Where is healing rooted? Is it in the atonement - the Cross of Christ? Maybe it’s in the person of Christ? Perhaps it’s in the Kingdom of God?
If healing is rooted in the person it’s easy to say that He’s not walking the Earth today and therefore divine healing isn’t for today. Far too easy in fact. No-one should base a theology on experience. Our basis needs to be the Word of God, so having an experience and “finding” verses scattered all over the place that loosely seem connected is not a valid way of creating theology. Very often our experiences are contrary to the Word, or they’re a missed and cloudy bag containing both truth and error. This is equally true of an argument from silence also: just because the Word says one thing and our experience seems contrary, we should believe the Word in preference to our own feelings and experience. For instance, the Bible says that we are loved by God yet we often dont feel that way and our experiences day-to-day might seem to invalidate that fact. Still, it stands as true that God loves us whatever our feelings. Yet we make theology from other cases where our experience of not seeing Divine healing today. Elabourate theological concepts have been created to explain why God “wouldn’t do that today.”
If healing is rooted in the Atonement of Christ, in the Cross, there are still problems. Some people are healed through Divine intervention today: everything from small items like headaches to backpain, curvature of the spine and on through cancer. The problem really comes when people arent healed. What then? Is the Atonement somehow ineffective? We read in Isaiah “by his wounds we are healed” and yet some people aren’t … so we naturally cast doubt on the Atonement itself asking whether salvation through the Cross is also suspect?
I find it deeply challenging to look at healing as being rooted in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom broke in 2000 years ago with the advent of Christ and He left specific instructions for all that would follow him
Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
What did He command the disciples? Matthew 4:23 says
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.
further to that, Matthew 10:7-8 says
He commanded the disciples “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.”
So, our mission today remains the same: preach the Word, pray for the sick, give to those in need. I am as much under the command to pray for the sick / lame / maimed as the first disciples were and I proclaim the good news of the very same Rule and Reign of God. God has not changed, neither has His message or His mission, or His power to minister to the sick.