Healing Jesus's Life and Ministry, Part 1
David W Palmer
Matthew 8:16–17 (EMTV) “When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and He healed all that were ill, so that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying: ‘He Himself took our infirmities, and bore our diseases.’”
Thank God that he did send a deliverer, Jesus, his Son. Born of a virgin, Jesus was not in Adam’s line; therefore, he was not contaminated with the sin-nature that was passed to every descendant of Adam and Eve.
In Jesus’s life, we see the perfect will of God expressed through a human being. (Note: Jesus Christ was both fully human and fully divine). What was Jesus attitude to sickness? It will reveal God’s will for sick people. Did he quote psalm 107 to them, and condemn them by saying that their sickness was a consequence of their own sin? No, Jesus regularly healed people.
Did Jesus heal only good people? If so, just how good were they? Clearly, no one was perfect; so if he healed based on how good they were, what was the cut off point? After all, no one is perfectly able to achieve God’s righteousness by their own performance:
(Romans 3:10, 23 nkjv) As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;” ... {23} “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
If healing were based on the law, or on how good people are; and if Jesus allowed some imperfect people to receive healing, then what level of imperfection did God allow? Again, what is the cut-off point? If God has a cut-off point, then his accepted level of righteousness would have to include some unrighteousness. This is obviously absurd. The only righteous standard God can accept is perfect righteousness—“the righteousness of God”—which we can have in Christ, and only in him (2 Cor. 5:21 nkjv). Therefore, Jesus was healing the multitudes based on something other than their own ability to attain right standing with God through their own performance.
So what was the will of God towards sickness—as expressed in the life and ministry of Jesus? And, on what basis did he heal the multitudes? To find out the answers to these questions and more, we continue our study in God’s word—and in particular, the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.
JESUS’S LIFE AND MINISTRY
Jesus is the Word of God (John 1:1); our Father sent him to heal in fulfillment of Psalm 107:20: “He sent his word and healed them” (nkjv).
1. He was sent by God to heal
(Matthew 8:16–17 nkjv) 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, {17} that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses.”
When Matthew witnessed the healing ministry of Jesus, the Holy Spirit revealed to him that what he was seeing was a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa. 53:3–4). Therefore, he wrote this in his gospel—the eternal, inspired word of God. It is therefore, the absolute and unchangeable truth. Father God sent his Son Jesus to heal in fulfillment of the prophecy that he would carry our sicknesses.
John the apostle states that Jesus, God in the flesh, was manifested to destroy the works of the devil; this includes the healing of sicknesses:
(1 John 3:8 nkjv) He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
(Acts 10:38 nkjv) “How 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.”
“God anointed Jesus” is another way of saying, “God anointed his living Word, Jesus.” We must always remember that when the written word comes alive in and through our hearts and mouths, he is Jesus in action, and he is anointed.
To confirm that Jesus is God’s sent deliverer from sickness, another gospel writer, Luke, records Jesus quoting Isaiah 63. Our Savior said the following words in the synagogue at Nazareth, and applied them to himself:
(Luke 4:18–19 nkjv) “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; {19} To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”
Jesus said that God anointed him and sent him to heal!
From the testimony of these three gospel writers—two of whom were eyewitnesses—we can see clearly that God sent His anointed living Word, Jesus, to heal the sick.
Today, I encourage you to fully accept that this is true and that it applies to you from God today. Yes, it is absolutely God’s will for you to be healed and to walk in wholeness. To bring you into this aspect of his perfect will for you, he sent Jesus to carry your sins and all their consequences—including sickness—to the cross and to resurrect to new life without it. He sent his word to you in person and in written form. If you will approach the written words as a farmer approaches the planting of seeds to produce a harvest, you can manifest what Father sent his word to do … heal! Also, if you will take literally that God has already invested his anointing into your life:
(1 John 2:27 NKJV) But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, …
(Colossians 1:27 NKJV) … Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Then, his solution to your sickness has already been provided: Jesus redeemed you from cursed sickness through his death and resurrection—believe; the living word to impart it has been handed to you in seed form—plant and grow it in your heart; and the anointing to [potentially] empower the healing is already in you—let it out with your confession, praise, thanks, and prayers. God is for you, he wants you whole, and he has put the keys into your hands:
(2 Peter 1:4 NKJV) by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
2. He healed all kinds of sickness and disease
(Matthew 4:23-24 nkjv) And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. {24} 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.
Here we see that not only was Jesus sent to heal, but also that he healed any and every type of disease, sickness, ailment, and malady. In other words, God’s ability to heal through Jesus is unlimited by type or severity of ailment.
(Matthew 15:30 nkjv) “Then great multitudes came to Him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others; and they laid them down at Jesus' feet, and He healed them.”
In this passage, the Holy Spirit says he restored the “maimed.” This implies that missing parts didn’t limit Jesus’s healing and restoring power; the Holy Spirit created what was missing there and then.
More tomorrow ...