Healing Belongs To You

ISAIAH 53:4-5 NKJ 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 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.

 This passage in Isaiah foretells the great substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, paying the price to redeem all mankind from the curse resulting from Adam’s rebellion. As you can clearly see, it includes healing along with payment for our sins.

 In Matthew 8 we have the inspired commentary of the Holy Spirit Himself, affirming that the passage in Isaiah 53:4-5 includes physical healing. MATTHEW 8:16-17 NKJ 16 When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, 17 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: "He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses."

 Then Peter, writing to believers in New Covenant times, says we were (already) healed. That does not mean we are necessarily possessing healing, but that healing belongs to us. 1 PETER 2:24 NKJ 24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness -- by whose stripes you were healed.

 Just as much as your hands or your feet belong to you, healing belongs to you. You need not ask permission from God to use your hands or feet. They belong to you. They were given to you as a gift. You did not earn them in any way. It is the same with healing. You could not earn it. It was a gift from God. Jesus paid for it with His own suffering. By the wounds He suffered, healing was provided for you.

The normal human response to this great news is usually something like "If healing belongs to me, then why am I sick?" Ownership and possession are not the same thing. You can own something you don't possess. I am not saying you possess healing, but that it belongs to you because Jesus paid for it and gave it to you. So the main reason you may not have received healing is simply because you did not know it belongs to you. If you had money in a bank account in your name, but did not know about it, it would do you no good. If someone bought a house for you and gave you the legal ownership papers, it would belong to you. Even if you had never seen the house and were living in another state, it would still be yours. Even if someone else was living in the house, it would still be yours. But if you wanted to possess that house and enjoy living in it, you would have to decide to move there. If others occupied it when you arrived, you would have to evict them.

 As the owner the law is on your side, but you have to enforce the law. Jesus purchased for you the house called "Healing & Health" and the written Word of God is the legal notice of your ownership. Where you choose to live now is up to you. Just because this belongs to you does not mean the Lord will force you to live in it. Healing is not a promise in the New Covenant. A promise is something that has not yet been done. A promise has to do with the future. But healing is something that has already been bought and paid for and is now yours through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So we should not approach healing in a passive manner, waiting on God to do something. What we must realize is that God has already done something about sickness and disease. Now we are supposed to do something.

We are to resist sickness and actively receive and possess by faith the healing God has already given us in Christ. Provision has been made by God. Now it is our responsibility to possess it. Don't think this is strange. This is exactly the way God worked with the children of Israel in the Old Testament. He told them that the promised land belonged to them, but it was still occupied by giants and they had to fight to possess the land. It will be no different with you. For you to possess all that God says is yours will require you to fight (1 Timothy 6:12). But your fight will not be with other people, but with your own feelings and reasonings. Just as you accept the Bible as sufficient evidence to believe that your sins are forgiven and you have a home in Heaven, regardless of how you may feel, you should do the same with what the Bible says about healing.

 This message is not condemning anyone. We have simply been ignorant of the truth. We have been destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). This is written to help spread the truth so the Body of Christ can start rising up to possess all that belongs to us. It's time we quit approaching healing as beggars asking God to heal us, and accept that the Bible says God has already given us healing. Then we can focus on how to possess what already belongs to us, instead of begging God to give us something He has already given to us.

 What evidence should we demand of God before we will believe that Jesus purchased our healing and it now belongs to us? Should we demand that our bodies exhibit no symptoms of sickness? Should we demand a signed note from our medical doctor? Should we demand that God appear to us and tell us that His written Word is actually true? Are we unwilling to accept the evidence of God's Word, but willing to always believe what the symptoms in our bodies tell us? Are the symptoms in our bodies more reliable than God? Should we ignore what God has said and trust completely in our physical senses, and medical doctors, as our supreme authority? It may be true that sickness is in your physical body, but that is no proof it has a right to stay there.

We can beg God to heal us, and believe He has when we feel no more symptoms of sickness in our body. Or, we can believe what God says in the Bible that healing was obtained for us through the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus, and therefore we should resist the sickness and by faith possess the healing that already belongs to us. God's Word has told us what belongs to us. Now we must act on what we have been told, and resist everything Jesus redeemed us from.

 Can we expect that all Christians will perfectly resist sickness? Not any more than we can expect them to always resist sin. But just because we fail to walk in complete victory is no proof that it is not God's will and available to us. Scripture uses the same words to tell us Jesus bore our sicknesses as it does to tell us Jesus bore our sins. We know we can still sin, but understand that Jesus has set us free from sin's power so we don't have to sin. We must learn to see sickness the same way and resist it as we would resist sin. This article may leave questions in your mind. One article cannot explain everything. But healing does belong to you. So decide to quit letting the devil steal health from you and your loved ones.