Dieper Dinge Deeper Things

Read the full article as published in Verbum et Ecclesia

Andrew Murray repeatedly and emphatically confessed his faith in divine healing and his belief that Christians can and should enjoy perfect health in this life. When he lost his voice for more than two years in 1879 he was forced to cease preaching and working and to seek a cure. He visited prominent doctors in London and, while there, met several faith healers that inspired the development of his own theology on faith healing. He subsequently published a book on the subject with the purpose of illustrating that “according to the Word of God, ‘the prayer of faith’ is the means appointed by God for the cure of the sick, that this truth is in perfect accord with Holy Scripture, and that the study of this truth is essential for everyone who would see the Lord manifest His power and His glory in the midst of His children”.

Andrew Murray’s view of the body

Murray’s view of the human body is discussed in several chapters in his book on divine healing. He believed that the human person has a twofold nature. He or she “is at the same time spirit and matter, heaven and earth, soul and body.” On the one hand, human beings are children of God and on the other they are doomed to destruction as a result of the Fall. Sin in people’s souls and sickness in their bodies testify to the right which death has over them. Christ, who took upon Him the soul and body of human, redeems both in equal measure from the consequences of sin. Some believers seek after holiness, but only for the soul and spirit. They forget that their bodies are the members of Christ.

Murray continued that the physical human body, governed by the spirit, is capable of being transformed by the power of the Spirit of God to manifest therein His power. The body, as God’s temple, can be set free from the domination of sickness, sin, and Satan. What has to happen first, however, is that the person must be fully subject to and crucified with Christ, renounce all self-will and independence and desire nothing other than being the Lord’s temple. It is in anticipation of that day when regenerated humanity, forming the body of Christ, shall be truly and visibly the temple of the living God, that the Lord attaches such a great importance to the indwelling and sanctification of our bodies, down here, by His Spirit. Murray then used the example of the healing of the paralysed man in the Gospels to support his theory:

The Lord Jesus begins by saying to him, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee,’ after which He adds, ‘Arise and walk.’ The pardon of sin and the healing of sickness complete one the other, for in the eyes of God, who sees our entire nature, sin and sickness are as closely united as the body and the soul.

Murray wrote that we tend to think that sin – justly condemned by God – belongs to the spiritual domain, while sickness is only a part of the present condition of our nature and have nothing to do with God’s condemnation. Christ warned the disciples of many sufferings to come and taught that every believer will have to bear his and her cross, but when He spoke of sickness, it was always as of an evil caused by sin and Satan, and from which we should be delivered. Sickness should be healed because it attacks the body, which is become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Christ “healed all that were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying: Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses” and to make known the love of the Father. In His deeds, teaching and in the work of the apostles, pardon and healing were always found together. Either forgiveness or healing was at times more prominent. Sometimes it was healing which prepared the way for forgiveness, at other times forgiveness preceded the healing, which sealed the pardon.

Murray contended that it was more difficult for the Jews at that time of Christ to believe in the pardon of their sins than in divine healing, while now it is the other way around. The Christian Church has heard so much of the preaching of forgiveness that it easily receives this message of, but divine healing is rarely spoken of and not many believers have experienced it. Healing is no longer given today in the way that Christ healed the multitudes without any previous conversion. Now it is necessary to begin by confession of sin and the purpose to live a holy life and that is why people find it difficulty to believe in healing. “Good health is too often for them only a matter of personal comfort and enjoyment which they may dispose of at their will, but God cannot thus minister to their selfishness.” Christ is Saviour both of the soul and of the body granting pardon and healing so that believers may serve Him and be used by Him. We have been made partakers of Christ’s redemption in order to make us holy. Healing accompanies the sanctification by the Spirit to either lead the sick one to be converted and to believe or to constrains believers to renounce sin and to consecrate themselves to God.

Murray states that sickness is a consequence of and a visible sign of God’s judgment. God permits sickness because of sin, to show us our faults, to chasten us, and purify us. In James 5:15, 16, for example, the pardon of sins and the healing of sickness are closely united. Sins that have not been repented from present an obstacle to the prayer of faith and the sickness may soon reappear. The first letter to the Corinthians indicates that their inappropriate behaviour at the Lord’s Supper is a reason why many of them are weak and sick. God has a distinct purpose in permitting the chastisement and “makes use of Satan as a wise government makes use of a jailer” – as soon as they confess and forsake their sins and consecrate themselves to the Lord, the chastisement will no longer be needed and they can share in the redemption of Christ who has conquered Satan and removed us from Satan’s domination by bearing our sins and our sicknesses.

What the Bible teaches

In contrast to the teachings of Murray, Boardman and other Higher Life teachers, it is written in Romans 8:22-25 that, together with the whole of creation, we wait patiently for the redemption of our bodies. Our bodies have not yet been made perfect and will not be made perfect until the return of Christ. Sickness is not inextricably linked to the sin of any individual person or group of people and not every sickness could be prayed or believed away. Paul himself recommended that Timothy should drink wine for his digestive problems, instead of offering or instructing him to pray for healing. The full redemption of our bodies, which would include total health and healing, is part of our eschatological hope. Linking all sickness with personal sin will mean that one would always play the role of Job’s comforters.

Nowhere in the Bible does it teach that it is always the sin of that individual believer that resulted in the illness, nor that God necessarily wants everyone healed. In humility we should resist the temptation to simplify the matter by providing conclusive answers as such answers will be at least partially untrue. Sickness and suffering is a mystery. Reconciling evil in the world with the will of a compassionate God lies beyond human understanding.

The instructions in James 5:14-16 and Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 11:29-30, neither of which aims to provide a complete theology on healing, form the main Scriptural reference for the theology of faith healing. Other passages in the Bible are conveniently ignored. Matthew 14:14, for example, clearly states that Jesus healed the sick in the crowd that followed Him, because he had compassion on them. In Matthew 25:36 those who will inherit the kingdom will be those who visited, not healed, the sick during their life on earth. In Paul’s letters we read about his fellow workers Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:26) and Erastus (2 Timothy 4:20) who were ill while with him.

Faith as a requirement for healing

As a further condition for healing, Murray stated that without faith no one can be healed. He argues that as we increasingly experience personal sanctification by faith, we will also increasingly experience healing by faith as these two doctrines go hand in hand, to testify to the world what it means to be redeemed. The more the Holy Spirit lives and acts in believers, the more miracles will multiply in the body. Although he recognises that medicine also comes from God, Murray asks his readers whether they will “follow the way of natural law” with the unbelievers and those whose faith too weak to abandon themselves to God, or will they choose “the way of faith” and receiving healing from God. He wrote that it is one of the principal laws of the kingdom of heaven that God can only bless us to the extent that we yield to His divine working, in proportion to the faith that we have.

Murray’s statement that God can only bless us to the extent that we yield to His divine working and in proportion to the faith that we have sounds like the familiar teaching of Pelagianism that Christ is dependent in His action on our pleasure and that He works and can work only when we release Him for working. If it is true that if we don’t believe He can do nothing, then it is not Christ who regulates our activities and thereby sanctifies or heals us, but we who regulate His activities and so secure our own sanctification or healing. The initiative and decisive action is therefore in our hands.

Murray also exhorts his readers that they must not only surrender to Christ, they must also abide in Him, because “if you are not willing to sacrifice time to get alone with Him, and give Him time every day to work in you, and to keep up the link of connection between you and Himself, He cannot give you that blessing of His unbroken fellowship” and “close, personal, actual communion with Christ is an absolute necessity for daily life”. In other words, not only is God helpless to work on and in us unless we place ourselves in his hands, He is equally helpless to keep up in His hands when He has undertaken the work.

Conclusion

It seems that some Pentecostal influences with an anti-intellectual bias have tended to preach universal healing without balance, but with great effect, while more established churches, proud of their intellectual tradition, have either neglected to preach on healing or have done so with great caution but little power. We need preachers that are courageous in faith, responsible in their interpretation of Scripture and true to reality to serve the sick in our churches.

It is not difficult to imagine how much guilt, pain, fear and alienation a theology such as Murray’s have caused countless believers. As C.S. Lewis commented in ‘A Grief Observed’, after his wife died of cancer, “we are tempted to see God as a sadist if we think that he is the one willing the sickness.” Such a distorted view of God is on contrast to the image of a loving Father that Jesus presents: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11) What mother or father would choose cancer as a way to discipline their child? Inevitably the sick person would ask: what kind of God, what kind of love is it that would want to see me suffer like this? He or she will experience God as punishing and distant, unable to trust such a relationship.

For many adherents of “Higher Life” ideas, being sick may be merely an interruption of their enjoyment of life, but in large parts of the world disease is due to circumstances beyond their control. Clean water, adequate nutrition, healthy relationships and safe living conditions are usually requirements for people to be healthy. To pray for their healing would often mean praying that unjust economic situations and corrupt political regimes be changed. We should therefore not stop praying for the sick, but should realise that the struggle against sickness will continue as long as we have to pray, “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.”