Is there A Cost For God's Free Gift?
It Is Free
The title to this teaching series probably got your attention. It may even sound like it conflicts with Scripture because we have been taught to believe that God's healing is a free gift to the body of Christ, which leads us to assume that there is no cost to it--at least no cost to us.
In a way, that is very true. Healing was purchased by Jesus on Calvary through His suffering, death and resurrection as a sacrifice for our sins. Isaiah 53:5 tells us, "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed." 1 Peter 2:24 says some- thing very similar: "[Jesus] Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness-- by whose stripes you were healed."
The New Testament makes clear a tie between Jesus' ability to heal the sick and His suffering/dying for us. For example, Matthew 8:16-17 says, "When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon- possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses'" That reference in Isaiah is Isaiah 53:4, and the next verse (Isaiah 53:5) explains how Jesus bore our sickness and infirmities--by His stripes. That refers to the fierce whipping He received at Pilot's command just before He was crucified (Mark 15:15, John 19:1).
One of the things that Jesus purchased for us was physical healing. The price tag was huge: it required His suffering, death and resurrection, as per Isaiah 53.
Jesus got access to this physical healing before His death, but it was His upcoming death/resurrection that gave Him access to it. Think of it this way: The Father (Who sees in all times at once) granted Jesus "advanced" access to the healing that He was about to purchase. Jesus was allowed to heal the sick BEFORE He died (and rose again) because He had come to this earth explicitly to become the sacrifice for our sin.
Everything in His life from the moment He was born until the moment He faced Calvary was explicitly to redeem us; so in a manner of speaking, He had begun to pay the price when He was born. All of Jesus' life and ministry on the earth was a part of Jesus redeeming us, and that gave Him access to forgive sins and heal the sick before He died and rose from the dead.
Putting it another way, Jesus made the first installment of the purchase (our salvation and healing) when He has born. He completed that transaction when He died for our sins and rose from the dead. But He had access to the "goods" (e.g., healing and to the ability to forgive sin) from the point where He made the first installment. That is why He as able to say to the paralytic in Matthew 9:2, "Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you." That is why He was able to say to the thief on the cross, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).
Once Jesus had access to healing, He gave it away very freely. The New Testament is full of example after example of this. Let me give you just a few examples. Matthew 4:24 says, "Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them." Matthew 21:14 says, "Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them." Mark 3:10 says, "For He healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about Him to touch Him."
So the gift of healing (along with the gift of salvation) were not free to Jesus--He purchased them at a very great price. But once He had them, He gave them away freely to anyone who was willing to receive them at His hand.
God Expects The Body Of Christ To Heal The Sick
Jesus did not just give away physical healing to those who need it--He also gave away the authority (or ability) to heal the sick to each of His followers.
Jesus started this with His followers when He was still living on the earth. We see it in Luke 9:1-2, where Jesus sent out the 12: "Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." Then a little later, He sent out seventy of His disciples with the same mandate. Luke 10:1, "After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go."
Then in the great commission of Mark 16:15-18, Jesus expanded this mandate to ALL of His disciples in all times:
15And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 16He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.17And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; 18they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."
It should not surprise us that Jesus gave each of us the mandate to "heal the sick," since one of His main ministry activities had been healing the sick. We must not forget what He said to us about this in John 14:12: "Most assuredly, 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 My Father."
In short, Jesus fully expects us to do the same works that He did when He walked on this earth. He spent a lot of His time healing the sick, and He expects each of us to likewise heal the sick.
If this is the first time you've heard this, then don't panic. Jesus did not give us an impossible mandate. Rather He gave us the very same thing (e.g., the indwelling Person of the Holy Spirit) to empower us in this that He used when He did it. Acts 10:38 tells us that Jesus healed through the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It says, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, Who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him."
He has given the same Holy Spirit Who anointed Jesus to each of us. In short, He made a way for each of us to be able to live up to His mandate to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. Then He commanded each of us to do the very things He empowered us to do.
But There Is Still A Cost
But there is still a cost to heal the sick. That cost comes in the form of increased spiritual warfare against us as we more actively start to do with God what He is doing. The more we advance God's kingdom, the more we become a threat to the devil, and the more he will fight back against us. I will talk about this more in the next lesson.
But I do want to address one thing...we don't have the option of not doing it just because there is a spiritual warfare counter-attack price tag attached to it. Jesus has commanded us to be His witness, to cast out demons and to heal the sick. We don't get an option as to whether or not we do these things, we are expected to obey God and to do with Him what He is doing.
Warfare Is To Be Expected And It Can Be Costly
We Are At War
Every one of us needs to expect that there will be times of spiritual warfare in our lives. This to be expected because it comes with the territory of belonging to Jesus and of being a citizen of Heaven.
And it can be very costly. The enemy can attack you in ways that hurt you--physically, financially, relationally and emotionally. So we have to understand the nature of the battle and take steps to defend ourselves. If we don't, we will most likely end up being a casualty of this war.
The war is not a physical war, but a spiritual one. It is not fought with things like guns, missiles and bombs. You are not fighting some physical country or nation, but you are "at war" with the spiritual ruler of this world. You are fighting to advance God's kingdom, to gain back His rule and reign, and to retake this world for His glory and for His pleasure. Ephesians 6:12 puts it this way: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."
You have probably heard this before, but when we believed on Jesus, we were not just adopted into God's family, we were also drafted into His army. The reason for this is because we were transplanted from the kingdom of this world into the God's kingdom--and the kingdom of this world is constantly in conflict with the kingdom of heaven.
The New Testament uses so many military terminologies and analogies, because the "war" is real. That is why God has given us spiritual "armor" to wear, as per Ephesians chapter 6. Verse 11 says, "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." And verse 13 says, "Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."
Common Misconceptions About This War
There are some misunderstandings about this war, misunderstandings that can turn people into unnecessary casualties. I'd like to look briefly at two of them.
1) IF WE DON"T BOTHER THE DEVIL, HE WON"T BOTHER US.
One misconception is that "if we leave the devil alone, then he will leave us alone."
That is a lie from the enemy, designed to get you to let down your guard and become an easy target. The devil is a master strategist, and he actively plots and schemes to advance his kingdom. And, as any military expert can tell you, it is a lot easier to move your troops in to occupy territory when then other side doesn't resist or fight back.
Look at it in terms of military strategy. If the other side is unwise enough to let you move in unopposed, the first thing you do is move your troops in and get established--then you go after the enemy and try to wipe them out. The devil wants us to leave him alone so that he can quietly move in and establish a stronghold.
Thus, if the devil can talk believers into "leaving him alone" ( e.g., not resisting him as he moves in to take territory), he may indeed leave you alone for a season. But that season will only last as long as it takes him to get firmly established. Once he has taken the ground and built strongholds there, then he will move in and begin attacking pockets of potential resistance, trying to remove them before they can resist him. In other words, he will leave you alone for a season, while he gets stronger and establishes himself. But he will eventually attack you, seeking to steal, kill and destroy all that pertains to you as per John 10:10. Unfortunately, it will be harder to resist him (fight back and protect yourself) at that time, because he will be more firmly established.
2) IF I AM IN GOD'S WILL, I WON'T BE HARMED.
The other misunderstanding about warfare is this: "If I am in the center of God's will, then He will protect me from all harm or attack that the enemy might launch against me." This is true in the long run (eternity) but not in the short run (our life on this earth).
Having said that, I want to acknowledge that there are times when God supernaturally protects us from harm/attack. But there are also many times where He allows us to suffer for His name's sake. It is not uncommon for a believer to struggle or to go through trial, difficulty and hardship.
In fact, if you look at the heroes of the faith, you will see that pretty much every one of them when through a lot of hardship and trials as they tried to walk out the destiny that God ordained for them. They were in the center of God's will but God permitted a lot of seemingly bad things to happen to them. Sometimes He delivered them quickly (like splitting the Red Sea when Pharaoh's armies chased them intent on killing them). But there were times when God left them in hardship and unfair circumstances for years and years, such as Joseph being sold into slavery and then thrown unfairly into prison. Daniel was very Godly from his youth until the day he died. Yet the Lord allowed him to be kidnapped as a youth by enemy soldiers, carried away into captivity and even castrated (or turned into a eunuch). Talk about unfair treatment! And God did not protect him from these things, even though God was with him and moved powerfully through him.
King David had to run for his life from Saul on many occasions, he had to go into hiding, he had to fane insanity, the had to live among his enemies and pretend to be a traitor. His wife was taken away from him and married to someone else. He was a favorite of God, and yet God allowed him to suffer and to go through all of these things. By the way, who do you think was the one who caused David to suffer? In a sense it was King Saul, but he was being influenced by a demon. The devil was attacking David through King Saul (spiritual warfare) because God had great plans for using David to advance His kingdom.
Throughout history, you can see the devil bringing attack and hardship on those who were anointed of God. The prophet Jeremiah was thrown into prison for prophesying the word of the Lord. John the Baptist was beheaded for proclaiming God's righteous standards. The original twelve disciples were imprisoned, beaten, and many of them executed for proclaiming Jesus. The Apostle Paul endured huge amounts of persecution, including beatings, arrests, stoning, shipwrecks, going hungry, being falsely accused, etc. Many early believers were martyred for their faith, laying down the physical lives to receive a crown of eternal life. In short, God allowed a lot of "bad things" to happen to very godly people. He did not protect His elect from all of these bad things, and He won't always protect you, even when you are in the center of His will.
That is why Jesus asked us to count the cost when following Him. He said, in Matthew 10:38-39, "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."
Jesus does not promise to protect us from suffering, hardship and attack. To the contrary, He promises that this will be a part of our lives, but that He will help us to overcome and walk in His victory in the midst of this adversity.
There are so many verses on this that I could not take the space in this lesson to cover them all. But here are some of them:
Matthew 24:9 - "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake."[Next Article]John 16:33 - "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Matthew 24:9 - "They will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake."
Mark 13:9-10 - But watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues. You will be brought before rulers and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them. And the gospel must be preached to all the nations."
Romans 8:16-18 - "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."
Philippians 1:29 - "For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake."
2 Timothy 3:12 - "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution."
1 Peter 4:12-13 - "Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy."
1 Peter 4:16 - "Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter."
Revelation 2:10 - "Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life."
1 Peter 5:8-9 - "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world."