How Jesus Heals You

This is the Tenth post from Chapter 4 of Friends With God: Living The Life Of Jesus In Us. Throughout this chapter and the previous chapter we have been exploring the false doctrine of the “Penalty For Sin”, ” invented by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th Century A.D.

In the previous post we explored Isaiah 53, showing that it is not talking about this false teaching of the Penalty For Sin, but is simply showing how Christ died. In this post we will continue to examine Isaiah 53 in context, so as to further clarify the meaning of these verses.

Physical Illness And Spiritual Sin

Please take the time to read all of Isaiah 53 in order to get the broader overview of these verses. In verse 6 it mentions that Christ was to ‘bear our sins’ (by people sinning against him and killing him) but in verse 4 it says that he had also ‘borne our griefs (pains) and carried our sorrows (sicknesses)’.

What does this mean?

This is quoted by Matthew, where he explains what Isaiah means:

And when the evening was come, they brought to him many possessed by demons, and he cast out the (evil) spirits with a word, and healed all that were ill; so that it should be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases. (Matt 8:16-17)

Matthew tells us that Isaiah’s prophecy meant that Christ was to heal many people of their illnesses- which was a major part of Jesus’ role when he came to the earth as the Messiah. These works were to be a major proof that Jesus was the Messiah. (Luke 10:13, 19:37, John 5:20, 5:36, 14:11)

Despite all his miracles of healing, Jesus was not recognized by the leaders as the Messiah, but was murdered by them! (Isa 53:6 )

The great healer was killed by the leaders, many of whom had actually seen Jesus healing someone, or knew of someone whom he had healed! (Matt 12:9-14, Mark 3:1-6, Luke 6:6-11, John 11:45-57, John 5:1-18)

On the one hand he healed those who were physically sick (bearing their sicknesses away from them) and on the other he was physically beaten and murdered.

In allowing this, Jesus yielded to God’s will, as discussed in the previous post, which was to put up with the sins of the people killing him. This incredibly sad irony of Isaiah 53:4-6 is inescapable, but it’s also very physical.

These verses in Isaiah are a powerful indictment on the mental and spiritual state of these people. Yet, despite all this evil and foolish stupidity, he was still able to say ‘forgive them as they do not know what they do’! (Luke 23:34)

Physical Healing

Some modern-day teachers who are caught up in the “penalty for sin” doctrine say that the way that physical healing is “allowed to happen” by God, is that “Christ has paid for our physical sins by being beaten, and thereby was able to heal people”. Whereas the spiritual healing is seen by these same people as “Christ paying the penalty for sin by dying”.

Yet no such distinction is made in these verses, or any other verses. There is no such thing as ‘physical sin’ in comparison to ‘spiritual sin’. This concept is just another made up idea associated with the punitive requirement for Christ to pay a penalty for sin. 

What we see in scripture is that when Jesus healed people, he bore (carried) these sicknesses away from them.

There is no context to suggest in either Matthew or Isaiah to indicate that he needed to pay a penalty for the ability to to heal people. What is evident, if we read the scripture, is that there is obviously no mystical transfer of a payment of sin from one person to another.

The Context Of Isaiah 53

We just need to read the context of 1Peter 2 and Isaiah 53 and Matthew 8:17, in order to see that they are all talking about the same thing- the terrible irony of the great healer being murdered by those who knew he was a healer!

There is nothing mystical in it- insanity probably, but nothing mystical!

If Christ’s “paying a penalty for sin” were actually implied by these verses, then it certainly is not spelt out in any way. The references to Isaiah by both Matthew and Peter are minimal, just one short sentence by each of them.

We therefore need to take a closer look at Isaiah 53 in order to understand what it’s actually talking about, for the New Testament certainly does not indicate that it has anything to do with the idea of a penalty for sin.

A lot of the confusion arises from the very poor and contrived translation of these verses. If you look at the original Hebrew in Isaiah, you will see that the term ‘our’ in Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows is not there. Nor is ‘our’ in But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. Nor is the word ‘us’ in the iniquity of us all. To provide some idea of what could actually be meant by Isaiah 53, I have provided the following translation, without the added words:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and hid faces from him; he was despised, and esteemed not. Surely he hath borne griefs, and carried sorrows (he healed us as Matthew tells us): yet (some) esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. (the great healer is assumed to be stricken by God) But (in reality) he was wounded by transgressions, bruised by iniquities: (it was not God who had stricken him but transgressors) the instruction of peace was upon him; (we are instructed to follow his way of peace) and stripes healed. (then perhaps our stripes will be healed?) All sheep have gone astray; have turned men away; the Lord has (allowed to be) laid on him the iniquity of all. (Isa 53:3-6)

These verses talk of Jesus’ being unjustly killed, not of taking on our penalty for sin.

This is my take on these verses, what do you think?

The above reading of these verses fits much better with the context than those terms which have been added by the translators. No doubt these translators were strongly influenced by the doctrine of the penalty for sin, as developed by Anselm some 500 years before the King James version of the Bible was completed, as discussed in this previous post.

The reality is that these verses, as originally inspired by God, don’t give any foundation to the concept of some kind of “penalty for sin” being paid for by the Messiah’s death.

The only way to put such a perverse interpretation onto these verses is by adding words that are not inspired. Yet only a very few verses of Isaiah are actually quoted in the New Testament, and then in a very different context. As we have seen, these verses simply can’t be used to justify the concept of “penalty for sin” doctrine.

If Isaiah 53 was such a critical chapter to demonstrate that Jesus came to “pay the penalty for sin”, then why don’t other New Testament writers quote it in full? They don’t quote it for the simple reason that in its original wording there is nothing about our griefs, our sorrows our transgressions, or our iniquities.

The clean unadulterated meaning of Isaiah 53 is that Jesus was killed by unjust people for being righteous.

That is what scripture tells us.

To add anything else to it is to distort scripture and to teach as doctrine the commandments of men. (Matt 15:9, Mark 7:7)