resurrection above all else.

For those of us who lived after the first century, the resurrection is indeed the preeminent miracle of which we can base our faith. As Paul said:

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (I Corinthians 15:17-19)

When doubts creep in, it is the resurrection of Christ which remains the most powerful proof of our faith. Even the atheist - if he is honest - has to contend with that.

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