By Duke Taber
Someone close to me — a woman in our congregation — was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer a few years back. She had walked faithfully with the Lord for decades. She had prayed, fasted, believed, and asked others to believe with her. She died. And in the months that followed, the questions I fielded from her family and friends were the kind that cut to the bone: Did we not have enough faith? Does God still heal today? Did He ever intend to?
Those questions are not academic. They are pastoral emergencies. And they deserve honest, careful, Scriptural answers — not shallow reassurances or cynical dismissals.
The truth is that divine healing sits at the center of some of the most important and most contested terrain in evangelical theology. Whether you come from a Reformed tradition, a Pentecostal background, or somewhere in between, you have likely wrestled with these questions. This article is not written to settle every debate. It is written to give you a clear-eyed view of what the Bible actually says — and to help you stand on solid ground whether you are sick, praying for someone who is, or simply trying to think faithfully about the subject.
Healing in the Ministry of Jesus
Any honest treatment of divine healing has to begin with the Gospels, because that is where healing is most visible. Jesus did not merely teach about the kingdom of God — He demonstrated it. The blind received sight. The lame walked. Lepers were cleansed. The dead were raised. These were not incidental events in His ministry; they were central to it.
“And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.” — Matthew 4:23 (NKJV)
This pattern — preaching and healing together — is not coincidental. Jesus consistently presented healing as a sign of the kingdom breaking into the world. When John the Baptist’s disciples came asking whether He was the Messiah, Jesus answered not with a theological argument but with an appeal to what they had seen: the sick were healed, the lepers were cleansed, the dead were raised (Matthew 11:4–5). Healing was the kingdom’s calling card.
What does this mean for us? At minimum, it establishes that healing is not outside God’s character or will. The God we worship is a healing God. The examples of healing miracles in the Bible stretch from Exodus to the book of Acts, and they reveal a consistent thread: God’s compassion moves toward the broken body, not away from it.
The Atonement Question: Is Healing Provided at the Cross?
Here is where the theological stakes rise. One of the most debated questions in evangelical circles is whether physical healing is included in what Christ accomplished on the cross. The argument that it is rests primarily on two passages.
The first is Isaiah 53:4–5, the great Suffering Servant prophecy:
“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” — Isaiah 53:4–5 (NKJV)
The second is Matthew’s direct quotation of this passage in the context of Jesus’s healing ministry:
“He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.” — Matthew 8:17 (NKJV)
Pentecostal and charismatic traditions — including the World Assemblies of God — have historically read these verses as establishing physical healing within the scope of Christ’s atoning work. The argument is that since Jesus bore both our sins and our sicknesses at Calvary, both forgiveness and healing are available to believers through faith.
However, many evangelical scholars note an important tension here. Matthew applies Isaiah 53:4 not to the cross, but to Christ’s healing ministry before the crucifixion. He writes that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy by healing the sick during His life. Furthermore, the parallel passage in 1 Peter 2:24 — “by whose stripes you were healed” — is written in the context of spiritual restoration and return to the Shepherd, not physical recovery.
The Gospel Coalition article on this passage offers a helpful framing: the question is not whether our bodies receive healing because of Christ’s atonement, but when. Sin entered the world, and with it, sickness and death. Christ’s work has defeated all three — but the full outworking of that defeat awaits the resurrection of the body at His return. Physical healing now is a foretaste, not a guaranteed installment, of what is certainly coming.
This does not mean healing is absent from Christ’s work. It means we need to hold it with eschatological honesty — rooting our hope not in a formula but in a Person, and not demanding of God what He has promised for the age to come as if it were guaranteed for today.
What James 5 Actually Commands
If there is one passage that directly addresses healing prayer in the church, it is James 5:14–15. And it is a passage we should not spiritualize away:
“Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” — James 5:14–15 (NKJV)
This is not a suggestion. It is a direct command addressed to the church — not the apostles, not a special healing class of believers, but ordinary elders praying over sick members. As Crossway notes in their exposition of this passage, the power in James 5 is not in the oil; it is in the prayer offered in faith. The anointing with oil functions as a visible, symbolic act of consecrating the sick person to God’s care — not a ritual with magical efficacy, but a physical expression of the church’s faith and the Lord’s authority invoked over the situation.
This passage is remarkable because it treats healing prayer not as the domain of spiritual superstars but as the ordinary practice of the local church. Elders. Prayer. Faith. Oil. These are accessible, communal, humble. Whatever one believes about miraculous gifts, this text stands as a command for the church in every generation to pray for the sick with genuine expectation.
If your church has stopped doing this — if healing prayer has become merely a formality rather than a living practice — James 5 is a call to return. Not to performance or manipulation, but to honest, faith-filled intercession laid at the feet of a sovereign God.
The Gifts Debate: Cessationism and Continuationism
Here is where many evangelicals find themselves uncertain. The cessationist view — held by many in Reformed and dispensational traditions — argues that certain miraculous gifts, including the gift of healing, functioned primarily to authenticate the apostolic message and establish the early church. Once the canon of Scripture was complete, these sign gifts ceased. God still answers prayer sovereignly, in this view, but the gift of healing as described in 1 Corinthians 12 is no longer operative.
The continuationist view — held by Pentecostals, charismatics, and many evangelical traditions — argues that the gifts of the Spirit described in the New Testament were not temporary scaffolding but permanent endowments to the church until Christ’s return. The gifts edify the church, advance the gospel, and bring glory to God — and there is no clear biblical text that announces their cessation.
I have been in ministry for decades and have spent time in both camps. I have sat with cessationist pastors who were wise, prayerful, and deeply pastoral. I have also prayed with charismatic believers whose faith was genuine and whose healings were difficult to explain apart from divine intervention. What I have come to believe is this: the debate matters less than the practice of bringing the sick before the Lord with humble, expectant faith. You can be uncertain about the precise theology of spiritual gifts while still obeying James 5. You can hold your pneumatology loosely while holding your prayer life tightly.
What neither side should do is use theological uncertainty as an excuse to stop praying for the sick. The gift of healings — whatever its precise scope and operation in this age — reflects the heart of a God who heals.
Why Doesn’t Everyone Get Healed?
This is the question that matters most to the person lying in a hospital bed. It deserves more than a theological footnote.
The New Testament itself does not pretend that everyone who is prayed for will be healed. Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20). He told Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach ailments (1 Timothy 5:23). He prayed three times for his own thorn in the flesh and was told that God’s grace was sufficient — that the power of Christ would rest more fully on him in weakness than it would have in healing (2 Corinthians 12:7–9). This is not a failure of faith. It is a different kind of answer.
“And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NKJV)
God’s sovereignty means He is not obligated to heal on our timeline or in response to our formulas. Healing is His prerogative, not our entitlement. This is not a cold theological statement; it is the source of our deepest peace. If healing were guaranteed upon sufficient faith, then every death would be a verdict against the sufferer. Every unanswered prayer would be a spiritual failure. That is a cruel theology, and it is not the gospel.
At the same time, the fact that healing is not always given is not evidence that it is never given. The examples of emotional healing in the Bible remind us that God’s restorative work is wide and deep — encompassing body, mind, and spirit — even when the physical healing we most desire does not come in this life.
The right posture is neither demanding nor defeatist. It is the posture of a child approaching a good Father: asking with confidence, receiving with gratitude, trusting with peace.
Healing and Medicine: Not an Either/Or
One practical clarification worth making: trusting God for healing does not mean refusing medical care. The Bible has never presented these as opposites. Luke, the author of Acts, was a physician (Colossians 4:14). Paul instructed Timothy to use medicine. Jesus spoke of physicians without condemnation (Luke 4:23). The divine partnership of God and medicine is a theme throughout Scripture — not a contradiction of faith, but an expression of it.
We pray and we seek treatment. We trust God and we use the tools He has placed in the world. These are not competing commitments. A God who created the human body, who wove nerves and tissue and the immune system into existence, is not diminished when His people use the healing knowledge He has given to the medical community.
Holding the Tension Well
Here is what I believe, stated plainly: God heals today. Not always. Not always immediately. Not always in the way we specify. But the God who healed the sick in Galilee, who promised His disciples that healing would follow the preaching of the gospel (Mark 16:18), who commanded His church to pray for the sick — that God has not retired. His character does not change. His compassion does not diminish.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” — Hebrews 13:8 (NKJV)
The healing scriptures of the New Testament invite us to pray with earnest faith while holding outcomes with open hands. They call us to the kind of faith that believes God is able — and trusts Him when His answer is different from our asking.
What we should not do is build our theology of healing on our experience of it, either positive or negative. The person who has seen dramatic healing should not assume everyone will have the same story. The person who has prayed faithfully and received no physical relief should not conclude that God does not heal. Both are reading their theology from the wrong text.
Read it from Scripture. Stand on the God who is revealed there. Then pray — boldly, humbly, persistently — for yourself and for others.
A Call to Action
If you are walking through illness right now — your own or someone you love’s — here are some steps rooted in what Scripture actually commands:
- Call for the elders. James 5 is a serious instruction. If your church practices anointing and healing prayer, request it. If it doesn’t, ask your pastor to pray with you.
- Pray with community. Healing prayer is rarely a solo act in the New Testament. Invite trusted believers into this with you.
- Bring your specific need before God. The five-step prayer model for healing ministry can help give your prayers shape and focus.
- Saturate yourself in God’s Word. The Bible reading plan for healing can ground your faith in Scripture during a difficult season.
- Trust His character. You may not receive the answer you hope for in this life. But you are held by a God whose intentions toward you are good, whose power is infinite, and whose ultimate healing — complete, final, and forever — is not in doubt.
Resources
- Divine Healing — God’s Idea from the Beginning — AnsweredFaith.com
- Healing in the Atonement — Kregel Academic Blog
- Should the Sick Be Anointed with Oil? (James 5) — Crossway
- Is Healing in the Atonement? — The Gospel Coalition
- Are Spiritual Gifts for Today? — AnsweredFaith.com
- 20 Uplifting Bible Verses on Healing (NKJV) — AnsweredFaith.com
By Duke Taber
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