Healing
is our inheritance as a covenant promise
The underlying
meaning of the Hebrew word berith (used in the Old Testament for ‘covenant’)
emphasised the mutual bond between two parties in a covenant relationship. So God gave himself unreservedly to his
people, and they in turn gave themselves to him and belonged to him. Hence his oft-repeated promise to them:
‘They will be my people, and I will be their God.’ (e.g. Lev. 26:12; Jer. 30:22, 32:38)
However,
God’s people could not inherit the will of God for them, i.e. the promises of
this covenant,[1]
without this covenant being put into effect with the blood of sacrificed
animals (which were a type of Christ):
‘This is
why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.’ (Heb. 9:18)
The blood
of atoning sacrifice, bringing forgiveness through the covering of sins, would
make it possible for God’s people to then enjoy the will of God for them as
their inheritance, as they continued in a life of obedience to his law.
Promises
of healing and good health were part of the corpus of blessings and provision
contained in this covenant, the will of God that he intended for them to
experience as their inheritance:
‘If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what
is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and decrees, I will
not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the
LORD, who heals you.’ (Ex.
15:26)
‘Worship
the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you and
none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.’ (Ex. 23:25)
This holism reflects the fact that God was
the God of their whole being, indeed the whole of life. God was concerned with every aspect of
a person’s life, and nothing was excluded from the caring authority of his
presence and power. As Yahweh
Rapha, the Lord their Healer, he
gave them a covenant promise to bring healing to them. He would forgive all their sins and heal all
their diseases, and he also gave them a list of dietary laws which, if they put
these into practice, would help to influence their health for good (Lev. ch.11;
Ps. 103:3).
So healing was not a matter which was left
to the sovereign, uncovenanted grace of God.
This would have left people not knowing what the will of God was for
them on any given specific occasion. God
made clear the matter of his will to heal them by including promises of healing
within the terms of the covenant he made with them.
However, how often or how many people actually
experienced this will of God for them (in terms of physical healing and good
health), I suppose no-one will ever know. The old covenant was good in and of itself,
but it did not have the power to change people internally in their hearts (Rom.
7:12). Although the Old Testament
narrative does record several outstanding examples of healing in the lives of
various people, yet the track record of the ancient Israelites was generally
one of unfaithfulness towards God and disobedience, so one suspects that this
promise of healing and health often went unfulfilled in many people’s lives,
even though it was the will of God for them (Heb. 8:7-9). Certainly, by the time of Jesus’ ministry, we
can clearly discern from the gospel records the generally lamentable state of
people’s spiritual and physical health. However, Jesus’ ministry of healing left
people in no doubt as to what God’s will for them was intended to be.
We can
see the antitype fulfilment of this in the new covenant in Christ. The Greek word diatheke, used in the
New Testament for ‘covenant,’ was used in everyday life to refer to the
disposition of property through a will/testament, and this is the way in which
it is used in Hebrews 9:15-17:
‘For this reason Christ is the
mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised
eternal inheritance – now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from
the sins committed under the first covenant. In the case of a will, it is necessary to
prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when
someone has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.’
So the
word diatheke expresses the purpose stated by the one party making the
will, rather than the idea of a contract with mutual obligations between two
parties (which would be the Greek word syntheke). The concept of diatheke covenant in
the New Testament describes the will of the one Person, God, for us, in Christ,
which came into effect upon the death of Jesus.[2] It is, therefore, God’s intention to begin
put into effect this will of his in our life when we become believers (cf. Isa.
53:10). This is our inheritance as
Christians under the new covenant (cf. Col. 1:12).
Jesus, as
the mediator, is the guarantor of this new covenant (Heb. 7:22, 9:15). A person can accept this will of God for
him/herself (through faith in Jesus) and then begin to enter into their
inheritance in Christ, or s/he can reject it (by rejecting the message of the
gospel). However, the purpose and
intention of God for us in Christ expressed in this diatheke new
covenant, cannot be changed or altered any more than the terms of a person’s
will can be altered after the person has died.
Because his atoning work is finished and
complete, Christ, as our new Head, has been appointed by the Father as heir of
all things (Heb. 1:2, cf. Eph. 1:22), and, because in this new covenant the
believer is now ‘in Christ,’ s/he therefore becomes a joint heir with him (Rom.
8:17, cf. Eph. 3:6), sharing with Christ in his inheritance and inheriting all
things together with him: [3]
‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing
in Christ.’ (Eph.
1:3)
‘He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up
for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all
things?’ (Rom. 8:32)
‘So then no more boasting about men! All things are yours… all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.’ (1 Cor. 3:21-22)
‘He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will
be his God and he will be my son.’ (Rev.
21:7)
So, in
Christ, God intends for us in eternity to inherit all things. However, the experience of partaking in our
eternal inheritance, God’s will for us which was gained through the death of Christ,
begins now in this life. The blessings
of eternal life begin NOW!
Again, our inheritance in this new covenant, the
will of God for us, includes his provision for healing and health. Jesus lifted up and carried away our
sicknesses with the specific intention that we might know healing (Isa. 53:4,
Matt. 8:16-17). By his wounds we are
healed (Isa. 53:5). We are redeemed into
this new covenant as complete human beings: spirit, soul and body, and so our
whole being can experience God’s life-giving presence and power through his
will for us (cf. 1 Cor. 6:15,20 AV). Put simply, our
healing has been provided for us.
God heals on the basis of covenant promise, not on the basis of
sovereign grace.
Therefore,
God intends for us to inherit what he has promised, through faith and patience:
‘…imitate
those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.’ (Heb. 6:12)
The
apostles were very confident on this point:
‘For no
matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us
to the glory of God.’ (2 Cor.
1:20)
‘His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature…’ (2 Peter 1:4)
Again, the fact that God intends to fulfil
the promises he gives to us is clear from the experience of the Israelites in
the promised land:
‘Not one of all the LORD’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.’ (Josh. 21:45 underlining my own for emphasis)
When a person has received Jesus, s/he can
then enter into the full provisions of the will of God for them and begin to
experience the fulfilment of his promises to them, their inheritance as a child
of God in Christ. The apostle Paul
prayed continuously for the Ephesian believers that the eyes of their hearts
might be enlightened to understand this:
‘…that
you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious
inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.’ (Eph. 1:16-19)
The
following passage taken from the writings of a friend of mine sums this
teaching up very clearly in regard to healing:
‘When we hear we have $5,000 coming in someone’s will, don’t we start
acting like it’s ours even if they are still alive because we consider it a ‘done
deal’? If they have died and we hear
about it, we still react the same way, with all the confidence that we possess
it even if we don’t yet have it ‘in hand’…
The basis of receiving your inheritance as a child of God is the ‘Last
Will and Testament of the Lord Jesus Christ,’ a legal document sealed with His
Blood. I sense a lot of people
wanting/asking for healing do not understand this fact, that according to the ‘Will’
it is NOW their inheritance. The words ‘This
is the New Covenant in My Blood’ (Luke 22:20) guarantee the right of healing to
all. No further questions need to be
asked. Signed. Sealed.
Delivered. Just open up your hand
and receive!’[4]
The new covenant is inwardly empowered with the purpose of being fulfilled
Now the
essential difference between the old and new covenants was one of empowerment. The ancient Israelites were unfaithful to God
on many occasions, and this was why God replaced the old covenant with the new
(Heb. 8:7-9). Under the new covenant our
heart is changed within us (Heb. 8:10-11). Through being reconciled to God in Christ, we
are brought into inner, organic, spiritual union with the life of God himself
by the Holy Spirit who is the seal of this covenant and indwells us (Acts 2:38-39, Eph.
1:13, Col. 1:27). We are regenerated and
born again spiritually through the working of his dynamic power, and so
subjectively and experientially we become children and heirs of God (John 1:12-13;
3:3,5-6; Titus 3:5-7). The Holy Spirit
makes us inwardly conscious of the fact that we have become children of God,
and, as we grow in Christ, he increasingly reveals to us and helps us to
understand what God has freely given to us in Christ (Rom. 8:15-16, 1 Cor.
2:12). We are restored into a dynamic and empowered
covenant relationship with God, grounded in the life and working of the Holy
Spirit within us:
‘For we
are the temple of the living God. As God
has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God,
and they will be my people.”’
(2 Cor. 6:16)
It is
therefore God’s intention for us as his children to experience in an ongoing
way his life, presence and power within us as we follow and obey him in our life.
Indeed, the Holy Spirit is given to us
as ‘the guarantee of what is to come’ – the guarantee not simply of the
inheritance that we will enter into in eternity, but also of what God intends
for us to enter into as believers in the here and now (2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph.
1:14). So the Holy Spirit will empower
us to live our life faithfully on this earth as children of God (Rom. 8:19,21);
he will strengthen our faith as we believe and stand on the promises of God for
healing, and he will empower us as we minister healing to others. His life-giving power will bring healing to
our mortal body (Rom. 8:11). As my wife
says, the Holy Spirit takes us from the place of simply being an heir to
the place of experiencing our inheritance.[5]
This role
of the Holy Spirit in our life is underlined by Paxson’s words:
‘God sent forth His Son that the sinner might enter
the family of God as a child. God sent
forth His Spirit that the child might enter the fullness of his inheritance as
an heir. God gave His Son to make
salvation possible for us; God gave the Spirit to make salvation real
in us. God gave His Son that we
might have life; God gave the Spirit that we might have life abiding and
abounding.’[6]
The full rights of sons as joint heirs with Christ
Furthermore,
using a parallel from Roman law, Paul says that we are also adopted
positionally into the family of God as his children (and then live in covenant
relationship with him), and therefore we become his royal heirs, inheriting his
promises to us. Under Roman law, the
adopted child had the same inheritance rights as the other children in the
household, including the firstborn son.
And of course, Christ is the firstborn Son in God’s heavenly household,
and we are his brothers (Rom. 8:29). So
it is through both spiritual new birth and adoption that we become the royal children
and heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, living a life which is empowered by
his indwelling Spirit:
‘…those who are led by the Spirit of God are
sons of God. For you did not receive a
spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of
adoption. And by him we cry, “Abba,
Father.” The Spirit himself testifies
with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs –
heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in
order that we may also share in his glory.’ (Rom. 8:14,17 and see Gal. 3:26,29; 4:4-7; cf. 2
Cor. 1:21-22).
The
apostle Peter puts the same covenant truth in Hebraic terms for his
first-century Jewish Christian readers: we are chosen by God, sanctified by the
Spirit for obedience and sprinkled by Christ’s blood, and so we are therefore
born again into our inheritance as God’s children:
‘…chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the
sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by
his blood… Praise be to the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his
great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can
never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you…’ (1 Peter 1:2-4)
Paul
emphasises furthermore that it is God’s intention ‘that we might receive the
full rights of sons’ (Gal. 4:5), i.e. that we enter into the full provision
of his promises for our life as our covenanted inheritance in Christ. The full rights of royal sons of God! So, because are we both positionally and
experientially made into the sons and heirs of God, and because are we indwelt
and filled with the life, presence and power of the Holy Spirit to empower our
life as children of God, it becomes clear that God fully intends and desires
for us to enter into the provision of his promises to us as our covenanted inheritance
rights as his sons. This is his will for us, and it is indeed
good news.
‘...that
we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of
his Son into our hearts... and since you are a son, God has made you also an
heir.’ (Gal. 4:5-7)
God desires to raise up a redeemed
community of people in this world who are inwardly conscious that they are the
sons of God, and who are learning to walk in the fullness of his will for them
in this life. It is now our God-given
privilege as his children to enter into and to experience this inheritance in
Christ which God purposes for us to receive, the fullness of his holistic will
for our life. So healing is a covenant provision in Christ to all of God’s children,
and it is therefore our expectation in him (cf. 2 Cor. 1:20).
Therefore, as John G. Lake said, we should
rise up in faith and claim the promises of God for ourselves, and pursue him
for them until we see them fulfilled:
‘Mankind has a right to health,
as he has a right to deliverance from sin.
If you do not have it, it is because you are being cheated out of your
inheritance. It belongs to you. In the name of Jesus Christ go after it and
get it.’[7]
This truth creates a strong foundation for
faith on our part as we seek God for the healing that we may need from time to
time. In the light of this, as Lake also
emphasised, there is no reason why Christians should not be the subjects of
continuous, abiding good health.[8] As we grow in Christ and learn to walk in the
presence and power of his Spirit, seeing the outworking in daily life of the
reality of our inner union with the life of God, then we can also practically
experience its reality in terms of physical healing.
[1]
See also passages such as Hebrews
11:8-9 and James 2:5 which make it clear that the promises of God are the
inheritance of believers.
[2]
See Archer, G.L.
“Covenant” in Baker’s Dictionary of Theology (Ed. Hamilton, E.F.),
London: Pickering and Inglis, 1960, pp.142-144.
[3] Christ does not divide
this inheritance up between believers, as though one believer should receive
provision or healing, and another not.
In that sense, Christ does not share out his inheritance among us. No. To
be joint heirs with Christ means that each of us inherits what Christ himself
has inherited and we each partake fully in this, and so all the promises of God
are given equally to every believer. We
all inherit the promise of provision, and we all inherit the promise of
healing, and so on. God’s intention is
to be faithful to every promise he has made and to do this in equal measure for
every believer in Christ.
[4] Taken from https://www.facebook.com/groups/1529142774081000/ by Windsor, A., accessed 05/01/2017.
[5] Brown, S. On Earth as We Are in
Heaven, Lulu Publishing: USA, 2015, p64.
[6]
Paxson, R. Life on the Highest
Plane, Chapter 13, Kindle Version, accessed
01.08.2018.
[7] Liardon, R.
(comp). John G. Lake: The Complete
Collection of His Life Teachings, “The Truth About Divine Healing”, Article
24, Laguna Hills: Roberts Liardon Ministries, 1999, p.509. Used with permission.
[8] See Lake, J.G. Diary of God’s General, Tulsa: Harrison House,
2004, p.61-62.
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