Q: If Jesus Was Never Ill, How Could He Free Me from Sickness and Disease at the Cross?
Selected from our Questions and Answers program
A: This question approaches the problem from the opposite door that the faith healer approaches it from. Today they say that there's healing in the atonement because He took all of our sicknesses and that we're to be delivered at present from our sicknesses. Well the doctor today doesn't have to have cancer to understand how to deal with it, how to treat it, or how to feel for the patient that does have it. The Lord Jesus didn't go through every little experience that you and I have gone through. These things that have come to us because of sin, He has not experienced. But back of sickness is sin, and He died for our sins. When Scripture uses the expression about healing, the healing I think refers actually to the healing of sin and not of physical healing. I think that there's been too great of an emphasis put upon that. We read in 1 Peter 2:24, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." Now what are we healed of? Diseases? No, we are healed of sin. Because it says He bore our sin. Now this is the first time I've ever seen anybody approach this from the opposite side that the faith healers approach it from. And for the same reason that I would answer them, I would answer you: He didn't have pneumonia, He didn't have cancer, He didn't have these diseases because He was dealing with that which was fundamental — He bore sin upon Him and, I think, suffered a great deal more than anyone has ever suffered from a disease that has come to us because of sin. It's quite interesting, this question, coming from the opposite direction. Frankly, I'd never thought of it from this angle. Now it's given me another argument for this matter of faith healing resting upon the idea that He took our sickness and bore our disease.
