Today's session is about healing and how it is part of what Jesus has already purchased for us. In Mark 2 and Luke 5 Jesus was teaching in a house so crowded that a paralyzed man was let down through the roof by friends to where He sat, and Jesus miraculously healed him. In Matthew 8:14‑16, after Jesus had been healing people, the Bible says, "And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them. When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick." Then verse 17 gives the reason for this happening: "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." In this instance, Jesus was healing many people, and it specifically refers back to and quotes from Isaiah 53:3‑5: "He is despised and rejected of men [This is a prophecy about the Lord Jesus Christ]; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath born our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 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" (brackets mine).

These are powerful passages of Scripture. Some people take them and say, "Wait a minute; this is talking in a spiritual sense." The church I was brought up in didn't believe in physical healing for the body. They would take a scripture like this and spiritualize it—use it to say we were wounded emotionally, and when we commit our lives to the Lord, He heals us. But if we put this passage together with the passages we started with, it forever ends that application of these scriptures. It's true that Jesus will heal you emotionally and in other ways, but these scriptures are talking about physical healing for the body. You can see that because in Matthew 8:17, it says that these healings that took place were the fulfillment of the prophecy spoken by Isaiah we just read, "With his stripes we are healed." It says this was the fulfillment that He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. This is talking about physical sicknesses, hurts, and pains. Jesus healed people physically to fulfill the scripture that says we are healed by His stripes.

The Bible goes on to say in 1 Peter 2:24, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body, on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." This is in the past tense. Jesus came, and part of what He came to do was heal your physical bodies. I am not diminishing the fact that He also came to forgive your sins. That's important, and forgiveness of sins is like the doorway, the entrance to everything else, but He didn't come only to forgive your sins. He also came to heal your body. In Greek, the word used for salvation in the New Testament is sozo, an all-encompassing word that applies to many different things. But if you look it up, it's also translated "healed." James 5:14 states: "Is any sick among you? let them call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; And prayer of faith shall save the sick." The word "save" there is the Greek word sozo, and it is talking about the sick being physically healed in their bodies. This same word that was translated forgiveness of sins hundreds of times in the New Testament was also translated healed.

When Jesus sent His disciples out in Matthew 10, the command He gave them was to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils, and preach the Gospel. In the same breath that He told them to preach the Gospel, He told them to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out devils. Healing is just as much a part of what Jesus came to accomplish in your life as forgiveness of sins.

In the same way you would never think that the Lord would want you to commit a sin to teach you that you could learn something through your sin, He would never want you to live in sickness. God is not the author of sickness in your life. Sometimes people say things like, "Well, this sickness is really a blessing from God because it turned me to Him." It's true that in crisis situations people turn to God, but He doesn't send sickness to teach you. He wouldn't do that anymore than He would put sin on you. Can you learn something if you go live in sin? If you live a life of adultery or homosexuality and get some disease, can you learn that the lifestyle was wrong? Certainly you can, but God didn't cause you to live that lifestyle. He didn't put sin in your life, yet you can learn from sinning. You can beat your head against the wall and learn that it's not the thing to do, but you could also learn that without physically beating your head against the wall.

You don't have to learn everything by hard knocks. God does not put sickness in your life to humble you and teach you something. Jesus died to forgive you of your sins and also to heal you of your diseases. He bore your sins in His own body, and by His stripes you were healed.

God's supernatural divine healing is available to all of us and is part of the atonement that Jesus died to produce. If you aren't receiving your healing, God's not upset with you. You don't have to be healed to love God. You can love God with your whole heart, not believe in healing, and still go to heaven. As a matter of fact, you'll probably get there quicker because you don't know how to walk in health. But you know what—it's available to you. Jesus died to produce it. God wants you to be well.