It is perfectly natural in all of us to shun disease and death, and our fears and distaste make us eagerly grasp at a doctrine that offers us immunity. For similar reasons there are many Christians who love the doctrine of what is usually called the “Rapture” far more because it holds out to them the thought of escaping death than for the genuine rapture of seeing His Blessed Face. Doctrines of Divine healing that leave almost no place ideally in the life of the Christian for physical pain and infirmity often are grasped at with avidity, but this is wishful thinking which neither Christian experience, nor the Bible when sanely interpreted, can transmute into sound doctrine that will stand the strain it is inevitably called upon to bear in practical living. No wonder we are surrounded with our “problems of Divine healing.” We make them for ourselves by formulating imperfect doctrines.
It is helpful to expect health, and always a sufficiency of strength to do the will of God, and live for His glory. The Christians in the Bible were not a crowd of sickly folk, always seeking prayer for bodily healing. Neither were their local assemblies little more than Divine-healing clinics. We have a right in Christ to expect the blessings of a salvation that has a place in its sanctification for the body as well as the spirit and the soul (I Thess. 5:23). A healthy body is an immense blessing which we believe Christians may justly claim and cherish for the service of love to God and man.
Physical health is frequently a matter of obeying simple and natural laws of health, such as wise eating and drinking; sensible clothing; sufficient fresh-air and exercise; proper hours of sleep; a good balance of work and recreation; freedom from personal worrying; etc. To attend to these matters is our part in true sanctification of the temples of the Holy Spirit. Our Heavenly Father will help us to achieve the abnormal only when we have absolutely no alternative in fulfilling our duty but to temporarily break the laws of health. There come times when risks have to be taken; when sleep has to be denied; when unsuitable food has to be eaten; when we have to temporarily overwork; and when personal anxiety and care can scarcely be avoided without being wrongfully unnatural. To trust in God THEN to be preserved in health is the privilege of His children; but to abuse ordinary rules for a healthy body when there is no need so to do is sheer presumption, and we need have little surprise if we are permitted to suffer accordingly. Divine healing gives us no privilege to presume.
And it is fanatical to rule out all place for possible sickness, and ultimately, if God so permit, a sickness unto death. It is stated with perfectly plain speech that in the end that great prophet of the Old Testament, Elisha, was “fallen sick of the sickness whereof he died,” (II Kings 13:14) and the context gives not the slightest indication that he had failed spiritually. The rather he seems full of spiritual and prophetic energy to the end. But in the manner of the end of his earthly life he was, in striking contrast with his predecessor, entirely normal and as all other men. We who live in this dispensation may wish to have an exodus like Elijah rather than Elisha, but wishes and doctrines are different matters—or ought to be.
pages 15&16
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