In our society, today, I believe that the word “miracle”, or some form of it, is overused. I think we often forget the real definition of the word, and water it down to simply mean “amazing”. The dictionary definition of miracle I gave in the last blog for miracle was: “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.” This definition suggests that something is happening that goes far beyond “amazing”. A miracle is something that must take place outside all natural boundaries. A miracle is supernatural.
In my last blog, I went to great lengths to differentiate between miracles and healing. However, some miracles are healings and some healings are miracles! As you read through the Bible, every time Christ heals someone, it is a miracle.
To really understand what a miraculous healing is, we need to combine the definitions of miracle and healing.
Miraculous Healing:
Through divine intervention:
- to make free from injury or disease : to make sound or whole (heal a wound)
- to make well again : to restore to health (heal the sick)
This simply means that God is causing the healing to occur in a supernatural way. It is my belief that no matter how healing happens, God has His hand in it. However, a miraculous healing is one in which God is not only involved, He directly influences the outcome in such a way that the normal, ordinary, natural course of events is disrupted, and a new, surprising, wonderful, supernatural course of events takes its place.
God spoke the Earth and all that is in, into existence. A simple word, “Let there be…” and it was so. However, He had an entirely different plan for creating man. He crafted Adam from the dust of the ground, and then breathed life into him. Think about that, man was such an important creation that we merited more than just a spoken word, but hands-on creation from God Almighty! Then, He put the air that we breathe into our lungs. Our bodies were perfect, and were not intended for disease, destruction or decay. Once sin entered into the picture, then things changed. When Adam and Eve introduced sin into the world, they took the perfect creation of God that was intended to live for eternity, and stamped it with an expiration date.
That is one of the reasons we need Christ. We can no more heal ourselves than we can save our souls from sin. Only the shed blood of Jesus can do either. I know that sounds like a contradiction to the list I put out in my last blog, but I will get to each of those points over time. For now, I can say with certainty, that I believe the only healing that our bodies go through is as a result of the blood of Jesus.
Now, to tie this in with the phrase “miraculous healing”. I believe that in order to classify a healing as miraculous, supernatural intervention has to occur such that explanation by any other means truly does not make sense. This was the case for the healings that Jesus performed in the Bible. It still holds true today.
Two things I want to cover concerning miraculous healing:
- Our calling to heal
- Unbelief
1. Our calling to heal.
I have a series of scriptures I want to look at. It begins with Jesus commanding His 12 disciples, then He moves on to a group of 70. Finally, He is addressing the Christian church as a whole. I believe that each of these scriptures was intentionally included in order to be a command for the Christian church as a whole.
“Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness…And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.” (Matt. 10:1, 7-8 NASB).
“Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come. And He was saying to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest’…‘and heal those in it who are sick, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’” (Lk. 10:1-2, 9 NASB).
“These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mk. 16:17-18 NASB).
The progression goes from the small, inner circle of 12 to a larger group of 70. Then, He says that the signs will accompany those who believe. So, if you believe, these signs will accompany you. Not might, or should, or probably, but will.
Then, we top it off with: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.” (John 14:12 NASB). So, if we believe, we will do greater works than even Jesus did. WOW!
I would say that this is the reason that all believers should be in the practice of performing miraculous healings. Oh, no, contradiction alert! Didn’t I say earlier that we can’t do the healing? We need Jesus to do it? Now, I am saying that we must do it. In the first two scriptures, the Lord is appointing and giving authority to do the miracles. In Mark, He says that the signs will accompany those who believe, and in John, He is granting authority to those who believe. So, no contradiction. The work is actually being done by the authority of Christ.
Think of it this way: If I need to remove a string from my shirt, I can grab it, pull it, and it will break. I can also take a pair of scissors, and cut the string. Now, it can be said that I cut the string, or it can be said that the scissors cut the string. It is true that the scissors cut the string; however, they had no power to do so on their own. I cannot walk up to a pair of scissors, and order them to cut a string, and expect it to be done. Just like I cannot hold the scissors next to the string and expect them to cut the string under their own power. However, in my hand, guided by my hand, the scissors will cut the string.
If I have a friend who needs to be healed, God can perform a miraculous healing. His method, His timing, His reasoning, His motivation have nothing to do with me. He can simply provide the healing, and it is done. Or, like a pair of scissors, I can be a tool in God’s hand. I can be given the authority to heal. In God’s hand, guided by God’s hand, I can perform a healing in someone’s life. It is not me, it is God. It is me, acting on the authority granted by God to do God’s will simply because He delights in sharing these experiences with His creation.
2. Unbelief
“And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.” (Matt. 13:58 NASB). We find in scripture that unbelief is given as a reason that miracles are withheld. While this is true, we have to be careful here. Some people would like to equate this saying with “Oh ye of little faith.” Jesus does rebuke His disciples at several points for a lack of faith, but it is not the same as unbelief.
Unbelief is choosing not to believe. It is so strong, that it is almost a refusal to believe. That is the scene that Jesus was encountering at Nazareth, and why He chose to do no miracle there except to heal a few sick people.
The danger in viewing this the wrong way is how easy it is to make the leap to saying “You haven’t been healed because you didn’t have enough faith.” I wrote a blog that deals with this subject 3 years ago, so I won’t rewrite it now. You can read it here. Just know that we are not healed by our faith. According to scripture:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;” (Eph. 2:8 NASB). The word “saved” used here is translated from a Greek word that means to be delivered. In the actual definition of the word, it describes sicknesses before it describes sins. So, when we look at Isaiah 53:5 telling us that Christ bore both our sickness and our sin on the cross, it makes sense that we are saved from both our sin and sickness by grace through faith and that it is a gift from God.
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