Dear Brother:
I am deeply thankful that you are able to say: “One truth which you make so clear in both letter and leaflet, namely, that ‘Christ is all,’ is a great growing power in me of late.” I, too, felt that our time together was all too short. However, I am glad for this broken glimpse, and even a little exchange, in what, through grace, is dear to us both—the things concerning Himself, “both new and old.” Is it not a little bit of heaven, when, together, our hearts are ravished, as His charms and glories pass before us. There are two things the Spirit of God maintains—the glory of Christ, as to His person; and the Lordship of Christ, as to His place. Alas! the mass of those professing His Name are not in the good of either.
But I must reply to what seems to be giving you so much exercise, the question of “healing.” I feel sure you will be gracious enough to pardon me, if I say it seems to me you take a very partial view of it; failing too to get the setting of some of your texts; and to mark the change of dispensation, you are likely to encounter perplexing difficulties. For example: You say “Throughout our Lord’s whole ministry there is not a single case reported where He refused to heal any person who came to Him believing.” Strangely enough, you then say, “There is one exception, that of Paul.” You are in another dispensation in the case of Paul, and, unfortunately, his case argues against your deductions. Though he “besought the Lord thrice,” the “thorn” remained, and he “gloried in his infirmities,” since they furnished an opportunity for the display of “the power of Christ.” This you appear to deprecate, since you can only conceive power working to deliver, whereas here, it is power working endurance to the point of exultation: “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities.” Why? “That the power of Christ may rest upon me.” May I not say this is a higher manifestation of power than we could have had in his deliverance? Nor could there have been any admixture of self, as is too frequently the case in our overweening desire to escape trial. Self is a subtle foe. What room does the system, for which you stand, leave for the display of “the power of Christ” in an infirm body?
Since the display of power is an outstanding thought with you, I should like to draw your attention to Colossians 1:11. “Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power.” “All might” and “glorious power”—for what? physical relief? deliverance from trial? No. “All might and glorious power, unto all patience and long suffering with joyfulness.” How infinitely above the unhappy restlessness of nature, that too often assumes the role of “higher faith,” whilst practicing unbelief in adopting affiliations and fellowships, which involve positive, disobedience to His word. In Corinthians, “order” comes before “power.”
I recall Fingall, and many other like proceedings. Such disorders throw the truth of “healing,” as presented in His Word, into disrepute, and thus, where we looked for His glory, we found His dishonor. At least, this is so for one whose thoughts, and judgment, have been formed by His Word. Alas! that the low state of the church of God, and the feeble exercise of faith, have opened the door to these vagaries! Has not the enemy despoiled us as to faith? taking away our “shields of gold” which we have replaced with “Shields of brass” (2 Chron. 12:9-10). “Above all taking the shield of faith.” That the “spiritual” one is discerned of no man is true (1 Cor. 2). The one “filled with the Spirit” is always a riddle to the world (Acts 2). “The world knoweth us not” (1 John 3). This is a very different thing from the flaunted unseemliness, too often found with these higher claims. And yet this very unseemliness has its attractions for inflamed and highly wrought nature. It is a state of intoxication. One in this state is rendered void of spiritual judgment (Lev. 10:9-10). “Be sober” is His word to us. They may tell me “the fire was there.” Be it so. It was “strange fire” (Lev. 10). A rapture not kindled by Christ, or His cross, is not of the Spirit of God. Nor can you build on “results.” It must be His Word. Not a faker in Christendom that can not show these, from Rome to the latest cult.
But I return to our Lord’s course here, to which you have referred. He spoke of the Kingdom as “at hand,” upon His rejection of the Kingdom “in mystery,” and, finally, of the Kingdom in manifestation (Matt. 4, Matt. 13, Matt. 24). The Kingdom was at hand, for the King was here. Not only was the Kingdom published in preaching, but the power of the Kingdom was displayed in healings and other things. In Hebrews 6, these powers are called “powers of the age to come”—the Kingdom age. These powers are not characteristically the powers of the present dispensation. The Kingdom order of things has been deferred by reason of the rejection of the KING. Meanwhile the church is being formed. He is “taking out of the Gentiles a people for His Name” (Acts 15). This present period is a kind of parenthesis in God’s ways with men. This could be clearly shown from various portions of His Word, but I can not follow this out here. The Kingdom line of things will be resumed upon the translation of the saints to heaven. Just where these testimonies and manifestations of power were laid down, there they will be taken up again. Christ meanwhile having gotten for Himself a bride.
Resuming His dealings with Israel, the Kingdom comes into view (1 Thess. 4; Matt., 24th and 25th chapters; Comp. 2 Cor. 11; Eph. 5, and Rev. 19). The blessing of these Kingdom-saints, speaking of what characterized it, was temporal and physical. Compare Deuteronomy 28:1-13; Ephesians 1:3. To this the whole of the Old Testament bears witness, and its testimony is concerning the Kingdom as offered by Christ when here, and to be offered by His (Jewish) “brethren,” just preceding its establishment (Matt. 24:14; 25:31-46; Rev. 11:15-17). At His appearing He is “King of Kings.” To be somewhat more specific, a comparison of Deuteronomy 28 and Ephesians 1, already referred to, will show the distinction. In Deuteronomy we have earthly and physical blessing. In Ephesians we have heavenly and spiritual blessing. The one system being earthly, and the other heavenly, we can see the suitability of their characteristic blessings. Not that one belonging to the earthly order might not have spiritual blessing, and the one belonging to the heavenly order temporal blessing, but spiritual would not be outstanding in the one, nor physical outstanding in the other. One was blessed in basket and in store; the other, “having food and raiment,” was to “be content.” That God vouchsafed the miraculous until Christianity became an established thing, here is true, as Acts shows, a fulfillment of Mark 16. This is recorded. Faith receives it, and this is better than seeing it. Nor would the continuation of these manifestations comport with the present state of the church, which is in ruin, and awaiting judgment (2 Tim., 1 Pet. 4, Rev. 1). Not that our failure has diminished His fullness, but that fullness, while for us, will take a shape consistent with existing conditions. He is not going to adorn that which is ripe for judgment. “Tongues” belong to the same class of gifts. Of these it is said: “Tongues, they shall cease.” Moreover, “tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not.” God’s lowest way of appealing to man is by tangible evidence. His highest, by His Word, since faith is the principle that puts God in His place, and me in mine. Nor does the faith produced by a miracle evidence a work of God in the soul (John 2:23-25). “Faith cometh by (not seeing) hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”
If you are contending for these miraculous manifestations, you might ponder with profit: “Covet earnestly the best gifts.” In the order of their importance they are: “First apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers,” and then as of far less consequence, “after that, miracles.” Then he places significantly, at the very end, what they were making so much of, “diversities of tongues.” From miracles to diversities of tongues, you have one grouping of gifts, inferior to those of prophet or teacher (1 Cor. 12). Beyond all, there is “a more excellent way”—Love— (1 Cor. 13). What Scripture would you refer to to show that the gift of healing was used in behalf of a believer? I mean from Pentecost on. I do not know of one instance.
Epaphroditus was “sick, nigh unto death, but God had mercy on him.” And who can not testify to the same “mercy”? It is striking that it should be put in this way as an act of mercy. The whole context gives him honorable mention, but does not intimate that they had a right to expect it; on the contrary it is regarded as an act of mercy on God’s part (Phil. 2).
“Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.” Paul, though having the gift of healing, did not exert it in his behalf. He left him to learn out of his affliction whatever God had for him in it.
To the “well beloved Gains,” John writes, “I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper, and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth,” clearly intimating that there might be a prosperous state of soul in an afflicted body. This we know was true in Paul’s case, already referred to (2 Cor. 12). Speaking more generally, “Though the outward man perish (is being brought to decay), yet the inward man is renewed, day by day.” Whatever our claim, this process is going on. Every wrinkle, every gray hair, every ache and pain, is just the preliminary shaking of what is to be removed (2 Cor. 4). The Spirit of God never leads us to expect the present redemption of the body. “Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” When? At the time of “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8). “In this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven” (2 Cor. 5). “We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body (body of humiliation), that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.” This is at His coming again, when “mortality is swallowed up of life” (1 Thess. 4; 1 Cor. 15; 2 Cor. 5). What is it to be mortal? It is to be subject to death. The believer’s body constitutes the last link he sustains to the old creation, which “groans,” and he groans with it, not a groan of despair, but a groan of desire. I take it from Romans 8:11 that the power of resurrection resides in the believer now. This will be put forth, as we know from Scriptures already cited, at His returning. “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by His Spirit that dwelleth in you (Comp. 1 Pet. 3:18). I know this text has been juggled with, but its plain and obvious meaning is clear for one subject to His Word.
Scripture distinguishes between the “gift of healing” and “the prayer of faith.” The first was peculiar to some; the second is common to all, or available for all. James 5 prescribes a course for faith. “Is any sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church.” The sick are not directed to call for those having “the gift of healing,” but for the “elders.” We might have difficulty in locating these, since the church is in ruin. The making of elders was an apostolic prerogative, in the case of Timothy and Titus, delegated. But we have now neither apostles, nor their delegates, so no authority to constitute any. Should one be found having the qualifications, he might be owned in this capacity (1 Tim. 3; 1 Thess. 5:12). But, owning our weakness and failure, “the prayer of faith” may ever be relied on, where one is convinced that it is His will. “The prayer of faith shall save the sick.” I think I have seen a number of answers to prayer in healing. But you cannot build a school of teaching around this, making it an inflexible rule. If you send for the doctor, pray first, bring God in.
“Is any among you afflicted, let him pray.” I ask your attention to the fact that Timothy was at Ephesus, and the elders were there (Acts 20:17). Paul, however, writes to Timothy thus: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, and thine often infirmities.” Mark “often infirmities.” His was a chronic case. He was where he could have carried out James 5 in every detail, but he is not instructed to do so. This is why I say, you can not lay down an inflexible rule (1 Tim. 5). Wine was evidently used for its medicinal value. You can’t put the truth in pigeonholes; God always leaves room for exercise—a wholesome thing in any case.
Asa appeals to the doctors, instead of to the Lord, and he dies. Hezekiah turns to the Lord, and a poultice of figs is advised (2 Chron. 16: 11-13; Isa. 38). Always turn to the Lord. He will make it plain. Willess, and with Christ before the soul, I can get His mind. “When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light” (Luke 11). What could better express the single eye than “I have set the Lord always before me.” To be really happy I must have Christ before my heart, and not my blessing of either body or soul. We shall soon have bodies of glory. Jesus is coming!! Till we see His face, may we “bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” God may help us out in this by “delivering us unto death for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4).
“Luke, the beloved physician,” is mentioned in Colossians 4. His status as a saint is not disturbed by the fact that he was a doctor of medicine. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” Proverbs 17:22. I offer these, not as standing in the way of a faith that counts on God, but as showing there is latitude in God’s Word as to this question of healing. The blessed Spirit of God does not confine Himself to either course. We are inclined to extremes, especially if a halo of imagined mystery hangs over the question.
It is a startling, yet subduing fact, that as we approach the end, miracles will be found, more and more, on the side of Satan. The Man of Sin, the Lawless One, will work these. The very things that accredited Jesus will be practiced by this one, for the “strong delusion” of “those who loved not the truth.” His “coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders.” And how awfully solemn. GOD SENDS IT. The second beast of Revelation 13 is the same personage, and “He doeth great wonders.... and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do” (Acts 2:22; 2 Thess. 2; Rev. 13). How searching Matthew 7:22-23 and Deuteronomy 13:1-3.
Matthew 8:17 is sometimes used to prove that Christ “bare our sicknesses” atoningly. It should be plain, to any sober judgment, from the context that Isaiah 53:4 was then and there being fulfilled. It is not intimated that He was to bear them “on the tree,” where our sins were borne. He bore them in sympathy and love in His spirit, not in His body on the cross.
Affectionately, yours and His.