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SICKNESS AND THE GOSPEL
By OTTO STOCKMAYER
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“SURELY HE HATH BORNE OUR SICKNESSES AND CARRIED OUR SORROWS”
(Isaiah 53:4, R.V. MARGIN)
“THE BODY...IS FOR THE LORD; AND THE LORD FOR THE BODY” (1 Cor.
6:13)
“WAITING FOR...THE REDEMPTION OF OUR BODY” (Rom. 8:23)
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SECOND EDITION, THOROUGHLY REVISED
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LONDON:
BEMROSE & SONS, 23, OLD BAILEY; AND DERBY
1887
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PREFACE
THE objection has been made to the first edition of this little
book, that, what was offered on the one hand, has been withdrawn on
the other. How far this reproach has been merited I cannot decide.
The great fact that Jesus Christ has borne our sicknesses and pains*
on the Cross needed to be brought out in its full meaning, as being
in itself applicable to every body and every age; while, at the same
time, the necessity of being led, step by step, by the Spirit of God
in the experience and appropriation of this truth needed to be
recognized.
Indeed the reason should have been stated why we cannot lay hold of
Isaiah 53:4, and realize it by the Spirit as simply as any other
Scripture truth; why the Lord must here give special instruction,
and inward preparation, and open the way. For the solution of this
difficulty it should have been put in the foreground that the
redemption accomplished on the cross, as regards its physical side,
will not be fully manifested in us till the coming of Christ; that,
till then, it can only be experienced in part, and step by step.
This truth was stated in the earlier edition, but without occupying
the place which it should have had.
The first edition had also some sharp points which needed rounding
off, in the question of appropriating the truth to which it
witnessed.
For the present I offer to my brethren—for this is intended for
children of God—what I am able to give under a deep sense of its
imperfection, but at the same time with the full conviction that I
ought to give it.
This second edition forms two parts, each with its own heading. The
first part reproduces much of the earlier edition; the second
contains a good deal of new matter.
May the grace of God be with these pages,
OTTO STOCKMAYER
Hauptweil, Dec., 1886
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* Rather than “sorrows,” according to German and French
translations.
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CONTENTS
PART I
JESUS CHRIST IN HIS HUMILIATION BORE OUR SICKNESSES AND OUR PAINS
1. HEALING AND
SACTIFICATION. SANCTIFICATION AN ATTITUDE OF DISPOSABILITY OF OUR
MEMBERS FOR THE SERVICE OF THE LORD
2. TESTIMONY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
3. CONDITION BY WHICH TO EXPERIENCE THAT TO WHICH SCRIPTURE
TESTIFIES: TO TAKE OUR STAND AS REDEEMED, AS CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST
4. FURTHER CONDITIONS: TO HEARKEN. SICKNESS A JUDGMENT, A MEANS OF
DISCIPLINE AND EDUCATION
5. FAITHFULNESS AND PERSEVERANCE; SURRENDER AND TRUST
PART II
JESUS CHRIST AT HIS COMING WILL BRING US THE COMPLETE REDEMPTION OF
OUR BODY; THEREFORE UNTIL THEN THE APPLICATION OF ISAIAH 53:4 MUST
BE VERY SPECIALLY UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
6. “AGAIN IT
IS WRITTEN”
7. JAMES 5:14-16—THE QUESTION OF HEALING, IN ITS RELATION TO THE
STATE OF THE CHURCH. THE SERVICE OF THE ELDERS IN CASES OF SICKNESS
8. JAMES 5:16—THE SERVICE OF GOD'S CHILDREN AMONG THEMSELVES, APART
FROM THE ELDERS
9. JAMES 5: 17-I8—UNCONDITIONAL SUBJECTION TO THE DIVINE WILL AND
IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE ARE THE SCHOOL IN WHICH WE ARE FORMED TO BECOME
FELLOW WORKERS WITH GOD (CHAP. 4 OF THE FIRST EDITION), SO THAT WE
MAY AT THE PROPER TIME GO FORWARD IN ACTIVE FAITH, SAVING AND
HEALING, AND HOLD GOD TO HIS PROMISES UNTIL HE HAS FULFILLED THEM
10. FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
11. HEALING AND THE ANOINTING OF THE SPIRIT.
12. CLOSING REMARKS
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PART I
JESUS CHRIST, IN HIS HUMILIATION,
BORE OUR SICKNESSES, AND
CARRIED OUR PAINS
~1~
HEALING AND SANCTIFICATION
We are created for the glory of God. Our
vocation is to manifest His name and His perfections, to give form
and expression to the thoughts of His heart, and to carry out His
purposes. Our body, as well as our soul and spirit, with all its
powers, is required for the accomplishment of this object, and must
be set free and placed at the sole and absolute disposal of God;
hence the close connection which exists between healing and
sanctification, taking this last word in its primitive meaning.
A sanctified man is a man of whose members God can have free
disposal, having redeemed them by the blood of Christ, and brought
them back into His possession by wresting them from alien influence.
See John 10:36; 17:17-19; Heb. 10:5-10. “Say ye of Him, whom the
Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest ;
because I said I am the Son of God?” Since God sanctified His Son,
and sent Him into the world—not, sent Him and sanctified
Him—“sanctified” can have no other meaning than: chosen out and set
apart for the carrying out of a commission or a work. In this sense
we find this word “sanctified” in Isaiah 13:3; Jer. 12:7; 51: 27-28
(literally translated “sanctify”).
Applied to a sinner, sanctification includes cleansing, since God
takes no unclean vessels in hand, and uses no unc1eansed
instruments. Applied to the Son of God, this negative meaning of the
word of course falls to the ground. He did not need first to be
cleansed or to be withdrawn from ungodly service, in order to be a
perfectly adapted instrument for God’s thoughts of love and
salvation.
As the Father sanctified the Son (John 10:36), we see also that the
Son, on His part, sanctified Himself (John 17:19); that is to say,
He yielded Himself, that He might fulfill the will of God on earth.
“For their sakes I sanctify Myself,” said the Lord to His Father,
referring to His disciples.1 In Heb. 10:5-9, we read
how Jesus sanctified Himself; we see Him presenting Himself
before His Father with these words, “Lo, I come,” and receiving from
His Father the body which He had prepared for Him, that He might
present that body a living sacrifice, in contrast to the sacrifices
of verses 4-6. In the offering of this His body, He carried out
God's purpose of love concerning our redemption.
By the very fact of His thus sanctifying Himself to God, the
Lord Jesus redeemed us, body and soul, from every other yoke
and dominion: He sanctified us to God. “By the which will we
are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all” (Heb. 10:10). “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they
also may be sanctified through the truth” (John 17:19).
St. Paul brings out the same truth in Romans 6. Through the death of
Jesus Christ, even our mortal body is redeemed from the
dominion of sin, verse 12. Our members, which before served
unrighteousness, which we had made use of for unrighteous purposes
and unhallowed works, for our self-life, and to carry out our own
will, are now become free, according to verses 13, 19. We can put
them anew at God’s disposal, that He may use them as instruments for
His righteous and holy purposes, to manifest His mind, and the
thoughts of His heart. We are able now to yield our bodies as living
sacrifices well pleasing unto God.
The essence of Christian holiness is, that we should be at the free
and absolute disposal of God. This attitude cannot be won by
self-effort. It is not the natural fruit of sickness or any other
suffering; but it is entered upon by faith. We simply receive what
the Scripture declares, namely, that we are a blood bought people,
redeemed from the vain conversation of our fathers, severed from
ourselves and estranged from our self-life, dead and buried with
Christ in His death. It is not by the suffering of our
members that we become sanctified; but by the death pangs of
Christ’s members that we are sanctified (Heb. 10:10).
That which He suffered is for us; what we suffer is for Him.
This implies that we can sanctify ourselves to Him, can serve
Him,—not only when our members are active for Him in word and
deed, but equally so, when we submit the members of our body, as
well as the powers of our soul, to the suffering, which the
service of God brings upon us, in a world estranged from God and
opposed to His gospel. Viewed in this light, the words with which
the Lord closes His beatitudes are significant—“Blessed are they
which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and
persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely,
for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your
reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were
before you” (Matt. 5:10-12). See also what the Apostle Paul writes,
“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is
behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body’s
sake, which is the Church” (Col. 1:24).· The Apostle’s whole life
forms a commentary on these words, especially the epitome which he
himself gives us of it in 2 Cor. 11:23-28.
In order to pursue the service of God, whether in suffering or in
active work, the members of our body, as well as the powers of our
soul, must be free and disposable. Our members ought not to be held
bound by sickness. Our spirit ought not to be exposed to the
oppression which sickness in its various forms brings with it; our
movements must be free.
In most cases, sickness by no means renders every service
impossible. Far from it. The general state of Christian life being
such as it is, God may sometimes even be obliged to use sickness, in
order to prepare His children for the highest and most important
service.
Nor can it be denied that sickness itself, by the manner in which it
is accepted and borne, may be a means of glorifying God, and thus of
serving Him. The history of Job affords us here a striking
illustration. By bowing at least in the beginning of his sickness
unreservedly to the will of God (Job 2:10; James 5:11), he rendered
Him that service which God had from the first expected of man. He
bore himself in such a manner that God was justified, and Satan made
a liar. And even today there are hundreds of God’s children, who,
through their patience and resignation, on beds of sickness and
pain, glorify their God and show forth His praises. May they remain
faithful so long as God gives them no further leading, nor allow
themselves to be troubled by anybody!
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that where God, as in the
case of Job, wills to give Satan the lie, the life and service of
His redeemed ones afford Him sufficient scope, independently of
sickness. Moreover, before we draw any conclusion from the example
of Job, we must first take into account his exceptional position.
Job is a character standing between the Old and New Covenant, on a
level of spiritual life which does not fully belong either to the
one or the other. If the Lord had only measured this His chosen
servant by the standard of the Old Testament, the blows mentioned in
the first and second chapters of the book of Job would not have
fallen upon him, for Job was perfect and upright, one that feared
God and eschewed evil (ch. 1:1); and, as such, he had a right to be
spared, according to the declarations of Scripture, which will be
given in another chapter. But when it pleased God to accept, and
even call forth Satan’s challenge, was it not that He might raise
Job above the standing of the Old Covenant, and bring him to a
consciousness how impossible it is for man to carry out the
obligations of that dispensation, and to establish any right or
claim of his own on the ground of the words “This do, and thou shalt
live” (Luke 10:28). On account of the utter corruption of our human
nature, our own piety will never be absolutely irreproachable. We
are not able to fulfill the commands of God, or respond to the
demands of His holiness in such a way that we may lay claim to
happiness’ health, and life, as our right. The “Accuser” is only
silenced by the work and perfect righteousness of Christ. Thus Job
could prevail neither against God nor against Satan, as long as he
pleaded his rights, according to his own notions of righteousness.
But as soon as God interposed, presenting Himself to Job in His
greatness, majesty, and holiness, he laid his hand upon his mouth,
threw himself into the dust, and owned himself guilty. Thus Satan is
conquered and God’s honor vindicated. God has attained His end with
regard to Job, and the light of His grace can again shine upon His
servant, bringing him pardon and deliverance.
Our position, as children of the New Covenant, is essentially
different from that of Job. For us the Accuser is conquered by the
blood of the Lamb (Rev. 12:11), by the blood which “cleanseth from
all sin” (1 John 1:7). We bring forward neither rights nor
righteousness of our own against his attacks; we know that we have
none. Not even when, according to Rev. 12:11, we are unconscious of
any unfaithfulness in the word of our testimony, or of loving our
own lives. “I know nothing by myself,” says St. Paul (1 Cor. 4:4),
“yet am I not hereby justified.” We plead the rights of Christ.
These we may, however, plead only in agreement with Him. He alone
knows how far His right to the bodies of His redeemed can be
realized before His coming, without harm or danger to their souls.
We do not for an instant deny that even those who, washed by the
blood of Christ, and sanctified to God through His offering of
Himself, are become disposable for the service of the Lord, still
need cleansing (1 John 3:3), and to follow after holiness (Rev,
12:11, R. V. margin). Whether, however, sickness affords a
good means to this end is another question. Sickness in general, and
considered in itself, is not a favorable condition for spiritual
growth, for the building up of a healthy spiritual life. It
withdraws us from the external activities of life, from the business
or work for which we are intended, and thus induces the temptation
to be occupied either with our bodily condition or our spiritual
experience. Each is unhealthy.
It is a different thing altogether when sickness is limited to a
time of humbling and breaking down, to a time during which we have
to discern and judge ourselves. We need to repent every time that we
have in any way been unfaithful to our position in Christ, in the
activities of either our outward or our inward life. Otherwise,
anything which leads us to look at ourselves, which draws our eye
off God, away from the pursuit of His glory and the
accomplishment of His will, is opposed to holiness. The
furtherance of our spiritual life is a matter which belongs
exclusively to God. If we seek to achieve somewhat of inward
growth and strive after a result which shall gratify ourselves, we
take a course directly opposed to true holiness. Our attention must
be directed to the service of God and to His claims, and we must
surrender the care of our spiritual interests entirely into God’s
hands. Our true interest is to live for God’s interests.
The service of God is the normal, God-intended, and God-appointed
ground, upon which sanctification, in the sense of gradual
cleansing, is most surely accomplished. The Lord refines and
purifies in the fire the Levites, the people who serve Him (Mal.
3:3). The Father purges every branch which bears fruit, that it may
bring forth more fruit (John 15:2). The experiences we gain in our
work in the Lord’s vineyard, especially that of our utter
helplessness and dependence on God, are the stones with which God
builds up our inner life. Thus we are constrained by the
necessities of the service, to remain unmoved under the discipline
of grace, and so the Spirit of God gains ground in us, the life of
Christ expands, and a steady growth goes on. Especially do the
frictions and humiliations, which are inseparable from joint work
with others, afford us opportunity of carrying out practically and
in detail our position as sanctified ones, of showing that we really
no longer care for our own life nor our own interests. Thus all that
unconsciously remained of self is judged and eliminated. By means of
the trials which God’s children endure for Christ’s sake, and as
Christians, in the service of their Lord, is accomplished the
judgment of the house of God, mentioned in 1 Peter 4:14-17. This is
the true and divine way for our purification.
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1 Compare also verses 17 and 18: “Sanctify them through Thy
truth: Thy Word is truth. As, Thou hast sent Me into the world, even
so have I also sent them into the world.” We must be sanctified,
that we may be sent into the world.
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~2~
TESTIMONY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
It is the definite teaching of Holy Scripture,
that by the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, we have been
redeemed from sickness, as well as from sin. In Isaiah 53, that
chapter of the Old Testament which gives us the kernel of the New,
in the picture of the dying Redeemer, we see that the Lamb of God
bore our sicknesses, as well as our sins. Verse 4 literally
translated runs thus: “Surely He hath borne our sicknesses and
carried our pains” (R. V. margin). No one thinks of limiting
this passage to a particular period of time, as for instance to the
time of Jesus and His apostles. Moreover, Matt. 8:16-17, shows
clearly, that real bodily sickness and pain are meant, and not only2
spiritual evils and diseases, “When the even was, come, they brought
unto Him many that were possessed with devils, and He cast out the
spirits with His word, and healed all that were sick, that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying, ‘Himself
took our infirmities3 and bare our sicknesses.’” From
this passage in Matthew, it appears equally clear and
unquestionable, that the promise in Isaiah 53:4 includes the taking
away and healing of sickness and pain. It cannot, therefore, be
God’s chosen and final will, that we should continue to bear what
the Lord bore for us. The Lord has a right to see in our body as
well as in our soul, the full fruit of His sufferings: “He shall see
of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11).
James 5:14-16, is equally definite: “Is any sick among you? 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 shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if
he has committed sins they shall be forgiven him. Confess your
faults one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be
healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails
much.” The express mention which James makes of the special case
where sickness is linked with particular sins, requiring in such a
case confession, as a condition of healing4 (verses 15,
16), is an additional reason for attributing a universal application
to the promises made to the sick generally.
We are usually in the habit of putting sickness on a par with other
sufferings; but this is not in accordance with Holy Scripture.
It is God’s expressly declared will that His children shall suffer.
Tribulation is the way by which we enter into the kingdom of heaven
(Acts 14:22), and the apostles gloried in the afflictions which they
suffered for the name of Jesus, In the very opening of his epistle,
James exhorts his brethren to count it all joy when they fall into
divers temptations (chapters 1 and 2) and in chapter 5:10, he seeks
to encourage them, by pointing out the example of the prophets. In
verse 11, he reminds them of the patience of Job. This servant of
God, as we have seen above, not only bowed unconditionally beneath
the blows mentioned in the first chapter, but he also manifested
complete submission under sickness, at least in the beginning
(2:10). It might thus be inferred from this reference to Job, that
James puts sickness on the same plane as other afflictions. But
immediately afterwards (13-15), we find in this respect an express
and definite distinction. “Is any among you afflicted?” says the
apostle, “let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any
sick among you? 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 shall save the sick,” etc. The direction
which is given in the case of sickness, is the very opposite to that
given for those otherwise afflicted. While with regard to other
trials we are exhorted to bear them patiently, or, according to the
sense of the Greek word, to “remain under” them, to wait under them
to the end,—we see here that God’s final word and final will with
regard to sickness, is not that we should abide under it; but that
we should be set free from it.
We find the same distinction between sickness and other afflictions
in the case of the Lord Jesus.
As far as His person is concerned,—“He suffered being
tempted” (Heb. 2:18); was “in all points tempted like as we are”
(4:15). “In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His
brothers" (2:17). Sin is expressly excepted (4:15); sickness is
nowhere mentioned. He who suffered for us and left us an example
that we should follow His steps (1 Peter 2:21-23), left us no
similar example for sickness in its ordinary meaning.5
The teaching and work of our Redeemer manifest
the same distinction. The time of His sojourn upon earth was by no
means an exceptional one in this respect. The Lord had already
acquainted His disciples with that same call to suffering, of which
the apostles afterward remind us in their epistles. Whosoever would
follow Him, must deny himself, take up his cross, and hate his own
life. But the same Redeemer who gave to each one a cross to bear,
healed all the sick who were brought unto Him (Matt. 4:23; 8:16),
and bade the disciples whom He sent forth, do the same (Luke 10:9).
Never did He require a sick person to look upon his sickness as
being the will of God, and, as such, to bear it patiently. He
imposed suffering, but delivered from sickness.
In the same way we find that, in the time of the primitive Christian
church, all the sick were healed.
The 11th chapter of Hebrews is noteworthy in this
respect. We find there, especially in the resume given at the end of
the chapter (32-40), a complete list of lives consecrated to God,
either in active service or in suffering. Among the godly witnesses
there named, whom we should take for our example (12:1), not one
sick person do we find, but on the contrary (34) those who, “out of
weakness were made strong.”
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2 We say, “not only.” The healing of the spiritual disease of
sin remains, of course, the principal and most important part of our
Savior’s redemption work. See 1 Peter 2:24 and 25.
3 The word may with equal right be translated weakness (2 Cor.
12:10; 13:4); infirmity (Gal. 4:13); or sickness (John 11:3-4).
4 “If he have committed sins” . . . . Sickness is the
consequence of the fall and is closely connected with our sin. But
to look upon it in every case, as the punishment and fruit of
particular sins is an error, which the Lord frequently combated
(John 9:2-3, Luke 13:1-5), and of which the friends of Job were
guilty. Equally wrong is it to pre-suppose the existence of some
bondage, conscious sin, or personal unfaithfulness in every case,
where a child of God is not at once released from his sickness. See
further on.
5 Yet the Lord has left us the example for a life of hardship
and self-denial (fatigue, hunger, and thirst), for martyr
sufferings and a martyr death. In its largest acceptation this last
was also sickness. The Lord was a Man of pains and acquainted with
sickness (Isaiah 53:3, literal translation). Yea, in a special
manner, in these very pains, in this sickness of His death pangs, He
bore our sicknesses and carried our pains.
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~3~
CONDITION BY WHICH TO EXPERIENCE THAT TO WHICH SCRIPTURE TESTIFIES:
TO TAKE OUR STAND AS REDEEMED, AS CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST
If we desire that Jesus Christ should reveal Himself to us as our
Redeemer from sickness as well as from sin, we must remember that
there is no redemption without sanctification;—in other words (vida
chap. 1.), that Jesus Christ has redeemed us unto God for His
service, God said unto Pharaoh, “Let My people go that they may
serve Me,” not, that they may go their own way. Deliverance from
sickness cannot be separated from the whole work of redemption. God
can heal us, according to His free grace and to His hidden purposes
of love, independently of the question how far We have entered into
redemption from sin; but we can claim deliverance from sickness by
faith, only if, at the same time, we accept by faith our deliverance
from sin.
Sin has displaced our life’s center, and given a wrong direction to
our whole being. Instead of God, our own self has become the center
around which everything within us revolves. The work of redemption
restores things again to order, and brings back the original
relations. To be redeemed, therefore, means nothing less than to
take again our right and true place with regard to God; to deny
ourselves, as Holy Scripture expresses it.
Christ has redeemed us by His sufferings and death, and he who owns
to being His, declares that he is dead and buried with Him. “Know
you not,” writes the apostle, “that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death? Therefore we are
buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was
raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also
should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4). “For the love of
Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that one died for all,
therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should
no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes
died and rose again (2 Cor. 5:14-15, R. V.) “For I through the law
am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with
Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and
the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the
Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20).
We must know that by the blood of Jesus Christ we have been
redeemed; that is, bought off from our vain conversation, received
by tradition from our fathers (1 Pet. 1:18-19), so that no power of
hell or of the flesh can retain us one moment longer in the bonds of
vanity or of preoccupation with ourselves. We must know this,
and then thankfully step out into the proffered liberty, breaking
for ever with our own ways, and resolved not to seek ourselves or
our own satisfaction in anything, but in everything to seek the
Lord’s interests only. Heart and head, eyes, ears and mouth, hands
and feet, all the members of our body, all our powers of love and
thought, must be yielded to the Lord for His use. He must take the
reins of our life into His hand.
As long as we are undecided upon this point, as long as we still
love and spare our own life, we must take it as a gracious leading
of God, if He sets bounds to our self-life through sickness or other
trials. It is better for us that the Lord should hold the members of
our body fast bound or paralyzed for a while, than that we should
pervert our members and our powers to serve our self-life, and live
as we think best. It is true, we may seek our own life even in
sickness. It may happen that sickness is used as a pretext for
yielding to ill-humor and caprice, for nursing selfishness and
willfulness, for absorbing the time and attention of others in being
waited upon. How much wrong is being done in this respect;
especially with children. How many Christian parents have allowed
sin to develop in a naturally nervous child, because they dared not
oppose the self-will and selfishness of the child, for fear of a
nervous attack, or other accident, and thus the body has been cared
for at the expense of the soul. The Scripture says, “Seek you first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall
be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). “It is better for you to enter into
life halt or maimed, than, having two hands or two feet, to be cast
into everlasting fire” (Matt. 18:8). None need, however, fear. He
who in childlike faith commits himself and his children to the
direct care of the Lord, shall know by experience that He takes upon
Himself all the responsibility, and averts all evil consequences,
even those distinctly predicted by medical science. He who, like
Abraham, considers not the body, but looks to the Lord and His word,
shall receive strength and courage to exercise, even, over a sick or
delicate child, such discipline as is necessary for his spiritual
welfare.
To die in our own person and in the person of our children—to die,
and thenceforth to reckon ourselves as dead—is the way by which we
become partakers in body and soul, for ourselves and ours, of the,
salvation which Christ’s death and resurrection has obtained for us.6
It is well to notice that Scripture does not demand of us that we
should die to ourselves and to sin, but that we should reckon
ourselves dead (Rom. 6:11). Of course this is only possible to
children of God; these in their conversion have crucified the flesh.
“They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections
and lusts” (Gal. 6:24). They have been buried in the death of
Christ, have taken in Him the position as crucified with Him.
Whereinsoever they have been unfaithful to this position, they have
again to mortify, that is, put to death their members which are upon
the earth (Col. 3:5). But in order to remain faithful to this
position, they have nothing further to do but by faith to reckon
themselves dead to sin by their union with Christ.
6 The following paragraph, in
small type, has been found useful, and has therefore been retained
in this place, although it interrupts the connection.
Why then are you afraid of dying? Why will you not enter by
faith into the position of one who is redeemed and sanctified, and
thus be planted together in the likeness of His death (Rom. 6:5)?
Has He not, through his death, destroyed him that had the power of
death, that is the devil? and thereby delivered them who through
fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage (Heb.
2:14-15)? And when the fear of death is spoken of, is not every kind
of dying implied, the offering up of our self-life and the
renunciation of our own will, as well as the bodily death? Did not
He become “obedient unto death” (Phil.2:8), in order that He might
enable us to follow in the same path of obedience? “Wherefore, my
beloved,” says the apostle in the tenth verse of the same chapter,
“as ye have always obeyed...work out your own salvation,” that is,
continue to obey, be obedient unto death, even as He was (compare
Rev. 12:11). Never ask, How can I do this? Know that it is the Holy
Ghost, God Himself, who works in you “both to will and to do.” He
makes us willing to die, and leads us into death. He carries us
through death into the grave, into “fullness of fellowship” with our
crucified and, buried, Savior. All that we have to do is to follow
the Holy Ghost step by step with self-surrendered confidence. Christ
“through the eternal Spirit offered Himself...to God” (Heb. 9:14).
Through the same Spirit we also receive power to tread the same
path. We can now say with the Psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Being free
from the fear of death, of whatever nature the dying and the shadow
of death we pass through may be, we are now enabled to follow our
faithful and compassionate Shepherd, even into the valley of
suffering and humiliation, yea, and to praise Him there. He is with
us, “His rod and His staff comfort us” (Psalm 23:4). Was it not in a
certain sense, this very joy in dying which John the Baptist
experienced when he heard the Bridegroom’s voice? He rejoiced to see
his own person and ministry cast into the shade by the coming of the
Master; he rejoiced that the Lord must increase and he decrease
(John 3:29-30). Such joy is pure and godlike. It is joy in the Holy
Ghost.
_______________
~4~
FURTHER CONDITIONS: TO HEARKEN. SICKNESS A JUDGMENT, A
MEANS OF DISCIPLINE AND OF EDUCATION
The reality of our being dead with Christ, and having broken with
our own will and our selflife, will be made manifest by our
listening in everything to what God has to say to us. To place our
members at God’s disposal and to listen to Him are one and the same
thing. While it is written in the epistle to the Hebrews (10:5), “A
body have you prepared Me,” the Psalmist says, “My ears have you
opened”7 (Psalm 40:6).
The Old Testament expressly teaches that our bodily health depends
upon our readiness to attend to God’s voice and to follow it. We
have to listen to God, first of all, in order to know what we have
to do, and then, if we have been disobedient, that we may let Him
judge and reprove us.
We read in Exodus 15:26, “If you will diligently listen to the voice
of the Lord your God, and will do that which is right in His sight,
and will give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I
will put none of these diseases upon you, which I have brought upon
the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that heals you [or, the Lord your
Physician]” And also in Exodus 23:22-25, “If you shall indeed obey
His voice (that of My messenger) and do all that I speak, then I
will...take sickness away from the midst of you.” Compare Deut,
7:12-15. On the other hand we have in Leviticus 26:14-16, “But if ye
will not listen unto Me, and will not do all these commandments, and
if you shall despise My statutes, or if your soul abhor My
judgments, so that you will not do all My commandments, but that you
break My covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint
over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall
consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart...” Compare also the more
detailed passage in Deuteronomy 28: 15, 21-22, 27-28 ,35, 58, 61.
We often hear it said that these promises no longer hold good under
the New Covenant; but the Lord said, “Think not that I am come to
destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to
fulfill (Matt. 5:17). Only, under the New Covenant, God’s claims
upon us, and with them the conditions upon which we obtain the
promises, are higher. Six times the Lord reiterates, “You have
heard, that it was said by them of old time...but I say unto you...”
Having been purchased by Christ, we are bound to give ourselves up
to Him, with all that we are and have, and if we would be made and
remain whole, we must submit ourselves unreservedly to the
discipline of His Spirit, that we may hear and obey God’s voice. The
distinctive character, then, of the New Covenant, is that now all is
summed up in the person of Christ; He is the end of the promises, as
well as of the law. To him who seeks first the kingdom of God, and
His righteousness, all other things shall be added (Matt. 6:33); the
present things, or the things to come—the world, life, death—all
belong unto those who are Christ’s (1 Cor. 3:22-23). Belonging to
Christ, we no longer seek our own. While, for example, an
Israelitish woman considered sterility as a loss to herself, and a
reproach under which she suffered personally, a Christian woman, who
in faith expects children from the Lord, desires above all things,
to bring forth fruit unto the Lord (1 Tim. 2:15; Rom. 7:4). Yet
while we thus no longer seek our own, but remain in the attitude of
unconditional surrender to God, we are nevertheless certain that
what we have offered up on Mount Moriah (Gen. 22), what we have
forsaken for Christ’s sake, shall be made good to us a hundredfold,
even here below (Mark 10:29-30). Now all that was promised to the
faithful and obedient Israelite, besides health and fertility, may
be summed up in the words, “daily bread.” Do we not still ask God
every day for our daily bread, and has not that been secured to us
by the Lord Himself (Mark 8:14-21); not only for the body, but also
for the soul (James 1:5; 1 Cor. 10:13; compare Heb. 13:6). The
promise of long life is also expressly renewed under the New
Covenant (Eph. 6:3).
However, even in the New Testament, there is a passage in which the
preservation in health of God’s children is made to depend upon
their attention to their Father’s voice, and the discipline of His
Spirit. “For this cause,” writes Paul to the Corinthians, “many are
weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge
ourselves (discern, thoroughly judge), we should not be judged. But
when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not
be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:30- 32). The numerous cases
of sickness and early death in the Corinthian church were judgments
which they had drawn upon themselves by no longer having an open ear
for the discipline of the Holy Ghost. As long as we give ear to God,
He speaks to us, chastens us, and sets us right, whether it be
immediately through His Word and His Spirit, or by a messenger, (Job
33:23), and He can use everything as His messengers (Heb. 1:7). Then
He will not need to use those outward judgments in order to take us
out of a false position, and guard us against condemnation (1 Cor.
11:32).
We see from this passage in the Epistle to the Corinthians, that
wherever the New Testament, in accordance with the Old, lays stress
upon the necessity of listening, it is always with reference to the
person and work of our Redeemer. The Corinthian Christians were
judged because they failed to discern “the Lord’s body” offered for
them (verse 29). It is inadmissible, according to the context, to
interpret verse 30 as referring to spiritual sickness and spiritual
sleep. Spiritual sleep is not a means by which we can be aroused,
set right, and kept from condemnation. Much rather are those
external judgments, which are accomplished in the flesh, especially
sickness, the means by which those of God’s children who had given
Him only partial attention are aroused and saved. Many must be
brought to a death-bed in order that they may be snatched from
condemnation. Saved, yet so as by fire (1 Cor. 3:15), they can now
fall asleep in Christ.
We see that if sickness is a judgment on those who do not hear, it
is a judgment in grace—a gracious visitation, by which the
loving God seeks to open our ear, so that He may bring us into, or
restore us to, the position of being crucified with Christ. (See
also Lev. 26:14-16, compared with verse 18, “If you will not yet for
all this listen unto me..."). It is universally admitted how
blessedly sickness can work, either with the converted or the un
converted, in order to make them listen to God’s voice. How many a
prodigal son who, in fleeing from the Father’s house, has never
stopped to answer the questions, Where are you? From where are you
coming? Where are you going? is brought to a standstill by sickness,
and so comes to himself, and turns back. And of how many children of
God can we not say as much? How many a worker for God becomes
estranged from his Father’s house and his Father’s heart in the
middle of work for his lord? Many a one, for example, while he
devoted himself and spent his strength away from home in the service
of others, had become guilty of selfishness in the home circle, in
the privacy of family life, and it needed sickness, often long and
painful sickness, to make him aware of it. He had been regarding
himself as a much-to-be-pitied victim, little thinking how much his
wife, children, and household had to suffer from him.
If a child of God has once come completely to himself through
sickness, and his heart and life are again illuminated by God’s
light, sickness can be made to him a blessed school, and above all a
school of self-denial. Taught by the Word and Spirit of God; he
begins to see where God desires to lead him: that is, to renounce
all earthly hopes and prospects, and to commit to God, in perfect
confidence, the question of his maintenance, and many other things,
which up to now he had, himself the care of, but which he is now
obliged to leave in other hands. He sees it, and learns it by the
power of grace. He learns to practice patience and forgiving love
when he fails to find in others that tender consideration and
unwearying sympathy to which his sufferings seem to entitle him, and
much besides which he had neglected to learn in the time of health.
When the sick one has learned self-denial and submission, and to
commit himself, with unreserved confidence, to the love of his God,
then God can use him to exercise on his part the blessed vocation of
love in the middle of sickness. He has found in Christ a
High-priest, who has taken away his burden, and at the feet of
Christ he now learns to bear the burdens of others; he follows with
his intercession all work for the Kingdom of God with which he is
acquainted, whether at home or abroad; he learns to exercise a
priestly ministry (Rev. 1:6).
God the Father does not rest till all things are put under the feet
of His Son. Although at the present time, and till Christ come, many
enemies remain unconquered; although the world at large does not bow
beneath His scepter, yet at least the first fruits of the redeemed
ought to be even now completely subjected to Him; they at least
ought to honor Him as their Lord and King in all their desires,
thoughts, and affections. Now sickness is one of the modes of
discipline which the Father employs to make us captives to His Son,
His conquered and willing subjects. The nearer a child of God is to
his Father, the more jealous is the Father for His Son, that He may
see in this child the full fruit of His death, and so gain a full
victory over him. If therefore Satan8 attacks by
preference the most useful and fruitful of God’s servants, and seeks
through sickness to rob the Lord of at least a portion of their
members, it is not simply that God permits it, it is God Himself who
sometimes gives over these, His most blessed children, to sickness
for a while, until their self-life is thoroughly judged. They must
learn to hold by faith that they are dead and buried with Christ,
and to be thankful for it; they must learn to regard themselves as
holy to the Lord, in order to serve Him as such, through His
strength.
_______________
7Or, digged, bored
through, that is for permanent service (Ex. 21:5-6). The body with
which we fulfill the will of God, either in active service or by
suffering, answers to the ear which listens to His directions.
8 There are a number of
passages in which sickness and disease are treated as being the work
of Satan. See especially Job 1 and 2; the woman with a spirit of
infirmity bound eighteen years by Satan, Luke 8:16; Paul buffeted by
a messenger of Satan, 2 Cor. 7:7; also 1 Cor. 5:5, and 1 Tim. 1:20.
Acts 10:38 sums up the whole earthly ministry of the Lord in these
words, “Who went about doing good, and healing all that were
oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him.” According to this
passage we see Christ’s victory over the devil, not only in the
healing of the possessed, but in every healing He accomplished. In
other passages of the New Testament also, the healing of the sick is
connected with the coming of the kingdom of Christ, Matt. 4:23;
9:35. Wherever God’s kingdom advances there sickness loses ground
(Luke 10:9).
The question has a practical bearing, in so far as the sick man
learns to impute it no longer to God, when he is, as it were, racked
on a bed of torture; and he will bring his need to the Lord in quite
another way when he has recognized that the power of the enemy has
been at play. Truly it is always God who directly or indirectly,
sends, permits, or takes away sickness; but though all things work
together for good to them that love God (Rom. 8:28), yet our
deliverance from an oppression in which Satan has a hand, will
mainly depend upon our appealing to the victory of the Lord Jesus
Christ over the devil and all his power (Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14-15).
Practically, the devil is powerless against God’s children just as
far as they rest upon the Lord, upon His Word and His work; but this
requires light and knowledge.
_______________
~5~
FAITHFULNESS AND PERSEVERANCE; SURRENDER AND TRUST
If we
wish to have confirmed in our experience the teaching of Holy
Scripture, according to which healing and health form part of our
redemption, we must remember that all realization of Christ’s
salvation, as it is accomplished by the Holy Ghost in our hearts and
lives, requires on our part faithfulness in the smallest things,
obedience and self-surrendered trust. Christ’s work of salvation
exerts its redeeming power upon our hearts and lives only in
proportion as the Holy Ghost illuminates it to us. What, then,
determines the character and the development of our inner life, is
the unreserved willingness, with which we yield to every ray of God
given light, and the tender, conscientious fidelity, with which we
follow it. All that we have apprehended of the Word of God, and the
work of Christ, must, at once, find expression and application in
our lives. Knowledge of divine things, which does not transform the
character and life, and which bears no fruit of self-denial, only
harms and corrupts our inner man. The best way of receiving more is
to apply in the home life, in the office and the daily calling, what
we have seen and received, until all clouds of unbelief are
dispersed, and the truth shines into the heart and life with
purifying and liberating power.
But we have gone about so long with blinded eyes, and deceived our
souls by accumulating knowledge, without bringing forth fruit, and
thereby blunted our perception of the truth, that we must not be
discouraged if, at first, it is difficult for us to realize even in
our inner man, the fullness of Christ’s redemption—if we do not
succeed all at once in finding rest from sin and the flesh—if we
should again in word or deed fall into the old ways.
Still less need we be surprised if, in our bodies, the fruits of
Christ’s redemption work are not manifested at once, or at first
only partially so, if sickness does not disappear, although the
dominion of sin has been already broken. “Das Ende der Wege
Gottes ist Leiblichkeit,” says the late Oetinger, a servant of God
well known in Germany. The sense of which is: to take a bodily form,
or, to be manifested in the body, is the end of God’s thoughts and
dealings. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, therefore
it may already be well with the soul, while the body is not yet in
perfect health (3 John 2). Hebrews 10:36, applies here, “You have
need of patience, that after you have done the will of God, you
might receive the promise.”
The first step out of unbelief and distrust is to be thoroughly
willing to be healed. Do you want to be made whole? was the
question to the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda. Many are
afraid of being healed. They dread the duties and claims which
returning health would bring with it; they cannot understand how
they should preserve intact, amid the frictions of daily life, the
varied occurrences and unexpected interruptions of an active
calling, that inward silence, that calm peace and communion with
God, which they found in the retirement of the sick room. That this
certainly requires a greater display of God’s grace appears from the
fact, that we find a deep and undisturbed rest of soul, an
atmosphere of eternity, more frequently about the couch of one who
has been long tried with sickness, than amongst the healthy who are
amidst the noise and bustle of life. This fear, however, springs
from an inconceivable and culpable suspicion towards our heavenly
Father, and the Shepherd and Guide whom He has given us. Forget not,
dear brother, that when God gives new duties, He also gives new
power in a corresponding measure. Think not that the Lord will heal
your body, without pouring into your soul new powers of life and
health, without endowing you for the days of health. Bid farewell to
your fears, let go your unbelief, and trust your heavenly Physician.
And if He asks you, do you want to be made whole? Answer Him
boldly and firmly, trusting His grace and faithfulness, “Yes Lord,
for Your sake and to the glory of Your name.”
It will be understood from what has been said, that we are
responsible or guilty of unbelief only so far as the Holy Ghost has
given us light on some truth of Scripture. If Isaiah 53:4-5 has not
yet taken for you the meaning, that you have a shelter from pain and
sickness in Christ’s wounds and death, then hold to the word
“Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses” all the more
firmly, in that sense that you can cast all the burden of your
sickness upon the Lord. Be sure that you will find in Him at all
times an open heart and a helping hand. Hanging between heaven and
earth, He experienced in His own body the bitterness and pain of
suffering. Therefore now “let us come boldly unto the throne of
grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of
need.”
If a child of God has not arrived yet at the point where the Father
can remove the sickness from him, He does not on that account leave
him at the mercy of sickness ; on the contrary, He surrounds him
with the most tender care. “The Lord will strengthen him upon the
bed of languishing, You will make all his bed in his sickness"
(Psalm 41:3). “A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking
flax shall He not quench” (Isaiah 42:3). “He knows our frame, He
remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 106:14). Whether it be a question
of bodily pain or of inner griefs and conflicts, which sickness so
often brings with it, the sick one may at all times, and under all
circumstances, comfort himself with the assurance that God will not
suffer him to be tempted above that he is able; that He will, with
the temptation, make such a way of escape, that His child shall be
able to bear it (1 Cor. 10:13).9
9 If the Father’s attention be
specially turned to His sick children, it evidently becomes the
healthy members of Christ’s body, to enter into their Father’s mind,
and to treat their sick brothers with warm sympathy and considerate
reverence (Matt. 25:36, 43-45). Sufferers need to be touched with a
delicate hand. We should put off the shoes from our feet in
approaching a sick-bed.
_______________
PART II
JESUS CHRIST AT HIS COMING WILL
BRING US THE COMPLETE REDEMPTION
OF OUR BODY; THEREFORE UNTIL
THEN, THE APPLICATION OF
ISAIAH 53:4, MUST BE VERY
SPECIALLY UNDER THE
GUIDANCE OF THE
HOLY SPIRIT.
____________________
~6~
"AGAIN IT IS WRITTEN"
The first ,thing to bear in mind, in seeking to
grasp and realize any scriptural truth is, that as God’s Word can
only be understood through the Holy Spirit, so it can only be
applied by the Holy Spirit. It would be folly to take into our own
hands, and out of the hand of the Holy Ghost, what He Himself has
unfolded to us, in order to dispose of it according to our needs and
our own judgment. But we can count on the discipline and guidance of
the Holy Ghost only so long as our union with the person of Jesus is
unbroken.
Furthermore, we must remember that, until the Lord’s coming, our
knowledge and understanding of the Bible, whether as individuals or
as a church, will be imperfect. In this condition we shall be led
astray, if we take any isolated text, and carry it out to its
extreme. If the Word of God is to remain the sword of the Spirit in
our hands, we must practice the Master’s “Again it is written.”
Otherwise it will become a carnal weapon, yes, even a weapon which
the wicked One can use to lead us captive.
“Again it is written,” becomes doubly important, when dealing with a
question of such deep importance as redemption from sickness. Let
us look into it carefully.
We read in Romans 8:23, 25, that the redemption of the body remains
an object of hope, even to those who have the firstfruits of the
Spirit. Granted that the primary meaning of this redemption of our
body be exemption from physical death, still we cannot claim at all
times, and unconditionally to be exempt from all pain and disease,
so long as we have to wait with patience for the redemption of our
body.
Paul had to leave Trophimus sick at Miletus. Epaphroditus fell ill
in the service of Christ, and owed it to the compassion of God
alone, that he was brought back from the border of the grave into
the land of the living. And what of Paul himself? Whatever that
thorn may have been which he bore in his flesh, this much is
certain, that Paul was buffeted by a messenger of Satan (2 Cor.
12:7). If an apostle had to submit to this, how can you refuse
unconditionally, and in all circumstances to bear sickness and
pain, relying on the fact that Christ has borne them for us? It is
true, the extraordinary revelations given to Paul furnished a
special ground, and perhaps the altogether singular position which
he occupied, may have furnished an additional reason why this thorn
should have been necessary. But what assurance have you, that your
circumstances, though they may be very different, do not render a
similar discipline necessary? In the hour of trial, about fourteen
years before he referred to this subject (2 Cor. 12:2), the apostle
himself did not know why it was necessary for God to send him this
affliction, else he certainly would not have prayed three times for
its removal. It was only subsequently that the Lord showed him that
it had been needed to guard him from the danger of self exultation.
At the time, he had simply to bow to the word, “My grace is
sufficient for thee.”
We have repeatedly mentioned Job, and have seen by comparing Job
1:1, and Exodus 15:26, that he had reason to expect exemption from
sickness. God neither excuses nor justifies Himself. He only asks
him if we may be permitted to use a synopsis, “Who are you,
impotent, short sighted child of man, that you should take God to
account?”
Moreover, if a redeemed child of God would attempt to carry out the
application and realization of Isaiah 53:4, fully and
unconditionally at all times and in all circumstances, must he not
first ask himself, “What about death?”
Our Lord not only bore on the cross our infirmities and diseases,
His death has also redeemed us from physical death. If through death
He destroyed him that hath the power of death, that is the devil,
and delivered them, who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. 2: 14-15), this victory over death
is indeed realized, wherever the fear of death has given place for
ever to the Spirit of adoption; but that is not its full
realization, its last triumph. When Jesus planted His banner of life
and victory over the grave of Lazarus, with the words, “I am the
resurrection and the life”, He had previously said, “He that
believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,” and then,
“Whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.” We cannot,
therefore, take the second statement for a mere repetition of the
first; no, it goes further. In the sixth chapter of John’s gospel,
that chapter so full of deep significance, the Lord twice repeats in
verses 50-51, and 58, “This is the bread which comes down from
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.” “I am the living
bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he
shall live for ever.” Since the Lord both times uses the expression,
“this bread” in express contrast to the bread from heaven, which the
fathers did eat in the wilderness, “and are dead,” he shows plainly
that the bread which He broke on the cross “for the life of the
world” (verse 51), works deliverance also from physical death. Paul
says that Jesus Christ abolished death and has brought life and
immortality to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1:10).
Scripture goes yet further. In the eleventh of Hebrews, Enoch is
cited among the cloud of witnesses whose faith is held up to us for
our encouragement and example; and it is said of him, “By faith
Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not
found, because God had translated him.” By this very fact the
experience of Enoch is held up to our faith as a goal.
And yet the Apostles died; and yet Paul declares, in the Epistle to
the Philippians, his joyous confidence that God will not let him in
anything be put to shame, but that at al times Christ shall be
magnified in his body, whether by life or by death (Phil. 1:20). How
is this seeming contradiction to be harmonized, and how should we
stand in regard to sickness and death?
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26). In
the same way as for the world the victory of the Lord Jesus over
death will be partially manifested during the millennium, but
realized in its fullness, that is, in the abolition of death, only
at the end (1 Cor. 15:24); so the doing away of death will be for
the believer the closing act of the present dispensation. The Lord
alone knows how near we are to this moment, the moment in which the
Lord will take home His bride. All the real members of Christ’s body
are pressing forward to this, but Christ alone can decide whether we
are of them that “remain unto the coming of the Lord.” It depends
on Him whether, and for how long, He will grant us free access to
His fullness of life, that we may draw from Him, the Prince of Life,
new supplies of life and resurrection power to withstand those
powers of death and dissolution, under which we suffer, and whose
seeds we bear within us.
Now, as even in the Church, Christ’s victory over death has not yet
reached its climax in the abolition of death, but has been
manifested only in so far as this enemy is made to serve the
purposes of God, Who is glorified in the death of His saints so it
is with Christ’s victory over Satan and his kingdom. Through His
death on the Cross the Lord has delivered us from the power of
darkness (Col. 1:15), and triumphed over all the powers of hell
(Col. 2:15), and yet they can trouble us mightily, and we need the
whole armor of God in order to be able to withstand them. The Lord
has conquered Satan, and yet Paul writes to the Romans 16:20, “The
God of peace shall bruise (margin, tread) Satan under your feet
shortly.” Twice was the Apostle himself hindered by Satan from going
to Thessalonica (1 Thes. 2:18). Satan, indeed, can no longer touch
the souls of those who are begotten of God, so long as they keep
themselves (1 John 5:18), but he can touch their bodies. Yet even in
this Satan is now become a conquered enemy, whose working serves
God’s purposes. Even when he touches our body he is compelled to
minister to us. As the good angels are sent forth, even so are the
evil angels made use of to minister to them who shall be heirs of
salvation. God overrules Satan’s torture of His children’s bodies,
to guard them inwardly (2 Cor. 12:7), just as the hindrances which
the devil opposes to every fruitful work in the Lord’s vineyard, by
endeavoring to paralyze or trouble the Lord’s workers, is used by
Him for the purifying of His servants, and for keeping alive in them
a sense of their dependence upon Him, their Shepherd and Master. We
are constrained by the straits into which Satan brings us to cling
more closely to Jesus, and to press on to such a nearness to Him,
that at last Satan shall no longer be able to reach our souls.
It will only be in her rapture that the Church will be for ever
delivered from all contact with Satan, and at the same time from all
contact with sickness. Till then the Lord, to Whom is given all
power in heaven and on earth, over nature and hell, will show to
each one individually, by His Spirit—as with regard to sickness so
also with regard to death—whether, and to what extent, He can call,
and, in vital union with Himself, enable us to remain free from
them.
We shall arrive at the same conclusion from another side when we
come to consider the passage in the Epistle of James, which treats
of healing.
_______________
~7~
“Is any sick among you? 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 shall save the sick, and the Lord
shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be
forgiven him” (James
5:14-15)
The sick child of God (“any...among you”) is
here invited to send for the elders of the Church. What does the
Word of God mean by “the Church?” If the existing churches are
essentially different from that which the writer of this Epistle
(St. James) had in his mind, then the invitation and promise
contained in these verses cannot be applied directly and
unconditionally to our circumstances.
According to the Scriptures, the Church of Jesus Christ, as a whole
and in its entirety, consists of the united company of His
redeemed, those whom He has washed and whom He is perfecting (Eph.
5:23-32), The Church in a
place, or, as it is in large cities, the Church of a certain
district, consists of the children of God living in that place (Rom.
1:7; 1 Cor.
1: 2; etc.). The Scriptures everywhere presuppose that the children
of God, who are members together of one body, most closely knit
together for weal or woe, for honor or shame, and continually
needing one another (1 Cor. 12:21-27), should, as far as time and
circumstances permit, gather together in the same place. In Corinth
some sided with Paul, some with Apollos, some with Cephas; others
again claimed to be Christ’s in a special manner. Paul grieves for
these divisions, and calls the Corinthians “carnal” (1 Cor. 1:10-12;
3:3-7). But bad and deplorable as was the condition of this church
(1 Cor. 11:17-20), yet the Epistle to the Corinthians bears no trace
of these Christians having thought of separating themselves,
according to their several sympathies, into special circles, which
would then have been called religious bodies, or congregations.
Divisions in the Church cannot be justified by Holy Scripture,
whatever the questions may be about which Christians differ, whether
of Church government, or of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Wherever
there exists a difference of views or convictions, there Phil. 3:15
applies, “If in anything you are otherwise minded (have another view
or conviction), God shall reveal even this unto you.”
In our day we are accustomed to see Christ divided (1 Cor. 1:13),
and how many children of God in the National Church, in the Free
Churches, in Baptist, Methodist, and other communities, pride
themselves on the truth or the views they represent, instead of
being ashamed of participating in the guilt of dividing Christ’s
body, instead of bewailing the reproach and weakness which are thus
brought upon the Gospel. Christians meet with satisfaction on the
ground taken by the Evangelical Alliance, and congratulate
themselves on the respect paid to man-made barriers, and the
consideration shown to the creeds for whose sake they separated,
instead of rather availing themselves of such precious
opportunities: of meeting with each other, in order to bow in
repentance and humiliation on account of a state of things which the
Lord alone can alter and heal; human attempts to put them right
would only aggravate the evil.
The immediate deeply important bearing of such a state of things on
the subject of the healing of the sick members of the Church is
obvious. Indeed just in the Corinthian Church there were many sick,
and many were prematurely carried off by death, because, in the
Lord’s Supper, they failed to discern the Lord’s body (1 Cor.
11:29-30); because they did not discern their own condition in
connection with it, and did not “judge” themselves (verse 31). But
in the Lord’s Supper the body of Christ is to be viewed, not only as
broken for us on the Cross, but also as His mystical body, which is
the unity of all the redeemed in Christ—they are indissolubly bound
together in Him. “We who are many are one loaf (margin, one body)”
(1 Cor. 10:17 R.V.). The Lord’s table is the place where this unity
of God’s children finds its perfect expression. Wherever the Church
is divided, wherever the believers of a place have separated
themselves into divers communities, founded by man, according to
human ideas, and have their Lord’s table closed to each other, there
they no longer “discern the Lord’s body,” in a sense different
indeed from the Corinthians, but in a manner equally culpable. If
the Corinthians were sick because of their sin, we in these days
have no right to expect that our sick shall be healed at once so
long as we are guilty of the same sin. It is also hardly possible to
call the elders of the Church as long as we have only elders of
communities.
It is certainly significant that the sick member of the Church is
not directed to the gifts of healing or of working of miracles
deposited with the Church (1 Cor. 12:9-10). From the beginning, the
Lord gave the power to heal the sick in connection with the work of
evangelizing, the work of extending the kingdom of God. It was so
when He sent out the twelve (Luke 9:2, 6), when He sent out the
seventy (Luke 10:9), and in His last will and charge to His
disciples (Mark 16:18). The instances of healing recorded in the
Acts of the Apostles also are generally not those of members of the
Church.10 The divine rule for the members of the Church
is in 1 Cor. 11:31: “If we would judge ourselves, we should not be
judged.” Those “without” were healed by gifts and miracles; those
“within” must judge themselves, or let their brothers judge them (1
Cor. 5:12) if they are to escape judgment on God’s part; and
therefore sick members of the Church are directed to the elders, who
are the shepherds and teachers of the flock, and, as their
ministers, have amongst other offices that of prophet. They must be
able to say to the sick member of the flock who has not “thoroughly
judged” himself, not discerned his own condition (such is the
meaning of the Greek word diacrinein in 1 Cor. 11:31), as
Nathan said to David: “You are the man” (2 Sam. 12:7). It should be
said of them what the woman of Samaria testified of Jesus: “He told
me all things that ever I did” (St. John 4:29). Compare here the
other saying of the woman in verse 19, “Sir, I perceive that You
are a Prophet.” But if the whole condition of the Church is no
longer according to God’s mind, if the Church has split into
parties, into religious bodies,11 and the elders are not
even alive to the culpability of such a state of things, how shall
they see clearly enough to judge the condition of the individual
member of the Church?
If there exist an intimate connection between the discerning the
Lord’s body and the healing of the sick, it will be easily
understood that the Lord specially owns the anointing with oil,
according to James 5, where the sick person and the elders have
their minds open to this discernment of the body of Christ, where
the separate interests of party or community have given place to the
common interests of the Kingdom, where the scriptural truth of the
unity of Christ’s body is recognized and respected.
Also as concerning the healing, in the name of Jesus, of those that
are without, there may be a connection between healing and the
condition of the Church; and the servants of the Lord cannot expect
any manifestation of the power and compassion of God towards the
bodies of men, so long as they do not seek the common interests of
the kingdom of God and His glory, without after thoughts for the
interest of a particular party.
10 The question seems to
be different with regard to raising the dead (Acts 9:36-42;
20:7-12).
11 Or if even a larger body lays claim to be the
Church.
_______________
~8~
“Confess your faults one to another, and
pray one for another, that you may be healed. The effectual fervent
prayer of a righteous man avails much.”
(James 5:16)
Though the Lord Jesus called apostles, and the apostles
appointed elders, yet the promise was not withdrawn, whereby the
Lord gave to His disciples in general authority to bind and loose
(Matthew 18:18), and therefore we see, in the next verse of the
passage of James, as cited above, that it is not necessary to be an
elder in order to be used of God in the healing of our sick
brethren. The circle widens here, and all children of God are
exhorted to pray one for another in case of sickness. It is no
longer the prayer of the elders, but the prayer of the righteous
man, that is spoken of here as availing much when it is effectual
and fervent, that is to say, when it is energized by power from on
high. Though we have no longer a scriptural church, or elders
furnished with the needful spiritual powers, still the Lord can
raise up, here and there, His disciples to bear faithful witness to
His name also in this matter of healing the sick. He has done this
at various and most divers times, and does it yet more at the
present time. So if a Christian is perplexed by the passage in James
5:13-15, because he knows no elders who will act accordingly, let
him lift up his eyes to God. The Almighty and all-loving One, who
showed the wise men from the East the way to Bethlehem, who brought
Naaman out of Syria to the prophet Elisha, and to the waters of
Jordan,—who made Ananias willing to go to the praying Saul, and the
unwilling Peter willing to go to the group of Gentiles who were
waiting upon God in Cesarea, —who led His own Son once to Jacob’s
well, another time into the far North, that He might bring help to a
Samaritan woman here and a Gentile mother there, —that same God
knows how to find for every upright heart, near by or far off, a
righteous man who shall, as a brother and a priest, intercede for
the sick one, and meet him according to his inmost condition and
need with the prophet’s word of judgment (Hebrews 4:12-13), or with
the glad tidings of comfort (Isaiah 1:4).
Together with bodily sickness, there is often an inward oppression,
a weakening or over clouding of the life of faith, and this explains
to us why God’s children, when sick, should be directed to the
elders of their church or to the “righteous” in general. Brotherly
help is here especially in place. But certainly, this does not mean
that the Lord is limited to human instruments in the healing of His
children. Jesus Christ remains the one Mediator between God and man,
for the body as well as the soul, and if the Holy Ghost has given us
light on Isaiah 53:4-5, in regard to its import for the diseased
body, then it will only enhance the glory and the joy of the Lord,
if we go straight to Him, that He, in a direct manner, may take us
in hand as the Lord our Physician.
In the present divided state of church relations, and the confusion
of ideas concerning it, each one must see clearly for himself,
before God, what position he is to take with regard to questions
about the Church, or about healing. He must be mindful of the way by
which the Lord has led him up to this point. The more definitely and
rapidly the Lord opens up new paths, the more will systems and
theories prove inadequate, their only use indeed in all questions
has ever been to sum up the knowledge and experience which had been
previously gained. In such times as these of revolution and
transition, it is doubly necessary that each one individually should
live in unbroken communion with his heavenly Guide, and keep such an
attitude towards Him, that at all times, and in all questions, he
may receive the watchword, signal, and guidance, direct from Him.
The Lord can only use those stones in the temple He is building,
which He Himself has hewn. He Himself forms the members of His body.
Even as they were not born of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, so neither can they be educated by the life and
knowledge of other members, they must be anointed with other than
human oil. He has begotten them, He nourishes them with His life,
and teaches and guides them by His Spirit. All ministrations of the
members one to another, which are not communicated and controlled by
the Head, will only hinder, weaken, and mislead.
_______________
~9~
“Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed
earnestly that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by
the space of three years and six months; and he prayed again, and
the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.”
(James 5:17-18)
A steady and victorious walk in grace,
fruitfulness in service, and calmness in the midst of labor, are
essentially dependent on childlike prayer on the one hand, and
trustful activity on the other, having each their proper place in
our daily life. It is of the utmost importance that we should know
the right moment when we are to bring our petitions to the Lord in
prayer, and when to go forward in confidence, not seeing the way,
and ready to put down our foot on a seeming void, like Peter on the
water. If Joshua, instead of following the command given to him
(Josh. 3:7-8), had divided Israel into groups along the banks of the
Jordan, and commenced prayer meetings for the passage across, they
might have prayed day and night, but the waters would not have been
divided. Here it was a case of believing, not of asking. In faith
the people had to move onward, in faith the priests had to set down
the soles of their feet in the swollen river, or they would never
have entered into the promised land.
It is equally important to discern when we are to pray
unconditionally, and wait upon God till we have our petition, and
again, when we should say, “Lord, not my will, but Yours be done.”
In that hour when it was with the Lord Jesus a personal question of
life or death, and when He could not know whether it was in
accordance with His Father’s will to spare Him a step, from which
His whole nature shrank—then it was that He prayed, “Not My will but
Yours be done.” At the grave of Lazarus, when it was no longer a
question about Himself, but about glorifying His Father, and He was
certain of His Father’s will, then He did not wait to see what the
Father would do; but, confident that His prayer was heard, and
thanking the Father for it, He spoke with authority to the dead man
before all the people.
It is the object of the present dispensation to prepare for the
Lord Jesus a bride, who is able to understand Him, and who
will reign with Him. As the realization and manifestation of the
full redemption, accomplished on the cross, is the work appointed to
the Church, and committed to her trust, so the accomplishment of
this task is the very way by which the Church is formed for her
calling to occupy her position as Christ’s bride. The Lord desires a
people for His own possession, not a people to cringe as slaves, but
a people who will boldly enter with full purpose of heart, mind, and
will, into the lines of God’s purposes and ways, whenever the Holy
Ghost opens before them new vistas and possibilities.
The late Pastor Blumhardt knew this. In his biography, for which we
have to thank Pastor Zundel, of Winterthur, we read page 284, second
edition, “The promises of God are not self-fulfilling, their
realization depends upon man. The fulfillment of what God has
promised, is always more or less dependent upon man’s free will,
whether he really desires that which has been promised to him or
not.” Yes, the Lord seeks a people who understand Him, who will
enter into His thoughts with their hearts and souls.
God had said to Elijah, “Go show yourself unto Ahab, and I will send
rain upon the earth.” Fearlessly and without hesitation Elijah did
as God commanded him, but yet the rain did not come, the divine
promise remained unfulfilled. From the time that the judgment of
drought was pronounced against Israel, the Lord had made the removal
of the judgment dependent on Elijah’s intervention (1 Kings 17:1),
and now that the hour of visitation is come, He places the carrying
out of His gracious will into the hand of His servant. Elijah had
been prepared by the many schools of faith, through which he had
passed to present himself before his people as a prophet, judging
and through judgment preparing the way for deliverance. But the
effectual accomplishment of this deliverance and the visiting of the
land with rain, depended on Elijah’s waiting on his God in the
prayer of faith.
Elijah was a man of like passions with us (R. V.). Whatever he did
God may expect of us, the children of the New Covenant. If we have
surrendered ourselves unconditionally to the Lord, and if the Holy
Spirit has full possession of us, He will awaken and use all the
gifts and powers committed to us. He will teach us to take the same
position which Elijah took with respect to the Word and the promises
of God. We then no longer wait passively until these are fulfilled
in us, but we appropriate them by active and definite faith.
This must not, however, be applied to sickness without limitation.
Assured as we are that the Lord bore our sicknesses as well as our
sins on the Cross, we yet cannot place both on a level. In the
domain of our physical life we still groan with the groaning
creation; we wait for the redemption of the body, and hasten it by
every groan, which the Spirit puts within us (Rom. 8:22-27; 2 Peter
3:12, “Looking for and hasting the coming”...[margin]; Rev. 22:17,
“The Spirit and the Bride say, Come”). After His resurrection the
Lord commanded that forgiveness of sins should be preached to all
people, not as something future and conditional, but as something
that He had purchased, into which everyone might enter at once.
“Repent,” said Peter, “and be baptized, everyone in the name of
Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins.” In the same chapter in
which Paul speaks of the redemption from physical death as something
to be looked forward to in the future, he clearly states that he is
already made free from the law of sin and spiritual death (Rom.
8:1,2,6,10). Not to accept this great salvation at once were
unbelief and disobedience. Here it behooves us, in the fullest
sense, to place our heads between our knees as Elijah did. As he
shut himself in to all that passed around him, so must we shut
ourselves out from all that passes within us. Indifferent to our
state or condition, our feelings, experiences, or frames of mind, we
must, by naked faith, hold on to what is written that the Lord has
done for us. Here it behooves us to pray unconditionally. He who
asks for forgiveness of sins and then waits till the load and sense
of condemnation leave him does not understand his God, he does not
understand what faith is. In any case doubtless you must first
recognize yourself as a lost sinner, condemned on the Cross of
Christ and must suffer yourself to be thoroughly searched and judged
by the Spirit of God, just as Elijah, after he had received the
promise of rain, had first to show the people their sin and then to
execute judgment. But if you will honor your God you must also know
how to plead with Him on the ground of that judgment which was
passed on that same Cross of Christ on all the sins of the world;
you must plead this before God, and you must lay hold of it without
waiting for any inward experience.
With regard to sickness, our position is more difficult. Yet even
there the example of Elijah shall serve us. Let us begin with
rooting out of our hearts and homes all Baal-worship; let us put to
death our own will and our own notions; let us no longer ask whether
it suits us or not to be ill, but simply, “What does God expect of
us? What position are we to take in this present case of sickness in
order that God may be glorified?” and then, if God does not
interpose His “My grace is sufficient for thee,” we take God at His
word, and remember that sickness is not His chosen and final will
for His children. As long as the Holy Ghost gives us liberty, we ask
for, and expect., our healing with unmoved assurance, however long
and severe may be the trial to which it may please God to subject
our faith, whatever be the outward or inward hindrances which oppose
themselves to the instant and complete realization of God’s will in
us.
All obedience to the truth through the Spirit, all holding fast in
faith of any revealed truth, cleanses and purifies the heart (1
Peter 1:22; Acts 15:9), and so prepares the way for the fulfillment
of the promise.
The same holds good with regard to death. Those of His servants and
handmaids, whom the Lord has called and prepared to advance against
the bulwarks of darkness, have to experience also the opposition of
the enemy. Not only against the world inimical to the gospel and
resisting all invasion of its territory has the Christian to fight
even unto blood (Rev. 12:4), but also from believers, in so far as
they have allowed themselves to be held captive by Satan in sloth
and thoughtlessness, we have to experience painfully the counter
pressure of sin. There are times when the Master lifts His servants
above this opposition by the power of His Spirit, but there may also
be other seasons when Satan is permitted to sift us, times when our
mind and body will experience the pressure of opposition to the
truth in its whole weight. The devil will then appear as an angel of
light, perhaps telling the weary servant that he has served long
enough, and may make room for another, so that it will appear to him
to be humility if he retires. If the soldier of Christ, in such a
case, is not to be overcome by an irresistible longing for his
eternal rest; if he is to escape the snares and sophistries of the
Prince of Darkness, who still retains some of the power of death,
and unfolds his wings as the angel of death, this soldier must be
thoroughly true; he must be able to say to his Lord, “Lord, You know
how gladly I will go home when You call me, and that nothing in this
world is holding me back; You know that I can give back into Your
hands with perfect calm and in fullest confidence the work with
which You have entrusted me; You know that, in spite of my earnest
expectation of remaining till You come, I am ready to go through
death, as my forefathers and brothers have done, as soon as You
shall beckon me, but I must know that it is You that call me. As
long as You can use me, as long as my remaining here may in any way
serve You and Your people, so long will I not suffer my heart to wax
faint, not even through the yearning after home, fully willing to
remain at my post. I know You are with me even unto the end.”
In bringing before us, however, the example of Elijah, St. James
does not primarily intend thereby to encourage us to withstand
sickness and death for ourselves, but that we should intervene for
others. As God called Elijah to stand up for His people, so He can
call us and fit us to stand in the breach for others, that they may
not fall a prey to sickness, but remain at their post or be won back
to it. Yet let us be careful. If entire simplicity and much sobriety
is needed even where it is ourselves who are in question, and if it
is indispensable that we should be to a certain degree accustomed to
discern God’s guidance, in order that we may resist sickness really
through the Spirit, it is doubly necessary that we should
keep ourselves from our own ideas and our own impulses when it is a
question of taking part in the guidance of others, whether it be
that of individuals, or of whole families, or congregations.
Elijah was a man of like passions with us, but it was his habit of
life to “stand before God.” When he lay before the Lord on Carmel he
was certain that he was acting in accordance with God’s will in not
letting Him go until He had removed the judgment from His people.
The scriptural, and therefore the surest way to be able to intercede
unconditionally, and in persevering confidence for others, is to
follow the example of Elijah. Not until he had swept away the idol
worship on Mount Carmel, and brought back the misguided people to
their God, did he ascend the mountain top and enter into that
wrestling in prayer and fight of faith, of which our text speaks. If
our God, in the greatness of His love and mercy, has even once
permitted us by a simple word of truth to shed light on someone’s
heart and life,—if we, like Nathan, have had been allowed to say to
anyone, “You are the man,”—if a sick person has gone away from us,
as I once did from a brother who had become a prophet,12
to me, with the experience of the Samaritan woman, “He told me all
things that ever I did,” —why should we not then with Elijah ascend
even to the top of the mountain? When God Himself has committed to
us for one of His children a mission of prophet, and when He has
acknowledged and sealed it by laying our brother in the dust, why
should we not step forward to the ministry of priest, and make
intercession for such a brother, waiting upon God until He seal
outwardly the deliverance, which He had already accomplished
inwardly.
The victory to which all judgment should lead is that heaven may
again open with visitations of grace and salvation, and therefore
with the manifestation of all the gifts which God has given to His
Son for the prisoners and captives.
Perhaps, we might even go further, and it would be according to
God’s own mind, if in the power of the Spirit of our Lord, we were
to say to a captive, “Your sins are forgiven you" (John 20:23), and
then to add in the same Spirit, “Arise, take up your bed and walk”
(Acts 3:6).
Let us suffer ourselves to be led by the Spirit in the footsteps of
Elijah; let us follow all light, given unto us, honestly,
faithfully, and boldly, and certainly the Lord will not rest until
He have gathered, even in our lives, the full fruit of His
sufferings.
12 The office of prophet in
counter-distinction to that of the priest and king was not in the
first place to reveal the future, but the truth in every respect.
_______________
~10~
FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
In the course of my life I was led to the
Lord’s healing unexpectedly, without seeking it. After my
conversion, in September, 1862, I had begun in the latter part of
the Autumn of 1865, to seek earnestly and perseveringly the fullness
of grace and life, until at Easter, 1867, I realized it like
cleansing waters flowing over my soul. In connection with this
spiritual grace, the Lord gave me deliverance from an overstrain of
brain, which had lasted for a long time, and was growing serious.
This was granted me through laying on of hands by S. Z. From that
time Jesus has been always my only physician.13
In the Autumn of, 1869, while in Geneva, I was suddenly
attacked by a pain in the head, which made me at once incapable of
any kind of work. After waiting two months, during which I received
brotherly and sisterly ministration, through grace and judgment,
being both raised up and broken down, but found no healing—the Lord
came to my rescue and led me to one of His servants, who in more
than one respect became to me a “prophet.” As I told him my story,
and in so doing, mentioned a certain circumstance, I encountered a
look from him which penetrated my very soul. I had, indeed, had a
consciousness that this matter was not altogether right; but I had
not yet seen and judged it in God’s light, and this was the first
time I felt myself really guilty in regard to it.
Later on I spoke of my position in Geneva. I had been engaged there
as an evangelist since the summer of 1868, and about a year
afterwards, that is a few months before my illness, I had sent in my
resignation under the impression that it was the Lord’s mind that
the laborers in His vineyard should depend upon Him directly for
their support. I had done so with singleness of heart, considering
it an act of faith. The Lord did not forsake me; but still a
difficulty had arisen, which was the cause of my speaking to the
above-mentioned brother about the matter. He said to me: at once,
“Go back to your box,” 14 finding it good for me to be
under human authority. He added that he did not wish to lay any
burden upon me; and that the Lord would Himself show me His way. I
took this bitter pill home with me, and had a hard time of it that
evening, until I was willing to go back to my old position, and
humble myself before my Committee. After I had experienced during an
intercourse of several days with this brother, the powers of the
world to come in more than one way, he received me on the fourth or
fifth day, with the message, that the Lord had bidden him lay his
hands upon me, that I might be healed of my disease, and become
quite a “decided Christian.” After his laying on of hands, the Lord
gave him this word, “He has it.”
Fourteen days elapsed without any signs of improvement. It was time
for me to decide whether I should go back to Geneva or not, and when
I asked Brother L., he bade me go, with the words, “To minister the
Word of God does not make sick.”
I went in faith. On the journey the pain became intense. When I
arrived at Geneva, I found a letter from my former Committee, who
had continued part of my salary even after my resignation, and now
invited me to attend one of the Committee meetings. I obeyed the
call, and took my place as a deserter, while relating my story. The
brethren received me with love, and replaced me in my former
position.15
From this moment the power of the disease was broken, and up to the
present it has never kept me back from any work. It did not
disappear at once, but was like a dog chained in a corner of my
brain. Whenever anything was not quite right in my relations either
with God or man, whenever my conscience or mind was troubled, and my
spiritual horizon began to be clouded, the old trouble at once
announced its presence. Although I had previously been walking in
the light, in obedience and subjection to the will of God, I was now
obliged to fly to the Lord about everything, even my
impressions and frames of mind, and to remain before Him until He
removed the grain of sand, till my inner eye had again become
“single,” and my inner being “full of light.” I was constrained to
this if I would not fall a prey to my old enemy. Through my body I
became the prisoner of the Lord.
It is obvious that in this way I came almost naturally to make a
stand against pain or sickness, whenever they threatened me; and by
this making a stand I simply understand pressing closer to the Lord,
seeking shelter as well as counsel from Him.16
About a year after my return to Geneva, at a time when, for eight or
ten days, I was holding meetings every afternoon, I fell ill just
after one of the meetings. It was shortly before my marriage, and I
had gone to visit my betrothed. When my mother-in-law saw the state
I was in, she did not allow me to return home, and wished also to
postpone the morrow’s meeting. But to that I would not consent. The
following night there came a moment when I rose up in bed with the
words, “I will not be ill.” The details how I was led to this have
vanished from my memory, but my wife still remembers the impression
of solemn earnestness on my face which struck her as she came in.
One thing I know for certain—it was not of the flesh, but of the
Spirit; it was not an act of self-will or natural energy, but an act
of faith wrought by God. The Lord owned it, and the next afternoon I
was able to hold my meeting as usual—I was healed.
More than nine years later—I was then living at Peseux, and my first
little pamphlet on “Sickness and the Gospel” had been published in
French for about a year—I was attacked one day with fever, and was
obliged to keep my bed. As far as I remember, I was perfectly
restful and quiet during this illness. I took the disease as if it
were a matter of course, without thinking of resisting it, without
asking myself if any unknown sin or unfaithfulness might lie at the
root of it. I was simply ill as any child of God might be who had
never heard of healing through faith, never known or practiced
anything but to rest happy in his Father’s will without any
Wherefore? The fourth or fifth day, when I was almost able to be
about again, I had a visit from a sister, who had learnt to know the
Lord as the Physician of the body, and who bore blessed witness to
this truth. I hailed her visit as a welcome opportunity for
admonishing her, and others through her, and showing her how very
careful they must be how they went forward on this line; but the
tables were soon turned upon me. Instead of convicting her, I sat
there as the convicted one. She had, she told me, asked the Lord to
raise me up, and had expected me to attend a committee meeting, to
which I had been invited, but had failed to go. Though my
non-attendance was of no consequence, yet I felt humbled and
reproved. I do not remember in detail what further passed within me.
Without feeling myself guilty that I, till then, had quietly
remained ill, but yet not without a certain sense of shame, I soon
felt decidedly impelled henceforth in faith to take my position
against sickness. I wrote to Neuchatel—this was on Monday or
Tuesday—that by God’s grace I would take the meeting there which was
appointed me for the following Sunday. Whilst still keeping my bed,
I had received a card from Pastor Theodore Monad, with whom I had
not had any correspondence for some time, inviting me to take part
with him in meetings at Valence. My acceptation of this invitation
was sent off at the same time as my letter to Neuchatel. When Sunday
came I was still weak, and had to stay over night at Neuchatel, but
I was able to hold the meeting. The next day I traveled to Valence,
where the Lord restored me, in the course of the meetings, to my
full health and strength.
13 How much better is it,
however, for a child of God with thankfulness of heart, and in the
liberty of the gospel to have recourse to a human physician, if this
is in accordance with the light he has received, than to refuse
medical help under the yoke of a human rule, and in a spirit of
legality.
14 The German term "Kasten,"
used by this brother (literally, “box “), conveys the idea of a
place too small, of a position in which you feel uneasy, hampered in
your movements, shut up as it were.
15 Before a year had passed my
"box" fell to pieces of itself, and without my raising a finger
towards it.
16 I did not learn to take
refuge under the Cross of Christ till later. It was afterwards that
the Lord led me to Isaiah 53:4, and opened before my eyes the
important connection between Matt. 8:16-17 and this passage in
Isaiah, showing me that my Savior had borne my bodily as well as
spiritual sufferings and sicknesses on the Cross. Still later I
received light on the significance of Jesus Christ’s death on the
Cross for my inward cleansing, and now there I find shelter from all
power and every form of sin.
_______________
~11~
HEALING AND THE ANOINTING OF THE SPIRIT
At the point which we have now reached, it is
obvious that the question which engages us is intimately connected
with the question of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, with the
anointing, as the Apostle John expresses it (1 John 2:27). We
can only walk on the ground of healing through faith and
faith-health, so long as our fellowship with God is close enough for
Him to be able to guide us in all things directly by His spirit. As
the Israelites in the wilderness had to wait for a distinct
direction from above, before they either struck their tents or
pitched them, so will he who has the anointing be guided by the
Spirit of God in all questions of what to do and what not to do, of
going forward or keeping still, and that, so long as he walks in the
singleness of heart and in the truth, with full inward assurance.
As hearkening to the voice of our God with full surrender of the
will is the first and principal condition laid down in Holy
Scripture, for being kept from sickness, so it is the only condition
required for being led of the Holy Ghost. We must have become still
and silent before our God. Let your heart make over to God even its
faintest desires in unconditional agreement with all His will, and
in fullest trust in His goodness and wisdom; let your mind be no
longer occupied with any question but the glory of God, and you will
realize at once that “the voice of strangers” will no longer disturb
your ear; no earthly image or prospect will any longer trouble your
eye; you will abide under the anointing.
He who is born of God, and has become a new creature, has the
anointing. But the sheep can only recognize the shepherd’s voice as
long as it is deaf to that of strangers’ (John 10:4-5). “I can of
Mine own self do nothing,” said the Lord Jesus. “As I hear, I judge:
and My judgment is just; because I seek not Mine own will, but the
will of the Father which has sent Me?” (John 5:30 compared with
Isaiah 1:4-6). If we would have God instruct us and teach us in the
way in which we should go, if we would be guided by His eye, we must
not be as the horse or as the mule, and in nothing seek our own will
(Psalm 32:8-9). We find the same truth in Isaiah 30 if we compare
the 15th verse with the 20th and 21st.
“Thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and
rest shall you be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be
your strength...yet shall not your teachers be removed into a corner
any more, but your eyes shall see your teachers: and your ears shall
hear a word behind you saying, This is the way, walk you in it, when
you turn to the right hand, and when you turn to the left.”
How indispensable the anointing is, we especially discern when we
would appropriate the promises of God given in Isaiah 40:28-31.
“Have you not known, have you not heard, that the everlasting God,
the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither
is weary? there is no searching of His understanding. He gives power
to the faint; and to them that have no might He increases strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall
utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run
and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” According to this
passage, we must wait upon the Lord, we must rest and cease
from our own works (Heb. 4:10), “not finding our own pleasure, nor
speaking our own words” (Isa. 58:13), if we would renew our
strength. But in order to wait upon the, Lord we must be acquainted
with God’s thoughts and ways. We must learn to distinguish what God
would have to be done, and what He would have left undone, when and
how He would have it done, whether by us or by others. The human
heart, however pure its zeal for God’s glory, however ardent its
love to the Lord may be, is not able and cannot be trusted to decide
in questions of the service of God. For instance, when we experience
a feeling of fatigue or exhaustion, we can only know by the
anointing, whether we are to see in it a sign from God that we are
to stop or at least pause in our work, or whether it is a temptation
from the enemy which we have to overcome in faith.
As long as we with our work stand under the anointing and move in
God’s line of thought, so long may we reckon unconditionally upon
the renewal of our strength, no physician’s prescription, no laws of
nature, can bind us. The Spirit who leads us also impels, permeates,
and strengthens us. In the same measure that a service which we do
in our own strength exhausts us, will our whole being, body, soul,
and spirit, be quickened when we cease to work ourselves, and
surrender ourselves as instruments of the Holy Ghost.
The more the Lord gets us thus in hand, the more sober will be our
mind, the more assured our heart, the more steady our walk. We are
no longer the victims and playthings of our moods and impressions,
and we escape the depression which otherwise so easily settles upon
our spirit. We gain power over the influences which press upon us
from without, through circumstances and individuals, weakening and
troubling us. Most children of God will have proved what a direct
influence these have upon the body. Nervous natures especially know
how much their bodily wellbeing depends upon their spiritual state,
upon a steady and assured walk under the discipline of grace, under
the leading of the Spirit.
The supernatural strength which the Lord gives at special times and
for special duties, is a further experience which every child of God
may already have had. How often has the Lord come in and borne you
up wonderfully and mightily through nightwatches by the sick, in
the service of the poor and outcast, in preaching and the ministry
of souls, in the most varied circumstances of life, wherever He has
dearly and positively shown you a duty, and that duty one for which
you had absolutely no power or time, no energy or ability. He has
made that to be a means of refreshing and strengthening to you,
which, according to human foresight, and in the natural course of
things, must have exhausted if, not utterly crushed you.
The Lord never requires of us but one thing—that we should show
ourselves to be true children of Abraham, not considering our body,
though it were “as good as dead” (Rom. 4:19 R.V.), but waiting “upon
the Lord.”
It gives a blessed freedom of action, when we no longer need care
for anything except the claims of the service with which the Lord,
according to His good pleasure, has entrusted us, leaving everything
else, especially also our body, to the care of the Lord. The Lord is
the only infallible physician, and it is for Him to have the last
and decisive word in everything.
How is it, then, that so many of God’s children are able to cast on
Him all cares except that which affects them most—the care of their
bodies? Why can they not trust the Lord with their bodies? Is it not
written, "Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for
you” (1 Peter 5:7)? And again, “I am the Lord that heals you?” Is
not the reason with many that they are not walking under the
anointing, that they are uncertain as to what the Master has
commissioned them to do, and what they have undertaken of
themselves?
Some have raised the objection that Epaphroditus was sick for the
work of Christ (Phil. 2:25-30), but certainly we are not to
understand by this that the Lord had laid on him a measure of work
which of necessity caused him to be sick—a work for which He
had not provided him with sufficient strength.17
We have already remarked that we are most liable to be sifted by
sickness when in the most direct service of the Lord. The more
complete and pure our self-sacrifice in this service is, the more
precarious will be our situation, the greater our danger. He who
lives by faith and serves the Lord in faith and love walks upon the
water, and one side glance, one moment’s wavering, is enough to make
him sink. Here it is well that he who “thinks he stands, take heed
less he fall.” May God keep us from blaming in word or thought a
servant of God for whom the Bible has only praise. So much is
certain, He Who stretched forth His hand to Peter in the midst of
the waves had mercy also on Epaphroditus and with him also on Paul
(verse 27).
Would that God’s servants who are obliged to suspend their work in
the Lord’s vineyard, whose heads are wearied and nerves
overstrained, would wait upon the Lord until it becomes clear to
them what has not been of the Spirit in their work or in their life,
until the Lord can fulfill Isaiah 40:31 in them. Would that, instead
of quitting their posts in discouragement, they would “humble
themselves” under the mighty hand of God, that He might raise them
up in “due time” (1 Peter 5:6).18
The Holy Ghost guides us within the lines which Holy Scripture
has traced. Through the Word of God the Spirit of God wrought faith
in us and quickened us (Rom. 10:14; Gal. 3:2). The Word, the written
Word, remains to the end of our Christian life the foundation on
which the Holy Ghost builds all His work. The Holy Ghost is He Who
leads us into all truth, but He does it, in the first place, by
reminding us of what Jesus has said (John 14:26); and all the
unbelief in the Lord, of which the Spirit convinces the world (John
16: 9), springs from unbelief of that which is written. “O fools,”
said the Lord to the disciples at Emmaus, “and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken; ought not Christ to have
suffered these things and to enter into His glory? And beginning at
Moses and all the prophets He expounded unto them in all the
Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:25-27). The Lord
said to the Jews, “Search the Scriptures; for in them you think you
have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me” (John
5:39). We cannot claim that the Spirit of God should lead us step by
step in our work for the Lord, unless we have been trained for that
work. But only the Word of God can train us for the service of God.
“All Scripture,” says the Apostle, “is given by inspiration of God
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be
perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim.
3:16-17).
To search the Word and to obey the Word are the essential conditions
for the solution of all the questions which occupy us. If God’s
Spirit is to speak to us directly, if our inner ear is to be opened
to His voice, we must begin by listening to all and doing
all that the Lord teaches us, in His written Word. The sin of
the Pharisees, placing human teaching and human ordinances above
God’s Word, is again to be found in the Church. In the views and
convictions, we form, in the direction we follow, we are influenced
more than we are aware of by traditional opinions, or by the example
of others. We are apt to rely on those who are generally received as
authorities, especially if they are men of God worthy of our highest
esteem. Almost everywhere we find wanting that independence and
perseverance which will send Christians to the source and make them
draw light and life directly from the Word of God.
Thus the anointing of the Spirit and the Word of God belong
together. He who abides under the Word and under the anointing will
no longer be determined and impelled by man: he abides in direct and
exclusive dependence upon God the Lord, and it is only thus that the
path of healing by faith can be trodden. It is a way in which the
Lord must be able to impel or restrain us according to His good
pleasure. As Paul had simply to bow to the Master’s word: “My grace
is sufficient for you,” so today that disciple of the Lord who,
resting on the Word and in the obedience of faith, makes a stand
against sickness, must be ready at any moment to allow himself to be
held back by the Lord, without knowing the reason why. After the
most decided stepping out in working faith, having boldly
appropriated and firmly held the divine promises, he must be ready
to stop at the first sign from God, and return into an attitude of
calm and quiet expectation, resting and glorying in God’s all
sufficient grace,19 and being anxious only to let Him
have His own way with him. And again, as he was ready to retire from
a service of active obedience into an attitude of passive
subjection, he must continue to be willing to return to the path of
active and energetic obedience, and take up a position of contest
and resistance against the enemies of Christ, be it sickness or
death, as Soon as the Master shall call.
17 It would appear from verses
25-30 that Paul is speaking of a perhaps exhausting or perilous
journey which Epaphroditus had undertaken in the service of the
Lord.
18 These remarks on Isaiah 40
do not contradict the fact that the condition of a child of God on
earth remains a condition of weakness. We run our course here
below in the midst of the greatest weakness (1 Cor. 2:3). Suffering
and privation are our portion (2 Cor. 6:10 ; 12:10). The life of
Jesus will be made manifest in our body only so far as we are always
bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus (2 Cor. 4:10),
As long as we are in this tabernacle we do groan, being burdened (2
Cor. 5:4). We wait for the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23), but
at the same time God must show His strength perfected in our
weakness, and for this reason must have our members free for His
disposal. As soon as we walk by faith we become in very deed strong
just where we feel ourselves weak, and we are able to do all things
through Christ which strengthens us (2 Cor. 12:9-10; Phil. 4:13).
19 We do not mean to say that a smaller measure of divine
grace is required for active cooperation with God’s mind than for
quiet subjection to His dealings.
_______________
~12~
CLOSING REMARKS
He who treads the path of resistance to
sickness and death under the divine anointing, he who in
faithfulness and humility allows himself to be guided by the Word as
well as the Spirit of God, shall not long walk solitarily. More and
more the Lord appears to be turning the attention of His children to
this subject, moving them here and there simultaneously and directly
by His own Spirit. And may we not expect to receive through every
honest child of God whom His Spirit stirs up to enter into this path
a new measure of light and strength, so that we shall be able to
press forward with more definite assurance, following the Lord, till
by His coming, He manifest the final solution of all questions and
difficulties.
We live in a time when the Lord is drawing together a little band of
believers who only need to have God’s mind unfolded to them in His
Word, in order to believe and obey Him at once, fully decided to
follow and serve their Lord. At the same time the Church of Christ,
as a whole, has made progress, in some way at least, and in spite of
periods of error and declension. She possesses today an amount of
light and knowledge of God and His salvation such as she has never
had. If this is, in many respects, a dead capital for the mass of
Christians, the little flock of “the seven thousand” is
appropriating and multiplying it all the more faithfully.
Furthermore, it is a striking sign of our times that positions of
prominence, such as that of an Apostle Paul, or even that of a
reformer, are more and more rare.20 The sound of the
footsteps of our approaching Master more and more rises above every
human sound. Every mountain and hill is brought low. Whatever light
and knowledge one member has received direct from above, becomes the
common property of the body, as soon as this member has yielded his
natural life as buried with Christ, allowing himself to be nothing
but a bearer of divine light. We must be in our own eyes simply
vessels and instruments, our entire personality, yes, even that
individuality which God has committed to us, and which is precious
in the sight of God, must first pass through death and resurrection,
before the Master’s image and mind can be impressed upon us
sufficiently clearly to be recognized by those afar off. We must die
and be raised again, before the light committed to us can find its
way into our brother’s heart, and become the common property of the
body.
Through all the outward divisions of the Church of Christ, there is
growing up between its living members a deep and mutual heart
intelligence, there is a bond formed which encloses the different
members, shielding and upholding them to a degree which Paul in his
time did not enjoy.
It seems as if the present time, however sad it may be in other
respects, offered new privileges to God’s people, new possibilities
for the building up of the body of Christ, that is for the
realization of Eph. 4:15-16. Let us only watch that our fellowship
with the brothers be always in spirit and in truth. Let us walk in
truth and uprightness, fearing self, and esteeming others more
highly than ourselves. Let us not selfishly follow our own
satisfaction in seeking out those who are of our own way of
thinking, and therefore congenial to us, but cultivate
conscientiously, with forbearing love, communion with those who are
further off, whenever the Lord opens the way; let us, in our
intercourse with others, aim at being built up in the inner man,
according to the Spirit, and seek by their gifts and experience to
make up for any deficiency in ourselves, with a view to the glory of
God and greater fruitfulness in His service; and we may be certain
that we shall find in our communion with the brothers the wholesome
discipline, the spiritual help, control, and balance, we need.
Such fellowship will guard us against the peril of exalting our own
gifts and experience, against the dangers of our position and
calling. We shall, in this way, not only be guarded from the out
breakings of our own inward corruption, but also from the lies and
machinations of the wicked one, who in the guise of an angel of
light seeks to drag into the abyss all who press forward into a real
scriptural Christianity, and who desire to live for God’s glory
only.
May all those who through their inner and outer leadings, have
received light on this special question of healing through faith,
deal conscientiously with the talent committed to them; may they go
forward fearlessly on the path on which the Lord has set their feet,
yet never further and never faster than the Holy Ghost gives them
liberty. “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am,
there shall also My servant be” (John 12:26).
There is no question here of worthiness or unworthiness. We live in
a time when everything is speeding onward, and hastening towards the
coming of Christ. However far behind our fathers we may be, yet, if
the Lord is really at the door, as we ardently hope, we can
adoringly understand why He has been pleased, in spite of all our
unworthiness, to give, just at this time, more light on the position
which the Holy Scripture takes up against sickness and death. To
withstand sickness and death, within the lines of God’s Word
and under His guidance, is indeed nothing, but giving the Spirit of
God liberty of movement within us, that He may, even now, quicken
our mortal bodies (Rom. 8:11), and making room for the life and
resurrection power of Jesus Christ, that He may gain in us the
victory over death and corruption, and thus prepare our bodies for
the glory, so that body, soul, and spirit, shall be preserved
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thes. 5:23).
20 It would seem that a few decades back,
circumstances were somewhat different from what they are now. The
richly blessed Dorothea Trudel, who went home September 6th,
1862, stood in quite an exceptional position with the testimony
which was committed to her. She also bore a thorn in the flesh for
her humbling, but with her crooked spine she compassed an amount of
work which is truly astonishing. Pastor Rein, in the Grand Duchy of
Baden, held a similar position to that of Dorothea Trudel in
Switzerland. He went home in the year 1865.
GLORY BE TO GOD AND THE LAMB |