Thinking Theologically about Sickness and Healing, Part 1

When someone claims to be healed by God, or when a spiritual leader professes to have the gift of healing, how do we determine what's real and what's manufactured? On one hand, how do we celebrate God's obvious healing touch?

And on the other hand, when do we push back and expose those who are spiritual charlatans? One day, Chuck begins a three-day study that's intentionally prepared to help us develop biblical discernment. Chuck titled his message, Thinking Theologically About Sickness and Healing. Let's open our Bibles together to 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verses 1 through 5.

I'll begin reading at the first verse of 1 Corinthians 2. This was perhaps the world's greatest evangelist. We know him today as the Apostle Paul. Take a good look at Paul, and what do you see? Did he come to Corinth, or anywhere else for that matter, with a lot of hype? Did he have a slick image and a packaged presentation?

Were his words rehearsed carefully and his emotions always intact, perfectly choreographed with his words? Is there anything revealed here about this man or his ministry that would lead you to believe that he brainwashed people into believing his message or the miracles that he performed? John White, in his book When the Spirit Comes with Power, describes how such brainwashing can occur.

He writes, A little later, Dr. White adds, What insightful words. Could brainwashing explain the conversions, the miraculous healings, or even the general influence of Paul's ministry? Of course not. Could it explain, however, what's happening in the ministry of many so-called healers who peddle the Holy Spirit today? Could it explain what's happening in the big meetings and large seminars of someone you're following right now? Think about it. Think about it hard, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity of devotion to Christ.

Let me give you an illustration you may have heard me give before. Johnny Erickson dived into the Chesapeake Bay, a strong, athletic young teenager. Only seconds later, Johnny was paralyzed from the neck down, completely helpless and still underwater. Though rescued from drowning by her sister, the doctors could not rescue Johnny from the paralysis that swept across her body. Johnny ultimately came to accept the fact that she could not be healed medically.

But what about God? Didn't Christ heal all kinds of paralysis and sickness? The more Johnny thought and prayed about these things, the more she became convinced God would heal her too. So she brought together a group of friends and church leaders and set up a private healing service. The week before that service, she publicly confessed her faith by telling people, Watch for me standing on your doorstep soon. I'm going to be healed. On the scheduled day, the group read scriptures, anointed her with oil, and prayed in fervent faith.

Today, over thirty years later, Johnny is still a quadriplegic. She did everything right and seemed to have met all the conditions, yet she was not healed. Was Johnny denied this miracle because she didn't have enough faith? Some believe that. Others say she wasn't healed because of unconfessed sin in her life. And still others quibble over the healing techniques she used, promoting instead their own three-step process.

But today I ask you, what do you think? Thousands travel around the world seeking those who claim to have the gift of healing. Testimonies of people declaring they have been healed by the Spirit abound. Special anointed cloths have been sold that were said to have healing powers. I ask you again, what do you think?

Are these things real? And what about the use of medicine? Should we trust God alone for healing? Does God heal?

If so, is there a particular method we should follow? And always, what about those who are not healed? What about Johnny Erickson Tada? The issue of the Spirit and divine healing today is a highly charged, hotly debated one that more often than not leaves people feeling lost in a forest of unanswered questions. If you're having trouble finding your way, come with us today as we seek some clear direction from the compass of God's Word. We're speaking theologically about sickness and healing.

Ours is a world of enormous pain and hurt. I am sure that each one of us knows an individual who this very moment is in an enormous time of struggle and trial, perhaps physically, perhaps mentally, or emotionally, or a combination of the above. We are also aware that there are some who today claim to have been healed instantaneously from their pain.

They tell remarkable stories of an instant turnaround in their lives. Perhaps they attended a meeting or they were in touch with a certain individual who, almost with magical powers, is able to speak the Word and they have recovered. On the other hand, we know others who have, I certainly know others who have attempted to find healing in their lives with no success.

They are among the most disillusioned individuals, especially if they have been around folks who tell stories on the other side. I know individuals who struggle with deep depression for two, three, or more years and they long to pull out of it and to get beyond it. Sometimes the depression is so deep it requires hospitalization and medication.

Long hours with therapists who assist them in their recovery. Some struggle greatly with thoughts and even attempts at suicide. So all of this creates the struggle within us to come to terms with the healing work of the Spirit. Those of us who think often struggle more than those who don't, and I don't say that with any sense of pride. The price we pay for being informed and curious and concerned is a heavy one.

What other people, it seems, would prefer simply to overlook, many of us cannot. And so it drives us to do deep study into the realms of information as set forth in Scripture and spiritual books and Christian writings. And we attempt to find answers that we do not have in ourselves. We believe just as much in the living God.

We certainly want to serve His Son and bring honor to the Spirit of God who lives within us. But we admit the fact that there are some who would like to be healed just as much as those who have been, but it has not happened. And so we struggle with why. We wonder how some could be relieved of an addiction almost overnight and others live with it through the better part of their lives. We wonder why our loved ones aren't relieved, changed, and healed rather than dying with some dread disease. I know people right now in the church that I serve who in this place of worship would wish that God would touch their lives and bring them back to a place of recovery that they once knew. I also know individuals just as dedicated as the others who have found healing and relief. And all of this creates within us the difficulty of giving an answer.

Certainly it does for those in leadership. Dr. John White in a book entitled When the Spirit Comes with Power begins this book by describing several different and unusual events. One occurs in Malaysia, another one in Ohio, and yet another in Argentina. He describes these events rather carefully though briefly and they fall in the category of phenomena. Things that occurred which could not be explained in human ways.

The question is were those things of God or were they not? Dr. White sort of summarizes the stories with this paragraph. Asia, North America, South America. These are three stories that I know about personally. I could also recount episodes from Africa and Europe. And there appear to be hundreds if not thousands of similar occurrences around the globe. What does it all mean? What are these reports of extreme emotional reactions and unusual behavior currently observed around the world among Christians of various theological persuasions? Reports of great weeping or laughter, shaking, extreme terror, visions, falling, being drunk with the spirit, and other revival experiences. Something is certainly going on, says Dr. White, and that something seems potent. Is it revival?

Is it from God? We must be cautious in evaluating new religious movements. Many new movements are mediocre and a few extremely dangerous. False fire burns fiercely. An angel of light still spreads his wings and the elect continue to be deceived. And then he concludes, too often, however, we rely on rumor to determine what is going on. Sometimes our fear causes us to condemn too quickly, especially concerning something new and spectacular. But is there a baby in the bathwater? God himself has been known to act spectacularly so that there is always a danger of missing him and our skepticism.

He is still at work in the world. We are engaged in this series on the Holy Spirit, that intimate side of the Spirit of God. It's not your standard type of series on the Holy Spirit, I willingly and freely admit. However, it is one that gets deeper and goes further than one would often hear from a person of my persuasion.

And by that I mean an evangelical Bible-loving minister who is not charismatic theologically. And yet, I am unable to pass off all these things with a shrug, or to simply claim that they are all of the devil, or to glibly turn away and ignore them. I have to think about them. And occasionally I have to give answers that deal with that tough question, why? Why is it that that person was healed and my loved one is not?

Why did we need to go through the hell of my wife or my husband's pain and finally his or her death, when a neighbor of mine in a matter of weeks is back on his feet and happier than ever in his life? There's a price we pay for being thinkers, and it is that we must dig deeply into the book of truth to find answers. And even when we do, some of it remains mysterious, I must tell you before you get your hopes up. Even one as intellectually gifted as Jonathan Edwards, the 18th century intellectual who graduated from Yale at age 17, and became a congregational minister and in many ways shaped the thinking of his century, admitted this. It has been very observable that persons of greatest understanding and who had studied most about things of this nature have been more confounded than others. Some such persons declare that all their former wisdom is brought to naught, and that they appear to have been babes who knew nothing.

I confess to you there are times I feel that. And I must admit that I will not hesitate to say there are realms of this subject I do not know and perhaps never will know. There are some things I simply, even after lengthy study, can never explain with dogmatism. All that having been said, I want to step into this segment of the Holy Spirit and his ministry of healing, which is, by the way, packed with enormous emotion on every side. I want to step into it reasonably and cautiously and carefully.

I don't want to hurry it, so I think we'll need to spend more than one session in it. I'll turn briefly, if you will, to 2 Corinthians chapter 11, and for the sake of clarification, let me come right up front with you and tell you why I want to be cautious about it. And then I want to share with you what I would call four possible sources of phenomenal events, such as healings, as we have described them. 2 Corinthians 11 is a chapter written with passion by the apostle Paul to people he loved dearly and deeply, the believers in Corinth. Verse 2, I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. He writes, by the way, as a pastor. I feel deeply the same feelings as Paul who writes these things. I am jealous for you, you who are under our ministry and within the scope of our influence. I'm jealous for you with a godly jealousy. For I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.

That's my hope. I have had the privilege of leading some of you to Christ. I've had the opportunity of introducing to you the joy, the privilege, and the gift of eternal life, and therefore my heart is linked with you in that spiritual experience and in your growth. But I agree with Paul, verse 3, I am afraid. I am afraid lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. I don't know of a pastor worth his salt who doesn't struggle with that same fear. If you wonder what I worry about when I think and worry about you as people within the scope of my ministry, it is that sort of thing.

I worry about what you turn to in your aches, in your heart aches, in your brokenness, and in your need for relief because there are so many offering answers which will only deceive and disturb and bring greater confusion and perhaps even deeper suffering. At the same time, I admit there is a living God who certainly has the power to heal. I have said all of my ministry and I underscore it now, I believe in divine healing. I simply don't believe in divine healers. For I have never seen a healer who will go with me to the hospital and heal floor after floor of individuals who were sick. They don't do that.

They won't do that. The living God who is as much alive here as he is in the hospital rooms of the sick around the world has a mysterious plan of life and at times it includes suffering, sickness, and even disease and death. And in light of that, I am not able to ferret out the difference between the two. I do not know why he sovereignly chooses to heal one and not another, but that is his choice. That is his right. I must minister to both. For the sake of simplicity and time, let's limit this list of sources of phenomenal events to four.

Can we do that? I think when people speak of some kind of phenomenal manifestation as I analyze it and as I have witnessed some of it firsthand, I believe I could put a list together of four sources that they come from. In no particular order, let's just list them, number one would be the manifestation could be self-induced. The so-called healing could have a psychological explanation. It might not be an alleged healing, it might be a real healing. It could have taken place because it was consciously or unconsciously self-induced. Psychosomatic illnesses are numerous, doctors tell us all the time. Many of them come from disturbed emotions, many of the illnesses. And when those emotions are healed, there is a remarkable healing of the physical part of it. Second, the phenomenon could find its source in highly charged emotional meetings.

It would fall in the category of mass hysteria or mass hypnosis. The quote healing of the spirit often is the result of what could be otherwise called brainwashing, mind-bending techniques known by those who know how to move an audience and many are extremely experienced in that. Third, the source could be satanic. Will we ever learn that when Satan is involved in something, it is more often in the realm of light than it is in the realm of darkness.

It looks right, it sounds good, it seems plausible, and yet it is to the core satanic. And fourth, God does it. God does the healing. No true evangelical that I know who loves the scriptures and believes the orthodox theology of evangelical faith questions the power of God to heal. You're listening to Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of pastor and author Chuck Swindoll. Our topic today, thinking theologically about sickness and healing.

There's much more teaching ahead, so be sure to join us again next time. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit us online at insightworld.org. Before we close today, I want to remind you that every Sunday morning, Insight for Living is privileged to present the live worship service from Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, where Chuck serves as senior pastor. The sermon that Chuck presents on Sunday mornings doesn't run parallel with our current teaching series here on Insight for Living, so it's material you've never heard before. Plus, the live stream includes congregational singing and sacred music as well, so you get to participate in the entire worship experience. For all the details on the live webcast, go to insight.org slash Sundays. If you're looking for some reading material to deepen your walk with God, we want to recommend a classic from Chuck titled Growing Deep in the Christian Life. Whether you're a new follower of Jesus or you've been a Christian for decades, Chuck's book will help you grasp the major theological doctrines that define our faith.

Look for the book titled Growing Deep in the Christian Life when you go online to insight.org slash store, or ask for the book when you call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888. From its founding in July 1979 until this very day, Insight for Living has never missed delivering a single broadcast, and that's because we've enjoyed a partnership that's built on trust with people like you. Other than our grateful listeners who give, there are no large churches or institutions underwriting our expenses. So thank you so much for your generous support. To give a donation today, give us a call. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888, or go online to insight.org slash donate. . I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll continues his message called Thinking Theologically About Sickness and Healing, Monday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Thinking Theologically About Sickness and Healing, was copyrighted in 1993 and 2003, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2003 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.