Healing is intrinsic to the gospel of salvation, and God’s eagerness to perform miracles of healing is illustrated everywhere in the ministry of Jesus Christ. We will examine several examples from Matthew 8.
First, a leper came to Jesus, kneeling before him, and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” He did not ask about the will of God, but the will of Jesus as a prophet or a minister. Even when the question was asked on this level, there is only one recorded instance in the ministry of Jesus. All the other times the people either assumed that Jesus was willing, or they did not care what he thought about it. They wanted healing and believed that they could take it from Jesus, and that was enough. God endorsed this kind of faith with an avalanche of miracles. It was lightyears ahead of the faithless and phony reverence of the religious people.
Jesus answered, “I am willing. Be clean.” He never refused anyone who insisted by faith on getting a miracle of healing. He said, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” He demonstrated this when people came to him for healing. If you come to Jesus with faith, he will not deny you. The doctrine of election does not mean that some who sincerely seek Jesus will be rejected. Rather, those who are denied are those who never truly come to him in the first place. Faith itself is a manifestation of God’s sovereign grace. If you are moved to come to Christ in faith, it is because God has chosen you, and Jesus will not turn you away. The same is true for faith in God for anything. Faith is God’s permission. Faith is God’s grace in your heart.
Healing has always been in the Bible. The problem is not with God or with his word, but with those who refuse to believe it. The religious establishment should be condemned for refusing to promote the miracles of God with maximum effort. They spend much of their time gathering disciples for their human traditions. If they mention miracles of healing, it is to attack those who pray for the sick. They would rather tell you it is not God’s will for you to receive healing than to make intercession to God for your healing. If you follow a human tradition and love a human heritage, you will miss out on what God has for you. Human traditions offer a false sense of belonging and a hollow sense of pride. It is religious delusion.
Healing has always been in God’s word, and it is still there today. This “I am willing” from Jesus is his middle finger to cessationism and to the perversion of divine sovereignty. The Bible shows that Jesus repeatedly gave this middle finger to faithless religion. It is strange that people find it so easy to believe something against themselves. They find it so easy to believe that God is not willing to heal them, even though Jesus healed everyone who came to him in faith.
Satan has been using the same strategy since the beginning, and it works. In the Garden of Eden, when God said they could not have something, Satan asked, “Did God really say?” He used that question to cast doubt on God’s word and to tempt humanity into sin. Today, when God says you should have something, Satan again says, “Did God really say?” He is joined by whole armies of faithless religious people, all shouting and singing, “Did God really say? Did God really say?” They will twist the promise of God into something else, claiming that they are the ones who know the true meaning, just like Satan did to Eve. Jesus called people like them the children of the devil.
Jesus told the leper to show himself to the priest. Healing was always in God’s word. The priests and scribes were supposed to minister and confirm healing, but they were not doing it. And today, most preachers and theologians are not doing it either. But healing is still in God’s word. Look! It is still there, and it is for you. All you need is faith in Jesus, and you can have it.
If your heart is moved by the gospel of Jesus Christ, if faith arises within you, then God has chosen you, because faith is a gift from God. It would be a lie to say that God is not willing to save, for his willingness is revealed in the faith he gives. And if faith arises in your heart for healing, come to Jesus. You can be healed. By your faith, you know he is willing. You never need to ask if he is willing, because your faith is the evidence that he is. You might say, “Perhaps it is not God’s will to give me faith for healing.” But although we sometimes refer to faith for this or that for the sake of discussion, the Bible itself does not divide faith like this. Moreover, faith is never denied to those chosen for salvation. So if you use this excuse, what does that make you? The real question is the one that Jesus asked: “Are you willing to be healed? What do you want me to do for you?”
Next we encounter the centurion who came to Jesus, asking for healing for his servant. The centurion understood something that many in the religious establishment had missed. He recognized the authority of Jesus over sickness. He said, “Just say the word, and my servant will be healed.” Jesus marveled at the centurion’s faith and said, “Go! It will be done for you as you have believed.”
What you believe is what will happen. If you do not believe in healing, you will not be bothered with it. There is no need to be upset. If you hate God so much, he will leave you alone in your sin and take his blessings to those who have faith to receive. But if you believe in the authority of Jesus over sickness, if you believe that he can heal with just a word, then go in faith. It will be done just as you have believed.
As Jesus said, many will come from all over the world to join Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the “sons of the kingdom” will be thrown out into the darkness. Those who are supposed to belong to the kingdom, those who claim orthodoxy, will find themselves outside. Why? Because they never had any faith in the first place. We are talking about faith to receive healing, but in showing what he believed about healing, the centurion also revealed what he knew about Christ. His faith was based on his understanding of the position of Jesus before God and the world, that he was under divine authority and could take command over the forces of nature. This was remarkable coming from someone who was not born as a physical member of the covenant community. Those who were born into the community took it for granted that they were part of God’s people. However, it turned out that the faith of the individual was the only thing that mattered. And Jesus used this to illustrate that many who think they belong to the community of God are not even saved.
Jesus said, “According to your faith be it done to you.” He did not say, “No matter what you ask, it will be done if it is the will of God, but it will not be done if it is not the will of God.” The Bible says that faith is the evidence and the title deed of what you hope for. If you have faith for healing, it already belongs to you, and you can have it. But if you do not have faith for healing, then your thinking contradicts the word of God, and you need to repent and comply with the teachings of the gospel. True faith comes from God, and God denies faith only to reprobates. Faith belongs to his chosen ones. When you have faith, you do not need to worry about the sovereignty of God, because God has already exercised his sovereignty in giving you that faith. Faith is the means by which God delivers his promises in your life. It was how you received salvation, and it is how you will receive other things that God has promised you.
The final part of Matthew 8 that we will consider is the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and the many others who were brought to Jesus. Peter’s mother-in-law was sick with a fever. Jesus touched her hand, and she was healed. She immediately rose and began to serve him. The claim that we can serve God better in sickness is a lie from hell. It is also a lie that seeking healing is unspiritual, or that those who seek healing are merely seeking comfort. Such ideas are the projections of faithless people who lack compassion and who are themselves the most carnal and worldly people. They could not imagine worthy motives for seeking healing from God because they themselves are full of carnal lusts and evil ambitions.
Peter’s mother-in-law could not serve Jesus while she was sick. When she was healed, she immediately rose and served him. If someone asserts that we can serve God better in sickness, or that sickness somehow makes us more spiritual, that person must be deeply rebellious, like Satan himself, to require such a perverted motivation. Such a grotesque doctrine is not only false but also reveals the twisted condition of the faithless heart.
After this, the Bible describes an explosion of healing miracles. That evening, the crowds gathered as word spread about the power of Jesus to heal and deliver. People brought their loved ones, desperate for relief, whether from physical ailments or demonic oppression. Jesus cast out the demons with his word, demonstrating his authority over the forces of darkness. He healed all who were sick, regardless of their condition or the severity of their affliction. Everyone who was brought to him received their miracle. The scene was one of compassion and power, as Jesus ministered to the masses late into the evening, tirelessly meeting their needs. His authority over both demonic and natural afflictions was evident. No case was beyond his ability, no one was beyond his eagerness to help.
Jesus healed all the people who were brought to him, whether their sicknesses were rooted in demonic or natural causes. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He himself took our infirmities and carried our sicknesses.” Healing comes from redemption, not from some special supernatural gift. When it comes to miracle healing, the standard is to receive by faith. Spiritual gifts represent only another way to enforce what is always available through faith in God.
The atonement makes healing available to all who believe. This is unchangeable, and it is not decided on a case-by-case basis. Jesus bore our sicknesses in his redemptive work, just as he bore our sins. Healing is not an additional benefit or an optional blessing, but it is integral to the salvation Christ purchased for us. Healing is the gospel. It is available to everyone who believes, and it covers every case and every cause of sickness. Whether your sickness is due to a natural cause or a demonic attack, the redemption that Jesus accomplished has addressed it.
Healing is salvation, just as forgiveness is salvation, and just as regeneration is salvation and justification is salvation. Healing has nothing directly to do with spiritual gifts. It has to do with the nature of God, the redemption that Jesus accomplished, and our will and faith to receive it. Although we affirm the role of spiritual gifts as an additional manifestation of grace to make healing more widespread, so that even many unbelievers could receive miracles, it is a diversion to make the topic hinge on spiritual gifts. It exposes theological incompetence, biblical ignorance, unbelief, and dishonesty. Healing is available because Jesus took our infirmities and carried our sicknesses. Healing is available because we have faith that healing is available. The sovereignty of God and the operations of the Spirit simply add even more healing miracles than we would otherwise expect.