DID JESUS REDEEM US FROM OUR DISEASES

WHEN HE ATONED FOR OUR SINS?

(NOTE-If you, Reader, have been taught to regard sickness as a "thorn in the flesh" which must remain, we would urge you to read the sermon on "Paul's Thorn" before you read any other sermon in this book. Otherwise you will likely miss the force of the scriptural arguments presented in other parts of the book.)

Before answering the above question from the Word of God, I invite your attention to a few facts taught in the Scriptures which bear on this subject.

The Scriptures declare, in Romans 5:12, that "By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin." Here it is plainly stated that death entered the world by sin. Therefore it is clear that disease, which is incipient death, entered into the world by sin. Now, since disease entered by sin, its true remedy must be found in the redemption of Christ. Since disease reached us through the power of Satan, it being called the oppression of the devil (Acts 10:38), what power, when nature fails, can remove it but the power of the Son of God? As soon as disease has advanced beyond the power of nature to recover us, it will result

in death in every case unless removed by the power of God. This all honest physicians will admit, for they claim only the power to assist nature. not to heal. In this event, anything that would hinder the power of God thus supplementing nature would make recovery impossible. Accordingly, James says: "Confess your faults one to another . . . that ye may be healed" meaning that otherwise ye cannot be healed.

When disease has advanced beyond the power of nature, neither nature, nor the physician, nor even prayer, can save the sufferer until he confesses his sins, unless God, for some sovereign purpose of His own, removes the disease. Since disease is a part of the curse, its true remedy must be the cross, for who can remove the curse but God, and how can God justly do it except by substitution? The Bible teaches, as one writer puts it, that disease is the physical penalty of iniquity, but that Christ has borne in His body all our physical liabilities on account of sin, and that therefore our bodies are released judicially from disease. Through Christ's redemption we may all have, as a part of the "earnest of our inheritance" the "life also of Jesus. . . made manifest in our mortal flesh," to supplement nature until our work is finished. In the same way that we may receive the "firstfruits" of our spiritual salvation, we can receive the "firstfruits" of our physical salvation.

Now, to the question,

DID JESUS REDEEM US FROM OUR DISEASES WHEN HE ATONED FOR OUR SINS?

If, as some teach, healing is not in the Atonement, why were types of the Atonement given in connection with bodily healing throughout the Old Testament? In the 12th chapter of Exodus, why were the Israelites required to eat the flesh of the passover lamb for physical strength, unless we can receive physical life, or strength, from Christ, who, Paul says, is "our Passover, sacrificed for us?" 765 years after the institution of the passover, we read in II Chronicles, 30th chapter, 20th verse, that, "The Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people" when they kept the passover. Accordingly, Paul, in I Corinthians 11:30, speaks of the failure of the Corinthians to rightly "estimate the body" (Weymouth's translation) of "Christ our Passover" as the reason why many among them were "weak and sickly

The Lord's Supper is more than an ordinance, because we may partake of Christ while we are partaking of the emblems of His death and the benefits thereof. In Christ there is both bodily and spiritual life, and surely there is no better time for availing ourselves of the privilege of having the "life also of Jesus. . . made manifest in our mortal flesh." (II Cor. 4:11).

HEALING TAUGHT IN OLD TESTAMENT TYPES

Again, in Leviticus 14:18, we read of the priest making atonement for the cleansing of the leper.

Why an atonement for the leper's healing if healing for us is not in the Atonement of Christ? The types in Leviticus, 14th and 15th chapters, show us that it was invariably through atonement that sickness was healed. This, to our mind, is a complete answer to the question we are discussing, should we go no further, because all of these typical atonements point to, and prefigure Cal

vary.

Again, Jesus tells us, in Luke 4:19, that He was anointed "to preach the acceptable year of the Lord," referring to the Old Testament year of Jubilee. This shows us that the year of Jubilee is strikingly typical of gospel blessings, for here He, Himself, applies the year of Jubilee to the Gospel era.

Leviticus 25:9 shows us that no blessing of the year of Jubilee was to be announced by the sounding of the trumpet until the Day of Atonement. On this day a bullock was slain as a sin-offering, and the mercy seat sprinkled with blood. No mercy was offered until the blood of the atonement sprinkled the mercy seat, because it would be a judgment seat if not sprinkled with blood. This teaches us that no mercy or blessing of the Gospel is offered to us irrespective of Christ's Atonement.

RECOVERY OF ALL LOST IN THE FALL

Through the Fall we lost everything. Jesus recovered all through His atonement. It was on the Day of Atonement that God said, "Ye shall return

every man to his possession." The order in the year of Jubilee is, first the atonement, then the sounding of the trumpet of the Jubilee, with the glad tidings "ye shall return every man to his possession." So, now, the order is the same; first, Calvary, then the Gospel trumpet that He "bare our sins" and "bare our sicknesses," etc., to be sounded "to every creature;" showing us that we may return "every man to his possession."

God's seven redemptive names, one of which is Jehovah-Rapha, "I am the Lord that healeth thee," shows us what lost possessions "every man" may return to during our dispensation. The two outstanding possessions to be restored during the Gospel era are health for soul and body; therefore, forgiveness and healing were offered universally wherever Christ preached "the acceptable year of the Lord," in order that the "inner" and "outer" man might be whole and ready for the service of God, "thoroughly furnished unto every good work," so they could finish their course.

Some of the Fundamentalists who attack the Christian Scientists for believing we can be saved irrespective of Calvary make exactly the same blunder when they say they believe in healing but that it is offered irrespective of Calvary. It is to me, as well as to them, a mystery how anyone can say that the blood of Christ was just as efficacious flowing in His veins as it was shed, in the face of every bleeding sacrifice of the Old Testament to the contrary and the statement "without the shed