The Gift of Healing

Question 4051.

Few subjects in the church today generate more heat and less light than the gift of healing. On one side the airwaves are filled with dramatic claims and conference stages where healing is promised on demand. On the other side many cautious evangelicals quietly file the whole category under “things that stopped with the apostles.” I find Scripture is steadier than either extreme.

So let me work through what the New Testament actually says about this gift, what the language reveals, and how a believer who trusts the Bible should think and pray. I am a continuationist, but I have no time for showmanship dressed up as the Spirit’s power.

What the gift of healing is

The gift of healing is a Spirit-given ability, exercised through a believer, by which God restores health to the sick. Paul lists it in 1 Corinthians 12:9, and the Greek is worth noticing. He writes iama, literally “gifts of healings,” both words in the plural.

That double plural is telling. Paul does not describe a single standing power that a person carries about and switches on at will. He describes many gifts of many healings, distributed by the Spirit as occasion and need require. The gift of healing, in other words, is something God grants moment by moment, not a permanent ability owned by a healer.

We see exactly this pattern in the book of Acts. Peter says to the lame man at the temple gate, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk,” as Acts 3:6 records. The power was real, but it was plainly God’s power working through a servant who pointed everything back to Jesus, not a technique Peter owned or sold.

Healing belongs to God, not to a technique

Because the gift of healing is the Spirit’s to give, “who apportions to each one individually as he wills” according to 1 Corinthians 12:11, no human being can guarantee it or manufacture it. That single truth dismantles a great deal of what is sold under the name of healing today, where results are promised if only you have enough faith or give enough money.

When the prosperity teachers tell the sick that they remain ill because their faith failed, they add cruelty to error. Scripture never lays that burden on the suffering. The gift of healing is a mercy God grants, not a transaction the desperate can trigger. Paul himself left Trophimus “ill at Miletus,” as 2 Timothy 4:20 records, which would be unthinkable if healing were always available on demand.

Even the apostle had a friend whose ongoing sickness he could not simply switch away. He tells the Philippians that Epaphroditus “was ill, near to death,” and rejoices that God had mercy on him, which shows that recovery was a gift received with gratitude, not a guaranteed result wrung from heaven. That honesty in Philippians 2:27 is a healthy corrective to every ministry that treats healing as a formula.

Does God still heal today?

Yes, I believe God still heals, and I have prayed for the sick and seen Him answer. James gives the church a plain pattern. “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord,” he writes in James 5:14. That is not a stadium event. It is the quiet ministry of a local church to its own.

The God who made the body can mend it, and He often does, through ordinary medicine, through time, and sometimes through means we cannot explain. I hold the gift of healing to be one of those means He still uses, even while I refuse to promise what only He can decide. Healing is bound up with His whole work in a believer, including the steady growth of the fruit of the Spirit that no medicine can produce.

Why God sometimes does not heal

Scripture is honest that healing does not always come, and that this is no failure of faith. Paul pleaded three times for his “thorn” to be removed, and the answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” in 2 Corinthians 12:9. God had a deeper purpose than relief.

Sometimes the gift of healing is withheld so that endurance, dependence and Christlikeness can grow in the sufferer. I have watched believers glorify God more powerfully in sickness than they ever could have in health. The final and complete healing is the resurrection, and no illness in this life gets the last word over a child of God.

This is why I am careful with the slogan that healing is guaranteed in the atonement here and now. The cross secures the redemption of our bodies, but Paul places the full experience of that at the resurrection, when “we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,” as Romans 8:23 says. Healings now are real foretastes of that day, not the whole inheritance claimed early. To promise otherwise is to set the suffering up for crushing disappointment.

Holding the gift with humility

Where God does grant the gift of healing, it should be exercised with the same humility and order that govern every gift. It exists to point people to Jesus, not to build a platform for the one who prays. The same 1 Corinthians 14:40 that keeps tongues and prophecy in their place keeps healing in its place too.

I am wary of anyone who needs cameras, music and a crowd before God can act. The Lord healed quietly, often privately, and frequently told people to say nothing. If you want to see how this gift fits among the others, my article on the spiritual gifts listed in Scripture sets out the whole picture.

Healing and the compassion of God

Underneath all the controversy lies something I never want us to lose, the simple fact that God cares about our bodies. The Lord Jesus was “moved with pity” when He healed, as Mark 1:41 shows, and His miracles of healing were never cold demonstrations of power but overflowings of mercy toward broken people. When I pray for the sick, I am appealing to that same compassionate heart, not trying to operate a machine that dispenses cures.

That compassion frees me from two pressures at once. I do not have to manufacture results to prove that God is good, and I do not have to fall silent for fear of disappointment. I can pray boldly, knowing the Lord is kind, and I can rest in His wisdom, knowing the Lord is wise. The gift of healing, where He grants it, is one expression of a mercy that runs far wider than any single recovery, a mercy that will finally wipe away every tear and abolish death itself.

It also keeps my eyes on the greatest healing of all, which is the forgiveness of sins. When friends lowered a paralysed man through a roof, Jesus first said, “your sins are forgiven,” before He ever spoke to the man’s legs, as Mark 2:5 records. Physical healing is a wonderful mercy, but it is temporary, while the healing of the soul is eternal. A church that prizes the gift of healing must prize the gospel that heals forever even more.

None of this should make us timid about asking. Jesus told His disciples to keep praying, and the early church prayed earnestly when Peter was in prison, and God answered far beyond what they expected. So I hold these truths together without strain. God is able, God is good, and God is wise, and a believer can bring every sickness to Him with bold confidence while leaving the outcome trustingly in His hands. That settled posture keeps us praying warmly and faithfully without ever turning prayer into a demand we make of God.

So, now what?

If you are sick, do not hesitate to call your elders and ask for prayer, for that is exactly what James 5:14-15 tells you to do. Trust God for healing, receive gladly whatever He gives through medicine and care, and rest in Him if the healing you long for does not come in this life.

And if God uses your prayers to bring healing to another, give Him every scrap of the glory and never let it gather around yourself. Whose name is being lifted up when you pray for the sick, yours or the Lord’s? Keep your eyes there, and the gift of healing will stay where it belongs.

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

ESV, James 5:14-15