Perhaps you’ve heard that Jesus will heal all your sickness and disease, if you would only have faith that he will do so. Since Jesus healed every sick person who came to him while he was on earth, surely he will do the same for sick people who come to him while he is in heaven. Jesus still bears the wounds that now heal us.
In this post, I’m not able to tackle the full ideology of faith healing, nor do I intend to discuss whether we ought to expect miraculous healings to continue taking place today. These are complex issues that warrant complex treatment. But in this post I will deal one small part: the common appeal to Isaiah 53:5 to support expectations of physical health and healing.
Context matters. When we learn to read the Bible properly—and not as a collection of unqualified personal promises to which we turn in our moments of need—we’ll find that some of our most famous mantras take us in a different direction.
Isaiah’s Train of Thought
I’d like to address Isaiah 53:5 from three angles. The first is the larger train of thought of Isaiah 40-55.
Isaiah 40 presents such a sharp change of subject matter and implied audience that many scholars believe the second half of the book could not have been written by Isaiah son of Amoz in the 8th century B.C. While condemnation of Judah’s sin is not absent (e.g. chapter 48), the focus lands far more heavily on proclamation of comfort (Is 40:1-2). And the audience appears to be no longer in the land of Judah (Is 7:1), but in captivity in Babylon (Is 48:20-21). The chief enemy is no longer Assyria but Babylon (Is 46:1-47:15). And the chief hero is not Hezekiah (Is 36-39), but Cyrus, King of Persia (Is 44:24-45:7), along with the representative “servant” of Israel.
Isaiah 56-66 presents yet another perspective, that of those who have returned from exile, now rebuilding the nation and city. So let’s limit our attention for now to chapters 40-55.
Isaiah 40:2 sets up two main announcements for the languishing exiles. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her:
- That her warfare is ended
- That her iniquity is pardoned”
These two points are then expanded as: “that she has received from Yahweh’s hand double for all her sins.” The following chapters expand on these two announcements.
First, in chapters 40-44, Isaiah shows that Yahweh, and Yahweh alone, is both willing and able to do these things. No idols can end the warfare with Babylon to return the exiles. And no idol can do a thing to pardon the people’s great iniquity toward God.
Second, Is 44:24-48:22 describes how Yahweh will go about bringing the first announcement to pass. He will anoint Cyrus for the job, he will bring the people home, and he will wipe out Babylon once and for all.
Third, Is 49:1-55:13 describes how Yahweh will go about bringing the second announcement to pass. He will raise up his unnamed servant to bear iniquity, he will put his words into the people’s mouths, and he will reconstitute them to bear his name.
As we follow Isaiah’s train of thought, we see that the suffering servant in chapter 53 is not raised up (or crushed or wounded) for the people’s physical well-being. Cyrus was the appointed savior for that sphere. The suffering servant is dealing instead with the sin problem. Though Isaiah makes use of the terminology of sickness (affliction, grief, affliction, etc.), these terms serve primarily as metaphors for the main issue: “Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Is 53:6).
Matthew’s Summation
There’s no avoiding the fact that Jesus physically heals people during his earthly ministry. And we are right to draw implications for ministry today: that the proclamation of the kingdom ought to be accompanied by improvements to societies and their quality of life.
It’s striking, however, that Jesus didn’t heal everyone who came to him. His message about the kingdom was more important than any physical healing he could offer (Mark 1:36-39).
Perhaps this is why Matthew explicitly states the purpose of Jesus’ healing miracles (Matt 8:16-17):
That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.’
Jesus healed in order to fulfill what Isaiah had spoken about. In other words, Jesus healed people both to illustrate and to authenticate his mission to pardon iniquity (Matt 1:21). It is no accident that Jesus conducts one such healing simply to prove he has the authority to forgive sins (Matt 9:1-8).
Peter’s Assertion
Peter makes the connection even more explicit. He alludes to Isaiah 53:5 (“by his wounds you have been healed”) to support his point that Jesus died so “we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet 2:24-25). In context, this assertion should motivate servants to submit to their masters, even when their masters treat them unjustly (1 Pet 2:18-25).
Conclusion
In context, Isaiah’s poetic statement—”with his wounds we are healed”—is not an absolute promise of physical well-being, if we would only believe. It is a declaration of the forgiveness of Israel’s sin, which had led to her exile in Babylon. The New Testament then uses Isaiah’s shadow to explain the reality of Jesus’ dying for our sin to make us righteous before God, if we would only believe.
Context matters.
For more examples of why context matters, click here.
Thanks to Bob and Daniel for the idea for this post.
