The Bible is the infallible, transcendent, Spirit-breathed Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16). It describes with precision the common human experience of daily life in our fallen flesh. In the Scriptures, we read about several physical aches and ailments—from Job’s boils to Sarah’s infertility. Time and again, we are reminded that these were real, historical people; with real hurts that point to a reality beyond the physical pain.
However, physical illness is a softened reminder of our spiritual condition. Reality is much bleaker: apart from Christ, we are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1–3). While it is not our place to diagnose illness as a direct consequence of a personal sinful decision, sickness is a mere shadow of our hopeless state before the gospel does its healing work.
The Gospel is the Ultimate Healer
I certainly do not intend to undermine or diminish the pain suffered by so many. As a physician, I am well acquainted with the physiology of nociception, and as a patient, I know the ache of cuts, gashes, and bruises.
Sometimes what makes the hurting bearable is knowing that it has a good, God-ordained purpose in our lives.
But sometimes what makes the hurting bearable is knowing that it has a good, God-ordained purpose in our lives. It is helpful to remember this as we counsel patients in places where the healthcare system often has little to offer. The gospel always fully revives the spiritually dead, even when medical interventions provide minimal physical relief.
Healing in the Bible also lends us hope for future wholeness. The blind receive sight, and the lame walk again, pointing us to the glorious reality of a restored new creation that Christ has already begun in part by reconciling believers to himself.
Relief from pain, however fleeting, points us forward to the day when there will be no more tears for God’s people (Revelation 21:4). So, we can take joy in the small help we offer as clinicians and encourage patients to understand temporal pain relief as a weak foretaste of future, eternal joy in Christ.
Even If, God is Still Good
Some of the more difficult clinical encounters I’ve had both in the States and abroad have come on the cusp of long-sought-after diagnoses. Labs and imaging begin to indicate a chronic condition, and the patient and family find themselves quite averse to what comes next. I have, in their minds, over-explained a situation they’d hoped would simply go away. I have “medicalized” their longing for a miracle, which always makes for tough conversations and sometimes incites wholesale rejection of further medical help.
There is a certain human tendency to ascribe only sudden, unexplainable improvement and remission of disease to God. We often forget that he is ever-active, ever-ordaining, and ever-sustaining his creation (Colossians 1:16–17). He may delight in healing through medical care, despite it, or altogether apart from it.
And even when he doesn’t choose to heal, God is infinitely good and kind. Paul pleaded that God remove his thorn, and instead, he gave Paul sufficient grace (2 Corinthians 12:8–10). We cling to that truth as we serve in places where superstition reigns and good physical health is seen as the corollary to upright spiritual living.
“You get good when you do good” is an oversimplification that has done great harm in many cultures. We must model Paul’s healthy alternative of trusting God’s good, sufficient grace when the healing we have pleaded for does not come.
In illness, God speaks personally to our morbid spiritual condition. In physical healing, however complete or incomplete, he admonishes us to patiently await our blessed hope—the glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus (Titus 2:13). In Matthew 9:12, Jesus tells the Pharisees that it is the sick, not the healthy, who need a doctor.
May the aches and pains of daily life—even the throes of devastating diagnoses—make us all more fully aware of the endemic sin-sickness we once suffered outside of Christ. May physical healing serve as but a faint glimmer of the glorious coming kingdom for all God’s people all around the world.
Courtney Miller currently lives in Tacna, Peru, where she serves through medical ministry. She desires to help Peruvians know the Word of God well so that the Gospel spreads through healthy local churches. Courtney graduated from the Medical College of Georgia and is a pediatrician. She and her husband Andy were sent by Trinity Baptist Church in Vidalia, Georgia.
