Why doesn’t God heal everyone?
Let’s understand that there are 3 different types of healing.
– God has built into nature, including our bodies, a self-healing process. You get a cold but your body naturally heals itself. Everyone has this ability.
– God has allowed us to discover certain medical remedies, whether they are drugs or medical procedures.
– God also heals miraculously but only on certain individuals.
It’s the miraculous healings that we question. Why does He heal some people but not others?
There are 35 recorded miracles of Jesus in the gospels. Only 10 mention faith in Jesus. In most of the cases, faith is not mentioned as a pre-condition of the healing. So some of the miraculous healings require faith (Matthew 8:13 9:22 9:29,30 17:19,20) but others don’t (Luke 8:26-39 John 18:10).
Jesus also didn’t heal everybody. In John 5:1-5, many people at the pool of Bethsaida needed healing but Jesus only healed one, a blind and deaf man. This man didn’t have faith in Jesus. He didn’t even know who healed hm until later (John 5:12,13).
Like today in our western countries, Matthew 13:15 applies…”For this people’s hearts have become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.”
Some miracles are done so people will believe in Jesus. The apostles healed people as a confirmation of their message (Acts 3:1-26). There are also special gifts of healing that are given to certain people (1st Corinthians 12:11). But even then, not everyone they pray for is healed.
Miraculous healings tend to be a sign to people unfamiliar with the gospel message. In today’s world, there are more miraculous healings in unevangelized countries. Yet there are still healings in already evangelized countries. So miraculous healings illustrate Jesus’ redemptive mission. Bringing sight to a blind man, hearing to a deaf person, bringing sanity to a deranged person, feeding 5,000 people on a mountainside…these are all things nobody but God could do. These healings made people stand up and take notice of Jesus’ message in a way that nothing else could.
Here’s a couple of things to consider:
1) If God healed everybody, people would be drawn to the miracle and not to the message. We humans have a great tendency to rationalize. I think we would rationalize these miracles away. We may come to think that we’re owed healing. In Luke 16, the rich man asked Abraham to send his family special messages that they might believe. Abraham said they already had enough proof and they still didn’t believe. He said that even if someone rose from the dead (foreshadowing Jesus’ resurrection) that they still wouldn’t believe.
2) If God healed everybody, He’d be taking a consequence of our own actions. Adam and Eve had a perfect world but it wasn’t enough for them. They rebelled and brought sin into the world. Sin brought death, disease and destruction with it (Romans 5:12). So the question shouldn’t be “Why doesn’t God heal everybody?”. It should be “Why does He heal any of us at all?”.
What were the results of Jesus’ miraculous healings? Some became believers, some didn’t and some became believers until following Jesus became too hard (John 6:66). Ultimately, we don’t have a pat answer for why God miraculously heals some people but not others. But that shouldn’t stop us from rejoicing when He does miraculously heal someone. Maybe God heals some people now as a way of reminding us that a complete healing will come later on when He returns and will go on for an eternity (Revelation 21:4,5 & 22:1-5).
Website reference:
www.letusreason.org/Biblexp239.htm
http://carm.org/why-doesnt-god-heal-everyone
For His Kingdom,
Dave Maynard
https://bsssb-llc.com
