Jesus’ Ministry of Healing

I love to study healing in the Bible. I love how many people Jesus healed. A quick Google search gave me 12 verses with some variation of the phrase “Jesus healed them all.” Nowhere in the Bible is a person turned away from healing. Nowhere does someone meet Jesus and fail to be healed! That’s amazing. It builds my faith. I firmly believe in the healing ministry of Jesus. I think it’s His divine will to heal us from anything and everything that comes against us. He heals us from physical disease. He heals us from emotional and mental diseases. He heals us from demonic oppression resulting in physical symptoms. He heals us all from everything. I don’t think sickness brings glory to God. Call me crazy, but I just can’t find anywhere in the gospels where someone came to Jesus for healing and He said, “Oh, I would heal you, but your sickness brings me glory, so I’m going to leave you the way you are for a while.”

I know that many people don’t see physical healing in their lifetime. I know many people of faith struggle with illnesses as well. There are many things the Bible tells us are possible with faith that we do not experience for ourselves. Some people go for dispensational theories of various workings of the Holy Spirit and Jesus in various time periods that explain the lack of the miraculous in our current age. I don’t buy into those either. Sometimes I think the reason we don’t see healings in this day and age is because we don’t know what healing means. We don’t understand how healing works. We are so caught up in our own view of the world, in our scientific enlightenment, etc. that we do not realize our unbelief. We have faith, but our faith is overpowered by doubt.

I think a big part of this comes down to a language barrier. I speak English. My Bible is translated into English. When I read my Bible, I read a language that I understand and that conveys the truth of God’s Word to me in the language that I can understand. But the Bible wasn’t written in English. The New Testament stories of Jesus and His miracles weren’t written in English. Paul’s letters that give us deep and precious lessons on doctrine and theology weren’t written in English. They were written in Greek. I don’t speak Greek. This doesn’t seem like a big deal because translations of the Bible abound in all kinds of languages. I don’t have to speak Greek to read the Bible and understand it. That’s true. But there are some things in Greek that just don’t make it into the English equivalent. In every language, words possess a range of meanings. There is the dictionary meaning of a word: how we would define it. There is the understood meaning of a word: this involves the context and the pictures we as a culture associate with a given word. Both meanings are important in written communication.

So when I read a word in English, I understand both meanings of it, and my picture of what is happening in the story is based on that understanding. Sometimes, however, my understanding and my picture is wrong. Jesus healed the sick. Story after story talks about the sick being brought to Jesus for healing. When I read the word sick, I get a picture in my mind of what that word means, but is it the full picture. Did you know that there are five different Greek words that have all been translated as “sick” in English? Looking into each of these words and their meanings gives us a bigger picture of Jesus’ healing ministry, and what it can mean in our lives today.

Nosos

In Matthew 4: 23, we read: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” The word here is nosos. Nosos is a Greek word that means disease, sickness, or malady. It referred to a chronic persistent disease. Typically, this word referred to a terminal affliction for which there is no natural cure. If you have a nosos sickness, there was no hope for you in terms of “modern medicine.” There was nothing doctors could do you for. It was expected that this disease would run its course, and you would die as a result of it. But here we find Jesus healing nosos disease among the people.

If you are struggling with a terminal affliction, if you are struggling with something for which modern medicine has no treatment plan, no good prognosis, no method of cure, Jesus is your answer. He can heal you. There is nothing that can afflict your body that confuses or confounds Jesus. He is the Great Physician. When modern medicine has failed you, and you feel hopeless, turn to Jesus. Bring your nosos to Him. He will not turn you away.

Malakia

Let’s look at Matthew 4:23 again: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” The word here is malakia. Malakia is a Greek word that means softness, weakness, illness, or sickness. This word refers to a condition that softens or weakens its victim. It is a debilitating or crippling disease. It can also refer to a moral weakness. If you have a malakia illness, you will live, but you will not be able to walk properly or be able to function properly. You will be weak and debilitated. In some instances, this word was used to refer to illness that caused a decrease in muscle fiber in a patient. Even here, we find Jesus healing malakia diseases among the people.

If you are struggling with a debilitating illness, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, Jesus is your answer. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Jesus has the ability to miraculously, or by a process of healing, bring your body up to full strength. He can bring your body into alignment and make it physically function properly again. He can also heal emotional and mental illnesses which can be debilitating and crippling. He heals depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. He gives us moral strength. When you bring Jesus into the situation, He makes things function the way they were created to function.

Kakos

Let’s go to the next verse. Matthew 4:24: “News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.” The word here is kakos. Kakos is a Greek word that means bad or evil, even in the widest sense. It refers to something that is inwardly foul or rotten or coming from an inward source of evil or malice. A person with a kakos illness is grievously vexed with a demonic spirit. They are mentally tormented or mentally confused. Their inward nature is going contrary to the will of God.

We’ve already shown that Jesus healed mental illnesses under the umbrella of malakia, but just in case you were unconvinced of the extent to which Jesus healed people who struggled mentally we are adding kakos. It does not matter what causes your mental illness, whether it is debilitating or you are able to function with it, whether it is physical in nature or demonic in nature, Jesus can heal you of it. Your healing maybe instantaneous or miraculous. Your healing may be a process of healing over a period of time. Your healing may involve therapy (Greek word  therapeuó translated as healing in many of the stories of Jesus’ healing ministry like the man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5). Regardless of the method God uses to bring healing to you, it is still God who is able to work out this healing in your life. Take it to Him.

Mastigos

In Mark 5: 24-29, we read about the woman with the issue of blood. You may recall that she had suffered with this condition for twelve years. She had gone to all the physicians in the hopes of getting better, but she had only gotten worse. In Mark 5:29, we read: “Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.” The word here is mastigos. In Greek, the word mastigos means affliction or plague. Mastigos comes from the root mastix, which refers to a whip or scourge. It was a word used in connection with torture. Think of the Roman cat-of-nine-tails. That was a mastix. In Roman times, they would bring a prisoner out to the post, tie them up to the post and beat them with the whip until they were almost dead…almost, but not quite. They would take them back to their cell where they were allowed to recover and heal. Then, they would bring them back to the post and beat them with the whip again until they were almost dead…almost, but not quite. They would again take them back to their cell where they were allowed to recover and heal. This went on and on for some time. The word mastigos, therefore, refers to a disease that carries a torturous amount of pain. It is any sickness of disease that repeatedly strikes you–not enough to kill you–but enough to cause you tortuous pain and to keep your life disrupted.

Are you suffering from unbearable pain? Do you have a condition that continues to wreck havoc on your body? Is there a sickness that keeps coming at you and keeps coming at you over and over again, allowing you to heal for brief periods before it returns again? Are you suffering from a disease that disrupts your life? Bring it to Jesus. He healed this kind of illness as well, and He can heal you too. Jesus said that he came that those who believed may have life to the full…abundant life. It is not His will for you to suffer from this anymore. He wants to give you quality of life.

And finally, there is:

Arrostos

Matthew 14:14 “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” The word here is arrostos. In Greek, this word means not strong, feeble, ill, sickly. Literally, it means “will not leave.” It is a disease that is chronic, that lingers. It refers to a person who is weak, unable to move. They are homebound, bedfast, or comatose. They may have lost consciousness altogether. Jesus healed these people, too.

The interesting thing about this word is that it is also used in Mark 16: 18 where Jesus is telling His disciples about the signs that will follow believers. Mark 16: 18: “they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” The word here is arrostos. Jesus was saying that not only did He have the authority to heal any and all kinds of sickness, even sickness that left people comatose, but He was giving that authority to us as well. We can lay hands on anyone, with any sickness–even the ones with no hope left…even the comatose–and they would respond.

It does not matter how it looks to outside observers. It does not matter whether or not you are able to get out and about or do the things you want to do. It does not even matter if you are physically or spiritually comatose, Jesus can heal you. And if you believe the words of the Bible Jesus will heal you.

So release your faith. Stand on the promise that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Stand on the promise that if He healed all of the sick and afflicted during His ministry on earth, His ministry from heaven is the same. Jesus didn’t turn anyone away. Neither will He turn you away. No matter what category you might fall in to, Jesus healed them all!