Summary
The Greater Healing
Scripture is full of healings, and they remain deeply moving to read. Does Christ still heal on this side of heaven? Yes. But that raises an unavoidable question: why are some healed and others not? Is there a secret formula—some threshold of belief—that unlocks bodily restoration? The healing of the lame man at Lystra in Acts 14:8-10 opens the answer, and it is not what many assume.
Luke goes out of his way to describe the man's condition three times over: he could not use his feet, he had never walked, he had been crippled from birth. Into that hopeless situation comes the preached Word. The verb Luke uses for "listened" indicates ongoing action—this man had been hearing Paul preach Christ repeatedly. That detail matters, because Romans 10:17 tells us faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Paul looks at him, sees that he has faith to be healed, and commands him to stand. He springs up and walks.
Faith is often misrepresented as if it functioned like airline points: accumulate enough, and you can cash them in for a healing. Several passages seem at first glance to support this — the woman with the hemorrhage Luke 8:43-48, blind Bartimaeus Mark 10:46-52, the thankful leper Luke 17:11-19 — all hear Jesus say, "your faith has made you well." Yet this view leads to terrible bondage: the dying believer who refuses to speak honestly with her family for fear that admitting the possibility of death will prove insufficient faith and forfeit her healing.
The scriptural picture also includes healings where faith on the recipient's part is nowhere mentioned. The lame man at the Beautiful Gate in Acts 3:1-10 was hoping for money, not healing. The centurion's slave Luke 7:1-10 is healed without any reference to the slave's belief. Jairus's daughter Mark 5:35-43 is raised from death itself—and the dead do not exercise faith. So how do these accounts fit together?
The Greek vocabulary unlocks it. The New Testament uses three words in the field of healing: therapeuō (from which we get "therapy"), iaomai, and sōzō. The first two refer to physical healing. Sōzō, however, is the most common New Testament word for being saved. And every time Jesus says, "your faith has made you well"—to the hemorrhaging woman, to Bartimaeus, to the leper, and through Paul to the man at Lystra—the verb is sōzō. He is not measuring a quantity of faith adequate to purchase a cure. He is acknowledging the spiritual healing that already exists in the person because of faith in Him as Savior. As The Greater Healing draws out, the physical restoration points beyond itself to a deeper, eternal rescue.
This does not minimize physical or mental healing in the slightest. Christ still heals on this side of heaven, and the basis is what it has always been—His grace and His will, never our contribution. Bring every need to Him, and ask boldly for healing of body and mind, while bowing to His will if He should answer otherwise. But know that the greater healing is already yours by grace through the cross and empty tomb of Jesus Christ. Our fractured relationship with God, which deserved condemnation, has been restored through His shed blood. That is a healing no sickness can undo, because it reaches into eternity.
Video citations
- "The Greater Healing" 8-4-19 — There are a host of healings recorded in Holy Scripture. And as you read the account of these healings, they are tremendously moving, aren't they? Does the Lord Jesus Christ still heal this side of…