Healing and Restoration

One of the things I have lately been fascinated with is how Jesus healed people. He used a variety of techniques. Jesus touched, spoke words of forgiveness, healing, and restoration, commanded healing, and was touched.

Equally important to those with infirmities, including mobility, vision, physical ailments, raised from the dead, and possession, was the fact that, now healed, those Jesus encountered were restored. Being healed meant a return to families and communities. It also meant a return to places of worship. You see, having any infirmity was deemed by the religious circles as the same as being unclean. Being unclean often meant you were expelled from your home, your family, your community, and your synagogue. Imagine the ways the tag “unclean” imposed the burdens of rejection and isolation. Leviticus designated some major illnesses as unclean because others could contract them. While the blind and the lame were not considered ritually unclean, a physical disability prevented them from becoming priests or serving in the temple. Human beings are the ones who made these a part of a sinful past, i.e., John 9:2: “His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered Neither the man nor his parents sinned.

 

The point is this. Jesus came to bring not only life but abundant life (John 10:10). Jesus’ ministry was prophesied by Isaiah 61:1-2 “The Spirit of God, my Lord is upon me because Yahweh my Lord has anointed me to preach good news (the Gospel) to the meek, poor, oppressed; He has sent me to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom and liberty for the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and grace, and the our Yahweh’s Day of Vengeance; to comfort all the mourners (Expanded from the Orthodox Jewish Bible translation).

 

If this is so, then healing must be more than just a physical change. Healing must include psychological and spiritual changes as well. The changes in the healed must also include their return to family, community, and church. Lastly, the changes in the healed are to impact family, community, and church.

 

We have all experienced healing from God via the medical profession, prayer, lifestyle changes, etc. Is it now up to us who have been healed to use that healing to restore our lives in families, communities, and our church so that those places and the people in them experience that healing power as well? Be healed in the powerful name of Jesus. Walk in that healing and offer its benefits wherever you find yourself this week. Amen.