Undoing the Deeds of the Devil

Surely He has borne our sickness

And carried our pain… (Isaiah 53:4a). 

Is there healing in the atonement? Of course there is. Jesus bore our sickness on the Cross and carried away our pain. 

But the healing is not necessarily in the here and now. 

Certainly God heals in the present through medicine and the medical arts, by the healing properties in our own bodies, and by occasional acts of direct healing.

But our ultimate healing will be in Heaven—what ancient spiritual writers called athanasias pharmakon (the medicine of immortality), the final cure for all that ails us. There, God himself will wipe every tear from our eyes; there will be no more sickness or sorrow; there will be no more pain (see Revelation 21:4). 

In the meantime, while we wait for our healing, a bit of sickness and pain can do us some good. John Piper writes, “I dare say the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness… If some men that I know of could only be favored with a month of rheumatism, it would, by God's grace mellow them marvelously.”

David Roper

4.22.20