In the case of Paul’s famous “thorn in the flesh” there was no removal, bout only a satisfying explanation (II Cor. 12:7-9). It was not chastisement, but rather a stern preventative against spiritual failure that would have ruined his further ministry. It was an entirely extreme and exceptional case, and ought never to be quoted except by those who dare to conceive of themselves as in like peril of soul through the abundance of their revelations. Where are they?
The doctrine that since sickness is in the human race as a result of the Fall the atoning work of Christ provides full deliverance here and now is attractively logical. The precise measure of our present deliverance from all the effects of the Fall, whether in soul or body, is a matter upon which there must be careful discrimination. Some “Holiness” doctrines seem to have gone a little astray here, and a parallel fallacy attacks doctrines of Divine healing. Thank God that for the eternal future there is no question of our perfect redemption; and we have it now potentially in Christ.
It is in the personal application to the individual Christian who happens to fall sick that our doctrine of sickness as the result of sin can be most shockingly misapplied and misinterpreted. To hastily attribute personal sickness to personal sin was the precise folly of Job’s three friends that drew upon them the anger of the Almighty. Many cruel things are still being said on similar lines by hasty and dictatorial exponents of very imperfect doctrines of Divine healing. Usually they are those who have suffered little themselves, or else have had just one experience of Divine healing on just one line, upon which they base all their ideas. It is only in the broadest sense that we can teach that sickness in the human race stems from sin in the race. In the case of many faithful believers in the Lord Jesus Christ it would seem more correct to regard them as innocent victims of our common human frailties until the atoning work of Christ comes to its glorious consummation in the fullness of the Kingdom of God.
Extravagant claims for immunity from physical weakness and pain here and now are corrected by noting such words as those used by Paul in Romans 8:16-25 and II Cor. 5:1-5. Although Christians have the “first-fruits of the Spirit” they still groan within themselves “waiting for the adoption, to wit the redemption of the body.” Such passages effectively dispel the airy and fanatical claims of some that they are enjoying even now their “resurrection bodies.” The scriptural truth is that the choicest saints on earth still have times when they “groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.” The teaching of these passages is not a claiming of Divine healing from the cause of the groaning or sighing consequent upon infirmities of the flesh, but rather having the comfort of hope that there is a fuller life, and a better body (a “building” rather than a “tent”) waiting for us in the life to come.
pages 23&24
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