In three previous Q&A’s on healing, we pointed out that because of Christ’s supreme Sacrifice, God has promised to heal our physical illnesses, if we are fulfilling certain conditions. We showed that God expects of a sick person to ask the ministers of His Church to anoint the sick with oil or send an anointed cloth to the sick person.
We also showed that the sick person must have faith to be healed, and that he or she must do the things “which are pleasing in God’s sight.” Another important requirement necessary to receive God’s gift of healing will be discussed in this Q&A. In 1 John 3:22, we read: “And whatever we ask we receive from Him (including a request for physical healing), because we KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”
Keeping God’s commandments is an absolute necessity.
Christ made it very clear to a young ruler that he had to keep the commandments to enter ETERNAL life (Matthew 19:17); it is obvious that this condition also applies for protection and healing in this physical life. After all, Christ came so that we should have LIFE, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). This passage speaks foremost about physical life, free from pain, suffering and sickness.
The commandments which Christ was addressing are clearly the Ten Commandments, and the statutes and judgments which explain the Ten Commandments more fully. He listed some of the Ten Commandments when speaking to the young ruler (Matthew 19:18-19), and James says that if we break one point of the “royal law”, we are guilty of all, clarifying that he is addressing the Ten Commandments, as he uses the injunctions against murder and adultery as examples (James 2:8-11).
Sin is defined as the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4, Authorized Version). We cannot live in sin by disobeying God and breaking His commandments, and expect at the same time that God would heal us. God had afflicted Abimelech and his household with sickness when he ignorantly took Abraham’s wife Sarah, thinking she was Abraham’s sister. In this case, God prevented Abimelech from sinning, and when he realized what he had done and let Sarah return to her husband, God “healed” him and his wife and his female servants (Genesis 20:17-18).
In Genesis 26:4-5, God pronounces a blessing on Abraham and his descendants because Abraham had obeyed God and had kept His commandments, statutes and laws. God’s blessing because of obedience towards His law would include healing from sickness—as sickness is generally not a blessing, but a curse.
In Exodus 15:26, God says: “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will PUT NONE of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”
So we see that healing also includes the concept of God’s intervention and protection when we keep His commandments, so that we do not even get sick. God promises us that it will be well with us and our children and that He will prolong our days when we obey Him (Deuteronomy 4:40; 5:33; 6:1-2; 12:28).
In addition, God promises us healing from our sickness, if we obey Him.
Deuteronomy 7:11-15 says: “Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them. Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God … will love you and bless you… He will also bless the fruit of your womb… and the LORD will TAKE AWAY from you all sickness, and He will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known…”
However, we read in Leviticus 26:14, 21, 25 that if we do not obey God and do not observe His commandments, then He will bring many plagues upon us, including “pestilence.” He is even more specific in Deuteronomy 28, saying in verses 20-22 that in case of disobedience, God will send “confusion”; that He will “make the plague cling to you”; and that He “will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with scorching, and with mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish.”
He adds in verse 35 that He “will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.”
Again, the warning is clear. God says that if we do not keep His commandments, we cannot expect healing from sickness. Instead, we can expect to get sick. He says in Deuteronomy 28:58-61 that if we are not carefully observing His commandments, He will “bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues –great and prolonged plagues–and serious and prolonged sicknesses. Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in this book of the Law, will the LORD bring upon you until you are destroyed.”
We can see a clear connection in a millennial prophecy of Isaiah 33:24 between keeping God’s commandments and healing: “And the inhabitant will not say, ‘I am sick’; The people who dwell in it will be forgiven their iniquity.”
The New International Version reads: “… the sins of those who dwell there will be forgiven.” The Living Bible states: “The people of Israel will no longer say, ‘We are sick and helpless,’ for the Lord will forgive them their sins and bless them.” God forgives when we repent. The people will repent of their sin; they will cease living in sin. And so, they will be healed from their sickness.
Isaiah 58:8-9 adds that when we obey God’s voice (including the proper way of fasting, leading to a sinless behavior, verses 3-4, 6-7), then “Your healing shall spring forth speedily… then you shall call, and the LORD will answer.”
In Psalm 32:1-5, David contemplated about the fact that he had become sick because he had not acknowledged his sin. When he did, God forgave the iniquity of his sin, and, by implication, He also healed him from his sickness. We also see a connection between healing and forgiveness of sin in Matthew 9:1-7.
As we explain in our free booklet, “Sickness and Healing – What the Bible Tells Us,” this is not to say that if we obey God, we will never get sick (Paul obeyed God and got sick); nor are we saying that every time we get sick, we have sinned against God and that the sickness is always God’s punishment for our sin; nor are we saying that when we repent of our sin and cease living in sin, God will automatically heal us right away from our sickness. We have already discussed the fact that there are additional conditions for healing. But it IS clear that if we refuse to obey God, then we CANNOT expect that He will heal us from our sicknesses.
New people who are being introduced to the truth may not yet know all of God’s commandments, and so God, in His mercy, looks at the heart of a person and might very well heal those who have faith in Him and accept Christ’s Sacrifice, even though they do not fully understand yet what commandments have to be kept. But once the understanding is revealed to them, they are duty-bound to follow through. Some are healed without knowing yet about the requirement of keeping the weekly and annual Sabbaths. But once they learn about them and refuse to keep them, they cannot expect any further healing from God in the future; in fact, the sickness from which they were healed might even return.
The same is true (and even more so) for those who experienced healing, while obeying God’s commandments, including the observation of the weekly and annual Sabbaths, but then decided later that they will not keep them anymore, thereby returning to the world from which they had been freed. Again, these people are living very dangerously — physically and spiritually (compare Jeremiah 8:4-9, 22).
Lead Writer: Norbert Link
