“Let me remind you, brethren, of the Gospel which I proclaimed to you…”  (1 Cor. 15:1 –  Ampl. Bible and the Danish rendering)

It was on my heart to emphasize in a small column yesterday that “Salvation equals spiritual health”.  Some may think that I´m pushing it to extremes.  In Denmark there are vocal circles that argue that physical healing is part of the work of salvation wrought on Calvary.  That kind of teaching I´m also familiar with in America.  An American friend opposes (or is correcting) me by saying that 

“salvation is wholeness, completeness, holistically healed, and touches on every aspect of spiritual, emotional, physical, psychological, etc, etc well-being......it is not just one of these, but touches on all of them,  and we do salvation wrong in emphasizing one over another.”

Promising words, but the point is missing.  I hasten to say that the all powerful Lord is able to heal sick bodies also today, and He does, but not always.  When He does it, it´s not because of Calvary, for physical healing is not there, it was already there during his ministry on earth.  Matth. 8:17: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses”. Then and there it was fulfilled.

“No”, some say (and at a certain time in my youth I said so too), “ it was fulfilled on the cross”, and on and on it goes proclaiming healing and health to the sick on the virtue of Isa. 53:5 which is however wrong and is like making out blank cheques on unbiblical grounds. 

A Danish pastor said to me, “But what about the word, “by whose stripes you were healed”  (2 Pet 2:24).  I kindly asked him to read the word in its proper context that points to the atoning death of Jesus where He “bore our sins in His body on the tree”, so the word is talking about the healing of the sin issue and not, as it is proclaimed, physical healing , though even 2 Pet. 2:24 is among the “proof texts” for bodily healing.

But why are the many not physically healed today?  Personally I believe it´s because the spiritual need has been sadly receded into the background.  If at a public meeting I would ask, “Are there some here who have a need we should pray for?” you may rest assured that the prayer requests would unanimously be about some physical or material need.  Who would say, “My need is to be a soul winner” or “I´m not having spiritual victory in my life” or “My Bible reading doesn´t give me joy” or “I need extraordinary grace as I go visiting unsaved friends”?  Prayer requests are mostly on a different field.

So salvation in the sense of Rom. 1:16 is our first and foremost need.  Don´t waste your time on “healing preachers”.  Let´s pray for a conviction of sin in our people. 

I read with delight about the old anointed puritans, like Spurgeon, Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, etc.   Sinners were convicted right on the spot (without having to “go forward”), and the gospel was “the power of God to salvation”, to spiritual health, indeed.  Notice, it was not about power.  It was in itself God´s power.  Christ  was that power of God.  1 Cor. 1:24. 

Many of those men who preached such a gospel were extremely frail in their bodies.  Spurgeon was heavily tried with rheumatism all his life and yet his sermons went in print to the millions in several languages and all over to the British empire at a scale never surpassed, not even by Billy Graham.

Be bold about that gospel!  Your own bodily weakness may be there as it was in the apostle Paul´s life, but that “physical infirmity” (Gal. 4:13) didn´t put obstacles in the way of his preaching the gospel of  Christ, in fact it was in his case rather an asset.  Let that, by His grace, be the case with you and me too!

May 23, 2012 – jn