Healings in the Gospels - A Brief Summary

This post will list a brief summary of some of the more salient points regarding the significance of healing as presented in the Gospels. To my mind there are dozens more that could also be listed, but the ones that follow are those that particularly stand out to me.

1. At its most basic level healing is a demonstration of care and concern by God for the human condition, which in turn serves as a moral example of divine love in action instructing us to also actively care for our fellow humans.

2. Healing functions as a sign and metaphor for salvation, indicating God's intent to restore and make whole again humanity. Just as healing was offered freely and given to all who called upon Jesus during his earthly ministry, so is salvation offered and given to all who call upon Jesus today.

3. Healing is indicative of the divine-human exchange brought about through Jesus Christ wherein righteousness and immortality are exchanged for sin and death between Christ and repentant, believing humanity. Healing serves to underscore the divine exchange that takes place in the atonement.

4. Healing is a sign confirming Jesus' divine identity, power, and authority, including his right and privilege to forgive sins and reconcile sinners to God.

5. Healing is a call to repentance and faith in Jesus, and thus when experienced or witnessed necessarily entails moral accountability to divine justice. (This may not at first seem apparent, but the lesson is drawn out from Jesus' indictment of those towns in which many of his healing miracles took place but failed to repent.)

6. Healing is an underscoring of the goodness of the material creation, the diginity of the human body, and God's love for the entire human. The fact that healing came via the incarnated Son of God serves doubly to make this point.

7. Healing is especially a sign pointing to the resurrection of the righteous, which is the ultimate healing. It serves to inspire hope in God's promise to restore all things and to imbue us with incorruptibility, glory, and immortality.

It is this final point which most excites me, and about which I hope to write at further length in another post. Remember, heaven is good, but the resurrection is better!