The Healing Ministry of Jesus

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His reputation continued to grow, and large crowds would gather to hear him and to have their sickness cured, but he would always go off to some place where he could be alone and pray.' (Luke 5:15-16)

Perhaps some readers may be offended to hear Jesus discussed solely as a faith healer, with the implication that he can be equated with a huge panoply of faith healers, many of whom were charlatans. Although it cannot be denied that Jesus was the archetypal healer-priest figure embodied in the earlier traditions of Greece and Egypt, it is instead our intention to show that faith healing held a deeper significance to Christ's ministry and was used as a symbolic tool by Jesus in a way that no other faith healer has ever approached or contemplated. This is why we devote an entire section to the faith healing career of Christ.

The concept of healing someone for the Hebrews entailed healing all that they were, and this attitude would have been shared by Christ himself. In fact, this is evidenced by Jesus's remark to a man who was lame. Jesus pointedly asked of him: 'Do you want to get well?' (John 5:6, NIV). His question was concerned with the mental attitude of his patient as well as his physical condition. When Christ healed the paralytic, he first healed his soul, and then his body (Matthew 9:2-7). Neither soul nor body was prioritized.

Even a rudimentary scan of the Bible reveals that the ministry of Christ and faith healing are concepts that are inextricably linked. Christ is said to be responsible for fifty paranormal occurrences recorded in the Gospels, although many of them would be viewed as the casting out of spirits rather than faith healing.

Jesus faced opposition virtually as soon as he began his public ministry. After healing the sick and casting out many evil spirits, his family were scandalized enough that they went to take charge of him, for they said 'He is out of his mind' (Mark 3:21). Even his mother Mary went to Capernaum to take charge of Jesus.

Jesus employed healing by touch: 'Then he touched their eyes, saying "According to your faith be it unto you". And their eyes were opened.' This was the origin of the practice of kings to touch the afflicted to ward off the king's evil. Sometimes this theme was varied by using spittle. Jesus himself employed this method, part of the lore of the time.

Sometimes an order was employed by Jesus in the healing process: 'Rise, take up thy bed and walk.' Jesus was also aware of the cathartic effect of the removal of unconscious guilt feelings: 'Your sins are forgiven you.' According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ sometimes brought about physical cures through the forgiveness of sin (Matthew 9:2-7). The early Christians followed his example and prayed for the healing of the sick (James 5:14-16). A sacrament of healing, the anointing of the sick, developed in the Catholic tradition, and faith healing services have been part of the Protestant tradition also.

The example of Jesus turning around in the crowd in the book of Mark is interesting:

'Who touched my clothes?' You see the people crowding against you,' his disciples answered, 'and yet you can ask, "Who touched me?"' But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it.

(Mark 5:30-32 NIV)

Jesus also seemed to be able to radiate a healing power about him, as when the woman suffering with a continual menstrual flow and thus ceremonially unclean touched Jesus's garment unobserved, only to find him turn around and demand: 'Who touched my garment?' Jesus had felt the healing power be drawn from him, even though his attention was focused elsewhere.

The story makes clear that it is her faith that cures her and not the magic of Jesus' robe, although at the time it was a widespread belief that cures could be brought about by touching a healer. Christ would heal hundreds of sufferers until too exhausted to carry on. He also said that others were endowed with this ability: 'He who believes in me will also do the works that I do.'

More individual healings occur in the New Testament than in the Old. At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus announced that the Kingdom of God was near (Mark 1:15) and immediately began healing the sick and casting out demons. Of the 3,774 verses in the four Gospels, 484 relate specifically to the healing of physical and mental illness and the resurrection of the dead. Of the 1,257 narrative verses in the Gospels, 484 verses are devoted to describing Jesus's healing miracles. The last miracle that Christ wrought before the crucifixion, as documented in St Luke, was perhaps also one of the most wonderful and awe-inspiring:

'And a certain one of them smote the servant of the high priest and struck off his right ear. But Jesus answered and said, "Suffer ye thus far." And he touched his ear and healed him.'

(Luke 22:50) The ability to heal was given to the seventy-two disciples:

Cure those who are sick and say, 'The Kingdom of God is very near to you'.

(Luke 10:9-10).

Jesus promised to everyone who believed in him that he will perform the same works as I do myself. (John 14:12). It was expected that in the early church the apostolate of healing would intensify. It is written that 'these will be the signs that will be associated with believers; they will lay their hands on the sick who will recover'

(Mark 16:16-18) If a layman was found to have the gift of healing it was considered to be a qualification for ordination.

In the first miracle after the Pentecost, Peter gave strength to a man of whom it was said that he had been 'lame from his mother's womb'. The apostle Paul saw a man at Lystra, who was thought to be 'a cripple from his mother's womb'. Paul implored the man in a loud voice to 'stand upright on thy feet', and thus the man rose to his feet.

When Eutychus fell from the third storey and was 'taken up dead', Paul restored him to life again. Paul, when visiting the island of Melita, appeared to the people of the island holding a viper. When the people saw that Paul came to no harm in spite of this, they came to the conclusion that he was a god. Paul is then credited with healing the diseases of the whole island. Healing, then, came to occupy the centre of the early church's activities, with successful cures being carried out by St Jerome.