Christ the Healer: An Analysis (part 4)
A study of the book, Christ the Healer, by F. F. Bosworth:
III. Healing and the Will of God
F. F. Bosworth’s view of diving healing is absolute. No one ever needs to be sick. A few quotations will make his point crystal clear.
Are human imperfections of any sort, be they physical or moral, God’s will or are they man’s mistake?
p. 208
The Scriptures plainly teach that it is just as much God’s will to heal the body as it is to heal the soul.
pages 5, 136, 171
God says to all incurables “everyone that looketh shall live”.
pages 12, 146 (presumably a reference to Num. 21:8)
“With long life will I satisfy him” is God’s promise to be appropriated by all (Ps. 91:16).
p. 9
When we die before our time, the fault is man’s… He [God] has not shortened by a breath the life of any on earth.
p. 42 (quoting Douglas Malloch)
All of God’s blessings are OFFERED gifts as well as promised, and therefore need to be accepted… This clears GOD of all responsibility for any failure.
pages 130, 161
Such is the rigid and dogmatic view of Mr. Bosworth. But look again at the last quotation. Is the author suggesting that all of the blessings secured by Christ’s finished work are immediately accessible to us? Does he mean that we can right now enjoy and experience all that God has for us? Surely not. We have much, yet, to look forward to– “An inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:4). To say that we shall one day have glorious perfect bodies is not to say we have them now! That is a blessing that awaits the resurrection (Phil. 3:20-21). No, that is not a gift that is “offered” here and now.
To bolster his argument, the writer calls our attention to the fact that Jesus and the Apostles are several times said to have healed all who came to them. (He speaks of this many times. For example, see pages 48, 49, 51, 82.) Granted that this kind of affirmation is made, in the New Testament (NT), in such places as: Matt. 4:23-24, 12:15, 14:34-26; Acts 5:12-16, 28:8-9, we must seek the reason for this phenomenon.
That will take us back to the OT description of the Messianic Kingdom. The prophets foretold that one day the Messiah would come to reign over Israel on David’s throne. He would usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity. There is a great deal in the prophets about this, but take Isa. 35 as an example, since it speaks of this matter of physical healing. There, we are told that “the desert… shall blossom as the rose” (Isa. 35:1) and people shall go up to Jerusalem to worship in perfect safety (Isa. 35:8-9) and so on. And, as one of the blessings of Messiah’s Kingdom, health and healing is to be readily available (Isa. 35:5-6, “The eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing”). The context shows those promises relate to that prophetic age which is still future– sometimes called the Millenium.
And when Christ came, He presented Himself to the nation. He was to be their Messiah-King. (The wise men knew it. After His birth they sought “He who has been born King of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2).) And how could the Lord clearly show that, if Israel would accept Him, they could indeed experience that golden age of prophecy? He did it by demonstrating the kind of kingly power that will characterize that day. Christ’s miracles demonstrated who He is, but, more than that, they gave His people an actual demonstration of “the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:5).
Then, when His disciples began to minister, it was important to establish continuity– to show that what they taught was not something new and different, but was a part of God’s plan. To confirm that fact, Christ conferred upon them similar powers (Matt. 10:1). These powers authenticated the work of the Apostles, by their very uniqueness. Paul reminds the Corinthians that “the signs of an apostle were accomplished among you… in signs and wonders and mighty deeds” (2 Cor. 12:12).
Thus, it was needful, for a period of time, that the Apostles heal all who came to them– to show theirs was no inferior commission.
But, toward the end of the Apostolic era, these things already were being spoken of in the past tense (Heb. 2:3-4). And Paul himself seems to have suffered an incurable ailment. (I shall deal with Bosworth’s denial of this in due course.) Timothy was encouraged to take wine to ease a stomach ailment (1 Tim. 5:23); Epaphroditus was sick and almost died, but recovered by God’s mercy to Paul (Phil. 2:27); and Trophimus was left behind, sick, by Paul (2 Tim. 4:20).
Furthermore, we must not assume that even Christ healed everyone. What about those who got sick and died even one week before Jesus’ “first” miracle, in John 2? And what about those who got sick and died in one town, while He ministered in another? Or, the sick in Egypt or Spain or ancient China, during the years He was on earth? In every case, a sovereign choice was made. That even applied right where He was. In Mk. 1:35-38 we read of Peter urgently appealing to Jesus because “everyone is looking for you”. But the Lord’s response was that they had to move on, because there were other places He had to go. (For another example see Lk. 5:15-16.)
To summarize: The healing of “all” in the Gospels and Acts reflects a very definite purpose for that time. It did not continue indefinitely. And even then, the “all” must be qualified, as the Lord’s sovereign choice was repeatedly exercised.
Since Bosworth is convinced that it is always God’s will to heal, he refuses to allow the sufferer to ask for healing “if it be Thy will”:
Praying for healing with the faith-destroying words, “if it be Thy will” is not planting the seed [of God’s Word]; it is destroying the seed.
pages 164-165, 178-179
It is impossible to have real faith for healing as long as there is the slightest doubt as to its being God’s will.
p. 80
Yet, in reality, as we have seen and shall see further, the suffering of this life is a part of God’s sovereign will, at this point in time. He invites us to appeal to Him for aid, but always in total submission to His final choice in the matter. We are to live our lives in the consciousness that God’s will decides everything (Jas. 4:13-15), a position that Jesus Himself took (Mk. 14:36).
However, the leper who prays with great insight, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean” (Matt. 8:2) has Bosworth’s scorn heaped upon him. He again reads into the text by saying, “The first thing Christ did was to correct his theology by saying, ‘I will, be thou clean.’ Christ’s “I will” (says the author) cancelled his “if” (p. 41). There is absolutely nothing in the passage to indicate that Christ was “correcting his theology”. The sick man is bowing to the supremacy of Christ’s will. That hardly needs correcting! It is an amazing recognition of the place Christ deserved, and it expresses a truth that John writes about, at a later time, “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 Jn. 5:14).
Next time we’ll look at some of the more serious accusations made by the author.
(article continued tomorrow)