THE GOSPEL OF JOHN AUTHORITY TO HEAL By Andrew Wilson Psalm 30:1-12 October 7, 2012 John 4:46-54 In John, Jesus s miracles are presented as signs. They give us visual insights about Jesus and our relationship to him. They reinforce the faith of those who ve been born again of the Spirit. Two weeks ago Lee talked about the wedding at Cana in Galilee, where, according to John, Jesus performed his first miraculous sign. By changing water in to wine, Jesus gave a sign of his power to transform old life into new life. Curiously, Jesus performs his second miraculous sign in the same tiny town of Cana. An unnamed royal official implores Jesus to visit his son, who is desperately ill at home. The father believes Jesus is the boy s only hope. When Jesus assures the father that his son will live, the father takes him at his word and thereby proves his faith in Jesus. The healing is confirmed later by the servants who live with the royal official. They rush to meet their master and tell him the amazing news while he s still traveling back home. It s illuminating to compare the first and second signs identified by John. The water-into-wine miracle points to Jesus work of transforming old life into new life. It s a sign to us that Christ intends to change us actually, to re-create us from within. The second sign points in a different direction. The healing miracle reminds us that, when we first come to Christ, he snatches us back from the edge of death. It s a sign to us that Christ alone can rescue us from our sin, and from the judgment against our sin that must result in death and destruction. This truth is declared by Jesus himself not long after he heals the royal official s son. He says in chapter five: Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. - John 5:24 There are three insights that we gain from this story of Jesus second miraculous sign that we can apply directly to our own lives. The first insight has to do with sickness. The physical sickness we sometimes experience points us to a deeper kind of sickness: the sickness that affects our soul, and that s caused by our sin. I don t mean that physical sickness is always caused by our sin. Sometimes it is, and sometime it isn t. I mean that sickness affects our bodies in much the same way that sin affects our spirit. That s because physical and spiritual sickness are related. They both testify to the fact that the created order is broken, and that all creatures within the created order are subject to disease and death. 1
The second insight has to do with divine healing. The restoration we experience when the Lord heals our bodies points us to a deeper kind of restoration: the salvation of our soul that can only be accomplished by Christ. When Christ heals our bodies, he reminds us that he rescues us from sin. He seals God s promise that we re going to receive new bodies after we die, just as Christ received a new, immortal, resurrection body after he died. The third insight has to do with prayer. The Lord wants us to be healthy and whole. He encourages us to pray for people who are sick, and to seek prayer ourselves when we are sick. Many of you have good friends or close family members who are sick, but you aren t praying that God would heal them. Many of you also have chronic physical problems that are holding you back. You seek every available form of medical treatment. You spend thousands of dollars each year on doctors and pills and therapies. But it never occurs to you to seek healing prayer from the church, or from Christian friends. Why is that? Some of you simply don t believe in Jesus. To you he s nothing more than a great teacher who lived and died, and who continues to inspire us through his words and example. Many more of you believe, but have gotten stuck somewhere. You read the many stories in the New Testament about miraculous healings, but you have trouble believing God is still operating in that way. You hear about people today who ve been healed in ways that can t be explained by science, but you don t believe God would do the same for your friends, or for you. We need to pay closer attention to the dozens of healing stories in the New Testament. When the Lord offers physical healing, he reveals his Father s desire for his children. He signals to the world that God intends for us to be healthy and whole. He doesn t want us to suffer from physical ailments. He doesn t give us aches and pains so we ll learn patience and courage. He doesn t cause us to be sick so that we ll be more reliant on him. Like any good father, our heavenly Father wants his children to be healthy, and ready to face life s challenges. He s a father who gives only good gifts, and whose greatest gift is abundant life. We need to be careful. We could take this idea too far. The Lord does promise, when we believe in him, to give us new life. But he doesn t promise to take away all our physical problems. Our bodies are part of the old created order, and they remain subject to disease and death. They re ground zero in the war that rages between the old self and the new. So we shouldn t expect to pass through this life without experiencing sickness and pain. But we also shouldn t take the attitude that God doesn t care about our bodies. Or that he torments our bodies to keep our minds on higher things. The Bible reveals to us a very different reality. It confirms for us, again and again, that the Lord is fighting on our behalf, and that he wants us to be healthy and whole. He wants us to pray for healing for others and for ourselves, and to realize that all healing comes from him. 2
The earliest Christians understood these truths. According to Yale classics professor, Dr. Ramsey MacMullen, the main reason for the explosive growth of the church during the first three centuries was because non-christians saw Christians healing the sick and exorcising demons. Few of us today think of healing ministry as something that s central to daily discipleship. We believe in God, and in the miracles performed by Jesus and the Apostles. But our prayers for the sick tend to be timid and half-hearted. We pray, Lord, we don t know your will in this situation, but if you want our friend to be healed of cancer, please help the doctors to find a cure. If no healing comes, we say: Oh well, there never was much hope. Or we say: God must not have wanted her to be well he s got some higher purpose in this situation that s hidden to us. The Roman Catholic scholar Francis MacNutt offers this indictment of the American Church: [P]eople are dying spiritually, emotionally and physically, because Christian leaders of most denominations still do not understand or practice an essential part of the basic Gospel message: Jesus came to share God s own power to transform evil in our lives This is what it means to call Jesus our Savior. - Healing, pages 11-12 Many people have an understanding of God s providence that leaves no room for healing prayer. They believe that everything in heaven and on earth is under God s direct control. When they affirm God s sovereignty, and declare him to be the almighty Lord of the universe, what they mean is that God is responsible for everything that happens, including sickness itself. Whatever happens, happens because God makes it happen. If a child dies of cancer, it s because it was part of God s plan. And if 12 people die in a mass shooting by a crazed gunman in a movie theater, that, too, is part of God s plan. Several years ago the Los Angeles Times published an article on the theological problem of suffering. One of the questions raised in the article, of course, had to do with sickness. How can a good God allow people to suffer from diseases like tuberculosis, leprosy and cancer? Various theological perspectives were considered, though of course no particular belief was promoted. A pastor from Beverly Hills wrote a fascinating letter in response to this article. The pastor took the perspective I have just outlined. He insisted that suffering is a part of God s grand plan for the world. He declared that God shows more love for some people than he does for others. Here s a portion of his letter: [A]ny view of God which denies that He controls all events makes the idea of God irrelevant The real question is not why does God allow suffering? but why does God show mercy at all? God loves some of us and He does not love others in the same way. That is why there is suffering for some and salvation for others. 3
What this pastor was saying was that God has complete control of everything, both the good and the bad. He s the one who causes people to experience mercy, or to waste away in agony. People suffer because God doesn t love them or at least he doesn t love them as much as the people that he decides to save. We need to think carefully about what it means to say that God controls absolutely everything that happens. Do we really mean to say that God is the cause of all suffering? Do we really mean to declare that all sickness comes from God s hand? I want to relate to you a story that brings these theological abstractions down to ground level. I found it in Ken Blue s wonderful book, Authority to Heal. This is a true story from the life of a church just like ours: Bev, a single mother, was told some years ago that her son had leukemia. She was confident that God could do anything for anyone, but her question was, Will he do something for my son? Confused about whether or not God intended to heal her child, she called for the elders of her church to come and pray, which they reluctantly did. Later Bev recounted to me her elders concerted effort to avoid any hint of presumption upon God s will. [They liberally laced] their prayers with [phrases like] according to your will and if it be your will. She remembered these as prayers of doubt and not as prayers of faith. Shortly following the meeting, her son went into the hospital for the last time. After his death, she fought desperately to reconcile her lifelong devotion to a God who could have healed her son but chose not to. In the midst of her schizophrenic struggle to love a God who had killed her son, an older woman from the church said to her, While we don t understand why, this, too, fits into God s secret plan. This statement served to crystallize the issue in the young mother s mind. She knew from that moment on that she wanted nothing more to do with a God who used the painful, humiliating death of a six-year-old boy for some higher, hidden purpose. It s so important for us to understand that the Lord doesn t send leukemia to children. He doesn t want us to live in a world that contains such horrors. He s fighting to redeem his creation, to cleanse the world of every last vestige of evil. If we take the attitude, when we pray, that sickness comes from God, our healing prayers will be weak and ineffective. But if we take the attitude that sickness is evil, and that God hates it more than we do, our prayers will be powerful. Sickness occurs because the world is still in bondage to sin and Satan. One day God will win a final victory, Christ will assume his throne, and the world will be changed. But until that day comes, our bodies remain vulnerable to sickness and death. 4
Does that mean that God isn t in charge? No, not exactly. God s plan of salvation is going to succeed. He s going to be victorious. But his work isn t finished yet. His kingdom isn t established on earth as it is in heaven. The battle is going to rage on until sin is destroyed, Satan is deposed, and death is no more. Let me tell you a story of something that happened right within our circle of faith. A member of our church had a friend whose son was in a terrible motorcycle accident over the summer. The woman was not a person of faith, but our church member asked if she wanted our church family to pray for the boy. The situation was desperate, and the woman gratefully accepted the offer. The boy s doctors gave a grim prognosis. They told his parents that the damage to his brain was profound and permanent. He would never be normal. In fact, he probably wouldn t even survive. Another doctor from our church saw the scans and lab reports and confirmed everything the neurologists had told the family. You ve been reading about Sean Goldberg on the back of our bulletin. Many of you have been praying for him faithfully, even though you don t know him or his family. Sean s recovery over these past couple of months has astonished his doctors. He s walking. He s talking. He s driving. Day by day, his health is being restored. Sean s mother of course is ecstatic. And the really wonderful thing is that she attributes her son s recovery to our prayers. She s starting to believe in this mysterious God who is hidden from our sight, but shows his love for us in wonderful ways. I could tell you other stories of healings. Recently many people in our church family have experienced blessings that I interpret as signs of God s love and grace. I m keeping a list of those people, and it s growing day by day. Are you watching for those signs of God s love and grace in your life? Do you believe God wants us to be healthy and whole? Are you acting on that belief by praying for people who are sick, and asking others to pray for you? The Lord invites his worldwide church to meet him at this table. He wants to bless us, and heal us. Let s open our hearts to his Spirit, and let him do his good work in us. 5