THE HONOR OF ILLNESS
PHILIPPIANS 2:26-27 “For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.”
The Apostle Paul, under inspiration, did not consider he had a right to demand physical healing, even for such a faithful laborer as Epaphroditus. He rather recognized it as the mercy of God. (verse 27). Mercy, of course, being something God shows to us that is not deserved in any way, actually, we have deserved the opposite.
Some teach that healing, bodily healing, is the birthright of the Christian, and that it is “in the atonement” and if so, gives every saint the right to demand it when ill. However, this is not the context of that “healing” of “by His stripes we are healed.” Paul never demanded miraculous healing for himself, Timothy, Trophimus or Epaphroditus, though they all were taken ill, some chronically ill. He asked for their healing in prayer, no doubt, but he did not demand it, as some do. He threw himself and those ill, upon the mercy of God for His will to be done in sickness or in health.
It is not a lack of faith which causes sickness to continue, generally, it may fall into the category of ‘not asking’ and ‘not receiving’ as other things do, unasked prayer is definitely unanswered prayer, and we must “ask in faith.” But, Paul was a man of great faith in a great God. He realized that illness had a sanctifying purpose in God’s plans, as it was in the case of Job, an honored servant of God.
We must remember this Biblical teaching, and the principle to “rightly divide the word of truth.” And when illness strikes, we must not get ‘carried away’ by men’s ideas about it, or others’ experiences. God deals personally with each of us, He orders our lives according to His will and for our eternal good, if we are His own children. Submission is the key for us, submission to anything He sends our way, for He gives us grace which is sufficient to bear it and we must apply that grace in His strength.
We must learn and grow from this kind of experience, as we must do with all the experiences of life. Sickness is a time of real reflection and searching the heart before God and an opportunity to allow the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and lives for “some wicked way in us,” which indeed may be because we are yet in our imperfect state and must daily ‘judge ourselves.’
In this sense, illness can be an enriching blessing to us, a stepping stone to higher heights with the Lord, instead of a stumbling block.
A time of illness or affliction is then, to be a time of sanctifying us more fully, setting us more apart for God to use us more effectively, thus God is honoring us when we are taken ill. So that we may glorify Him more with our lives.
We may ask, “cannot God heal all sicknesses?” The answer is “yes” but does God always heal the sicknesses of His children? The answer is “no.” Paul prayed for recovery three times, and God answered with, “my grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness.” And so it is with us. Let us pray fervently for healing and trust His will to be done in us and through us, and submit to it.
In His Marvelous Grace,
Pastor Ed Bowen
