Is Healing Ours By Right Because it’s in the Atonement? (aPP 3 14)

I told you in the last Nugget that this week I would investigate the Two Opposing Views more thoroughly.

• Is healing really in the atonement?
• Can we name it and claim it?

How do we deal with the responses we get from onlookers or worst yet our family members when they make comments like:

• “You must lack faith if you still have this sickness.”
• “You can’t have prayed enough. Perhaps you need to fast and pray.”
• “You have to ignore the lying symptoms and hold fast to your healing.”
• “Healing is ours by right in the atonement; so if you have not yet been healed there must be sin in your life you haven’t dealt with.”

The verse oft quoted in this context is of course:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Isaiah 53:5

Many think the answer to the above question is a simple but strong “YES!” on the basis of Isaiah 53:5 – the healing is in the atonement verse. Certainly the woman in Jennifer Rothschild’s book who referred to her as “our little speaker” thought so and began subtlely at first to fire little snipes at Jennifer. Gradually those snipes turned into pointed missiles. It is by their fruit you shall know them. When you don’t fit their theological framework you bear the brunt of their vitriolic reactions. They can’t have anyone questioning the stability of “their little world”. It sows doubt and uncertainty in their own minds. Others who take a more pragmatic (and I would add biblical) approach suggest there are two sides to these two opposing views.

1. The Name it and Claim it School
2. The Need for a Theology of Suffering School

Many of our friends, family and acquaintances have been told they must have sin in their life if they have long term on-going sickness. Those who name it and claim it believe we all have a right to be healed. “We simply need to believe that all sickness and disease will be healed in Jesus’ name.” Statements like this have a profound effect on those who have been sick with long term illness.  Those proponents of the Name it and Claim it position openly state that:

• “Everyone who is not healed is weak in faith and their trust in God.”
• “They pay heed to the symptoms and don’t stand firm in their faith.”
• “All that God requires is for people to have a mustard-sized-seed-of-faith and they will be healed.”

I told you briefly in the Two Opposing Views Nugget [hotlinked above] of our experience at Bible College where there was a band of zealots who regularly visiting those who were sick or struggling with issues in order to pray for them. That I am sure you will agree is highly commendable. However it didn’t stop there. This group would return again a few days later to test the results of their prayers for healing. That too is commendable; most groups or individuals who pray in such a way don’t bother to check on the results. Not these zealots. They came again to see if the patients had been set free from their sickness, physical or psychological.  At that point in the process the tone changed and became accusatory. The patient was no longer the recipient of well-meaning Christian caring but had somehow transformed into a sinner, not saved by grace like us all, but one who was undermining the record of this group’s success rate by not being healed. After all healing is in the atonement and it is ours by right. If you are not healed and stay healed then you are the one culpable of your own demise.

That kind of ministry leaves behind broken and hurting people who then have to look for answers to this twisted approach to Scripture. Is that really what the Bible teaches? Is healing in the atonement and ours by right? All we need to do is name it, claim it, believe it and that settles it. I know that kind of thinking. I think that way myself when I tell people, “I have read the back of the book; I know how it ends. We are on the victory side. It’s written in the Bible: Christ said, I believe it, that settles it.” But can that construct of thought be generalised to healing such that we will be healed, not could be healed?

There were two women at Bible College with us in those days whom we got to know well. We warmed to both of them and they have become good friends. Both had amazing faith and a strong walk with the Lord. The more we got to know them, the more we were impressed with their trust in God and the way they relied on him. They were both a challenge to me in my walk with Him and their ability to hear His voice.  Soon after each of these women had had a second visit from the Zealots we got to hear of the troubling nature of what they were being told. I could see this input was both harmful and was not having a positive effect, quite the opposite. I soon learned others had been harmed by this band of not so merry men as well. Because the latter input from the Zealots was so harmful, it made me want to check out the Name It and Claim It position from the Bible. I went to the key verse behind this thinking and wanted to find out what it said in Hebrew. So I put my new found skills to work back then. I have added to my understanding significantly since.

   Editor’s (Ian) Note: For those Hebrew purists among you, the Hebrew is reading left to right following the English, but the words are in sync with the English translation. The Interlinear Tool on this website is set up that way. The normal Hebrew sentence reads from right to left:

  והוא מחלל מפשׁענו מדכא מעונתינו מוסר שׁלומנו עליו ובחברתו נרפא־לנו׃

Jesaia 53:5

By his stripes we are healed

I wish to concentrate my investigation firstly on the element “and with his stripes we are healed”. So in addition to giving you a Hebrew interlinearised text I have also given you below the interlinearised Greek text of the Septuagint for the same verse – Isaiah 53:5

The verb for healing in both Hebrew and Greek in Isaiah 53:5 is in the passive form. In Hebrew it is a Niphal form of the verb [רפא] rapha to heal. In the Greek text of the Septuagint the verb is [ἰάθημεν] derived from ἰάoμάἰ (iaomai) one of the verbs in Greek to heal. In this case it is a middle passive which is more focused on healing from sin sickness that healing related to the physical body. it would be more appropriate to refer to “inner healing” in terms of the usage of this verb in Greek and for the Hebrew niphal form of [רפא].

Now at the risk of turning this Nugget into a heavy grammatical session I want to give you a table in which I have charted the four exchanges contained within this verse. To construct this table I have used numerous English versions and extracted the Exchange Couplets from the readings. This is in essence what this verse is all about, set in the wider context of chapter 53 of Isaiah.

Table of the Exchange Couplets Across the Versions

You can see at a glance that these four exchange columns divide in two with the left hand two (Exchanges 1 and 2) being negative in the sense that Jesus was wounded, pierced, crushed and bruised for our actions. In the right hand columns (Exchanges 3 and 4) his suffering and punishment, stripes and wounds resulted in peace, wholeness and healing for us. Notice how the TLV substitutes shalom for peace. That is exactly what the Hebrew word [שׁלומ] means. Peace is not just an absence of war or turmoil, inner or external. The sense of [שׁלומ] is total well being in life. The totality of blessing as God intended. I now need to draw your attention to the fact that all of this verse is set in the context of the result of sin. The healing therefore is related to sin sickness which accords well with the use of the Niphal form of the Hebrew verb rapha and the middle passive form of the Greek verb iaomai in this passage. I say again the focus of this verse is not bodily healing. The focus of this verse in more correctly what some call these days inner healing. The effects of sin on our psyche and souls. The results I addressed in the Overcoming Strongholds series. To take this verse and use to claim all bodily ailments, sickness and wounds are healed by our right of being children of God is complete and utter nonsense given the context of this verse and what we perceive all around us in terms of healing of Christian and non-Christian alike. Healing is not actually ours by right of being Christian, irrespective of what we might claim! What is higher on God’s priorities is dealing with the results of sin and getting us right for heaven than catering to the bodily scars and ailments.

I wish to do one more thing in this Nugget and then I will pick up the pieces again in the next Nugget. In the meantime I would suggest you analyse, dissect and weigh up what I have laid before you over the next week before I write the following Nugget. If you have questions or comments feel free to bring them on. Now I would like to introduce something from Deeper Bible level 701. Don’t worry, it won’t leave you with trauma. neither will it be too hard to understand. I am not intending to going into it in the depth that I do in the context of Deeper Bible. I am just laying a relevant Bible truth before you.

You can’t help but have noticed the Bible terms Iniquity, sins and transgressions in the table of exchange couplets across the versions above. Most of us dont really understand these terms. So allow me to shed some light on the meanings of the Hebrew words just for a moment.

• עָווֹן   עָוֹן (âvôn) Iniquity, perversity, depravity, guilt, consequence of or punishment for iniquity
• חַטָּאָה (chaṭṭâ’âh) sin, error, wrong doing
• פֶּשַׁע (pesha‛) transgression, rebellion, sin, trespass, revolt,

The difference between these terms is as follows:

• Iniquity is whatever your eye hooks to which then multiplies within you
• Sin is when temptations, desires or lusts for what has caught your eye entices you
• Transgression is when you yield to the temptation and take hold of it, act on it.

Hebrew words are not only abstract concepts they are also collections of pictographs. Here is the package that is Iniquity illustrated from the combinations of of the Hebrew letters or radicals used to make up the word.

There you have the idea of Iniquity both conceptualised and illustrated. The gradation of sin is a process which moves from what catches (hooks) our eye to us being tempted to the point of committal or action. I think James summed up the Hebrew concept when he wrote

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.

James 1:14-15

I will now leave you with the thoughts contained in this 14th Nugget in the Puzzling Paradox series and allow you to mull over the concepts and adjust your thoughts related to Isaiah 53:5 accordingly. We will return to it again in the next Nugget and I will expand the concepts for you.