Matthew 8:13 - And his servant was healed

8:13

The incident ends with Jesus telling the centurion that he can go and he will find that it has been done “just as you believed it would”. We have great difficulty with faith and healing. On the one hand there are parts of the church that really don’t expect Jesus to do anything about healing, apart from helping the medical staff. On the other hand there are some who say every sickness should be healed if only we have enough faith. I guess that many of us fall somewhere in between. To say that miracles and healing never happen is deeply unbiblical. They happen throughout the Bible. Moreover, Jesus is delighted when people come to Him in faith, and frustrated and disappointed when people do not believe. Yet in the New Testament we see that there were times when Paul was ill, and also when some of his co-workers were ill, and there is no criticism of this. So to say that every sickness will should always be healed is not that Biblical either. I don’t have a definitive answer to this, but will say something for us to think about. So often we treat healing as a law. That is, we treat it as if the Bible has added a commandment that says “if you are sick you must believe that I will heal you”. And, as with all laws, we cannot fulfil it, so we either ignore it (God please help the doctors) or pretend we have or can fulfil it when we cannot. Well, let’s stop treating it as a law. Instead take the issue that if we find faith arising in us then we can act upon it in all confidence. And faith is a gift from God, it is not an emotion that we manufacture ourselves. As I say, I don’t have anything like a complete answer.