Does God heal all diseases?
Does God really heal all diseases? That’s a question we’re dealing with today, and I think you probably instinctively know the answer to that question. So why even ask it? Does God heal all diseases? Well, in the Psalm 103 chapter that we looked at in my sermon this past Sunday, you can look at it online if you happen to miss it, but in Psalm 103, it talks about praising the Lord and thanking Him for all of his benefits.
And in verse three it says, who forgives all your sins? And we like that part, of course. And then the next phrase is, who heals all your diseases? And then it goes on and talks about all these other wonderful things that God has done for us as his people, and yet we could easily get stuck on a phrase like that. Who heals all your diseases?
Does God heal all of your diseases? You and I can think of probably plenty of people in our lives who we know who get sick and who stay that way. We know examples, plenty of them in Scripture, in the Old and in the New Testament, even friends of Jesus who got sick and who stayed that way. So how can Psalm 103 talk about the God who heals all diseases? I want to just briefly think about that.
Now, that word for heal that is there in verse three is the same word for heal that is used in other places, such as Isaiah 53 five, which Isaiah 53 five is later quoted in one Peter 224. But it’s a phrase that says by his wounds, meaning Jesus wounds for us on the cross, by his wounds we are healed. That word healed there is the same word that we see in Psalm 133, who heals all your diseases? It’s a Hebrew word that can certainly mean physical healing. But if you look at other places in Scripture where it shows up, it can also refer to spiritual healing.
And given that we know that there are plenty of people who get sick and who are not physically healed in this life, then we have to begin to look deeper at the context and come away with an understanding. That this is most likely referring to a spiritual type of a healing. The fact that we are sin sick individuals and we need someone to make us right with God. And so there is spiritual healing available in our relationship with God through Jesus, and God lavishes that opportunity upon us. Now, that’s not to say that God doesn’t physically heal as well.
So I want to just kind of summarize this and think about what we can take away from this understanding of physical and spiritual healing. First, we need to remember that sometimes God does physically heal. But we also know that sometimes God does not physically heal. And whether or not God physically heals is entirely up to him. And the timing of whether or not he actually heals physically is completely up to Him.
What we do know is that God can, and he often does heal all of our diseases. It’s completely up to him. But because he can, and because he’s a good father who loves to give his children good gifts, we should ask, we should seek that. We should pray for it. We should be persistent in our prayer for that.
And then when God does grant it, we should thank Him for it. So anytime there is physical healing of any kind, it’s because of God. God’s the one who has done that. He is the healer and he’s the One who heals all of our diseases. But we also know, because of reading the whole again canon of Scripture, that there is an anticipated future for all who are citizens of the new heavens and the new Earth that we will get to experience someday in the future that the New Testament points us towards.
We’re really pointed towards it all the way back from Genesis and then throughout Scripture, this beautiful future where there will be no more sickness and no more disease. And so we do know that there will be a future day in which there will be no disease anymore. Praise God. We’re excited about that. But we also know that for those of us who are followers of Jesus, that our sicknesses and our diseases and our calamities need not be defeats for us.
So we should pray for healing. And if God grants that, we should say, thank you God, for that. And if we pray for it and God does not grant it, I think that God is wanting us to anticipate the future to come. Theologians call this sort of an already but not yet kind of a way of thinking. It’s talking about how those many times in scriptures where something is promised in the future that seems so idealistic, it’s beyond any of our ordinary experiences as humans.
But we do know that God grants us pieces of those promises in this life, but they will be fulfilled even more so in the future. That’s referring to an already but not yet reality. And so we know that God’s desire, if we are dealing with sickness, it need not be the thing that defeats us, because God in our weakness can make his strength perfect. His grace is enough for us. God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.
And so he wants us to lean on Him in our weakness. He wants us to consider it joy whenever we go through trials of mankind, because we know that he’s trying to teach us and to develop us. He must have a plan. He’s wanting to build character in us. He was wanting to conform us more into the likeness of Jesus.
All of these are things that we can hold on to when God doesn’t heal all of our diseases physically in this life, knowing that one day they will be all healed and fulfilled because of God being a Promise Keeper. He’s the one who promises and then fulfills those promises. Well, I hope that that’s been helpful and encouraging to you as we live in the already but not yet reality of our world today. Thanks for joining us.