The doctrine that deliverance from sickness, by Divine healing, is provided for in the Atonement is securely based upon a scriptural foundation, but it needs interpreting in the light of the whole of the Word of God. To apply it indiscriminately and blindly is to plunge multitudes of good people into most grievous problems. It is significant that the Epistles do not apparently apply it to the problem of present human sickness and infirmities of the flesh, not even in James 5:14-16, where the work of the Atonement can only be assumed as a basis for the prayer of faith. Our problems of Divine healing impose upon us the responsibility for a courageous and frank examination of the applications we make of our doctrines, even though we need not question the basic facts laid down in our statements of faith. Intellectual dishonesty forfeits the guidance of the Spirit of Truth.
The unexplained sickness of Trophimus, and all unexplained sickness among Christians, brings us at last to the ultimate problem of pain in the Universe. We cannot deny it. We cannot contract out the Universe as we find it, even after the supreme historical fact of Calvary. It remains one of the final mysteries of existence as we know it at present that God, who is Love permits pain.
The Bible offers no easy explanation. The wiser among our teachers never pretend to offer us more than a partial solution of the problem. It is there and we cannot escape it. The Bible does teach that our Heavenly Father uses pain for loving purposes of discipline. The Bible comforts us with the promise that a time is surely coming when there will be “no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” (Rev. 21:4). Above all things the Bible reveals that God in Christ Himself suffered pain, and in some mystic way still suffers with us. For we are told that “though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.” (Heb. 5:8) It is true that except for weariness caused through journeying (John 4:6) our Lord seems to have enjoyed perfect health when on earth. But since He suffered pain of a deeper nature we believe that our High Priest knows the feeling of our physical infirmities also (Heb. 4:15). Any doctrine of Divine healing that professes to leave no place for pain in the present order of things is palpably too shallow to be true. It may have a passing appeal to the thoughtless. It cannot stand up to the strain of life as it really is in God’s Universe. It produces artificial and unnecessary problems by refusing to face the one true problem. For the genuine problem of pain there is at least the genuine comfort of truth. For our false “problems” there can be no true comfort at all.
It seems in the final analysis that we make our own problems of Divine healing because of our inveterate tendency to push any truth revealed to us to extremes. It has become a truism that almost all error is a truth pushed too far. In Divine healing we have glimpsed through the grace of God a glowing and saving truth.
pages 25&26
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