We need the word trauma. It goes beyond pain or hurt. It means something about us has been damaged. And, although trauma has come to be applied to a good many things in our world which stretch its definition, that does not mean that trauma is not real. Indeed, in a world that is sick with sin and with sin-sick souls, every person on earth will experience trauma. At our own hands, at the hands of another, or simply as those under the curse that rests upon creation. Trauma is real.
And trauma can head in a lot of directions. It can be the chronic loneliness an individualistic society fosters. It can be a tragic physical accident. It can be the neglect of a parent who is lost in addiction. It can be the slow destruction of anxiety. It can be the dark shadow of abuse. Failure to address real trauma will always leave us walking with a limp, or perhaps not walking at all.
Most emphatically, as Christians we should never be a people who deny the reality of trauma. For the denial of destructive pain belongs to the fantasy of Eastern religions and denial of its evil to the fatalism of Islam. As Christians we must confess that we suffer physically, mentally, and spiritually in a world groaning under sin. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and a host of other diseases will not let us do otherwise.
Moreover, a quick flip through the Old Testament law or the ethical instruction of the epistles makes it very clear that the ancient social and physical world was probably very painful for many. Socially, we can all imagine what a harsh husband (1 Pet. 3:1-6) or threatening master (Exod. 21:2-21) looks like, especially without (Bible-shaped) modern law acting as a restraint. Medically, wine was sometimes the best way to suppress widespread stomach issues (1 Tim. 5:23), because there was no way to handle sickness with any sophistication or promise of recovery (Mark 5:25-26). The ancient world was such a harsh and brutal place that we could say trauma was the fabric of life.
That background makes the following truth all the more remarkable: into this world, God promises healing with an expectation that Jesus Christ will be sufficient to deal with all such things, however horrendous they might be. This article will seek to explore the biblical metaphor of healing as portrayed in the Old Testament, especially Isaiah, and how Jesus brings these hopes to their true fulfilment. It will then close with some reflections on how we might approach healing as Christians.
Wounding: Creation’s Curse and God’s Discipline
When Adam and Eve first sin, they bring God’s curse on the world. Present problems in the fruit of the womb and in the fruit of the land culminate in a future of death (Gen. 3:16-19). And these images for cursing continue to be embedded in God’s covenants with his people.
Indeed, when God is bringing people out of Egypt, he warns them: “If you will diligently listen to my voice… all the sickness which I put on Egypt, I will not put on you, for I am Yahweh who heals you” (Exod. 15:26, author’s translation here and throughout). And when he is bringing them into the second Eden, the promised land, he says, “I alone am he, there is no God besides me. I put to death and make alive, I strike and I heal, and there is no one who delivers from my hand” (Deut. 32:39). In context, this is a reaffirmation of God’s lordship in the Mosaic covenant.
Clearly, Israel’s holistic health (shalom) depended on God, both because he could strike in judgement or heal in grace. And this is exactly how the book of Isaiah develops and broadens the wounding and healing that come from God.
Struck in Order to Be Healed: Isaiah’s Use of the Metaphor
In the foundational introductory chapter, Isaiah bemoans Israel’s sin and its terrible consequences:
Using the metaphor of wounding, Isaiah shows that the discipline of God has brought Israel into desperate straits and they are afflicted by the surrounding nations (Isa. 1:8-9).
And, at least initially, Isaiah’s prophetic calling won’t change this. Isaiah will call out, “hear well, but do not understand. See well, but do not know… lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and there would be healing” (Isa. 6:9-10). In their idolatry, Israel is dumber than the common donkey, for it at least knows and acknowledges its master (Isa. 1:2-4).
Israel’s spiritual apostasy would lead to holistic destruction.
And yet judgment is not the only word. Isaiah 30:18-26 holds out a vision of a totally renewed Israel (and likely creation). God longs to be gracious and rises up to show compassion so that weeping will be abolished. Israel’s eyes will see their teacher and their ears will hear his word (Isa. 30:20-21). This will bring renewed safety and provision in the promised land. And what is the way that we can understand this renewing work of God? “On that day God will bind up the break of his people, the wound of his strike he will heal” (Isa. 30:26). Here we have the lack of healing in Isaiah 6:8-13 reversed: God’s people will see and know him. This will be spiritual healing and bring renewal to the earth.
And the mission of the Servant, who is to restore Israel, is central to this healing. Yes, he brings a kingdom of shalom (Isa. 52:7), but there is much more. For he is a suffering King:
In language that carefully follows the metaphor of wounding and healing, the suffering and death of the Servant are the means by which God’s people are restored spiritually and physically. Indeed, the fact that the Servant suffers the same wounds and striking as described in Isaiah 1:5-6 seems to clarify the nature of his suffering. It is substitutionary and punishment-bearing.
To be sure, when Isaiah says, “that which they have not heard, they will understand” (Isa. 52:15), it can only mean that this death of the Servant will reverse the hardness of heart with which Israel has struggled. The description of the Servant in Isaiah 61:1 clarifies the portrait. There the Servant seeks to “bind up the brokenhearted” and “open the blind eyes of prisoners.” The Servant not only accomplished healing and shalom in his death, but he is also the herald by which that good news is announced.
In summary, the suffering Servant of the Lord will undo God’s wounds of discipline and restore shalom to the people of God. All that remains for the people of God in Isaiah’s time is to turn to God and wait. The proclamation is powerful and a decision cannot be avoided: “shalom, shalom for the one far and near, says the Lord, and I would heal him… there is no shalom for the wicked” (Isa. 57:19, 21).
Healing Accomplished: Jesus Bore Our Wounds
The survey of wounding and healing in the old covenant given above might leave open the question of whether spiritual or physical renewal is in view. However, Jesus makes it abundantly clear: it is both.
On the one hand, when Jesus is explaining the parable of the sower and the lack of response to kingdom preaching, he cites Isaiah 6 as the paradigm: “Seeing they do not see… lest they turn and be forgiven” (Mark 4:12). If Israel would see, hear, and turn, God would forgive them. Jesus’ use of forgiveness rather than healing (which is an intentional difference with both the Hebrew and Greek text) shows how the justice of God underlies the wounding in Isaiah. It is a spiritual matter.
Later on in Mark 8:17-18, Jesus will clarify how important this healing is: “Do you still not understand, are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see and ears do you not hear?” Clearly, the disciples, in their inability to comprehend, are failing to see the true nature of the gospel of the kingdom and so they still do not have the healing needed.
In contrast, blind Bartimaeus cries out for mercy and is healed, receiving sight (Mark 10:46-52). He rises and follows Jesus: an indicator of what true discipleship means. In summary, Mark concentrates on the spiritual plane of the healing that Jesus would bring: forgiveness of sin and true knowledge of God.
On the other hand, we have Matthew’s Gospel which makes very clear that the death of the Servant is healing in the most complete sense. After a session of healing at Peter’s house, Matthew notes that this took place in order to fulfill what Isaiah had said: “He received our sicknesses and bore our diseases” (Matt. 8:17). This is the Greek Old Testament of Isaiah 53:4, which orients slightly more strongly on sickness than the Hebrew text. However, what is most pertinent here is how Matthew understands fulfilment.
Matthew did not think that Jesus was “bearing with” people and so healing them. Neither the Hebrew nor the Greek text can bear that sense. It can only bear the sense that Jesus had the weight of their sicknesses upon himself. And so this healing is prophetic foreshadowing: it looks forward to the cross.
Jesus’ ministry is shining abroad the healing that his wounds will bring. Matthew believes that Jesus’ substitutionary suffering has come to bring shalom and healing in the widest sense (see Matt. 13:14-17).
Healing Dignified
Knowing this vision of Jesus, the suffering healer, we honour healing. Whether it be through God’s brilliant design of the body, medicinal supplements (natural or pharmaceutical), or the surprising supernatural power of God, it is a merciful gift on this side of death.
Conversely, we dishonour death. Although any trial is an opportunity to grow (Jas. 1:2-4), death is always an enemy and never natural or innately good. And, as many other parts of the globe are still keenly aware of, all of our sicknesses and ailments are harbingers of death.
So, like our Saviour, we should fight death vehemently. And yet we recognize that, should Christ not return soon, death will take every one of us. Some for eternity, some temporarily. For those who put our hope in the wounds of Christ, we live in hope.
I have no doubt that in my younger years (and cessationist leanings) I was overly narrow (and probably not a little secularized) in my approach to healing and in my questioning of how broadly to apply “by his wounds we are healed.” But I was likely asking the wrong questions. I think it is probably better to ask a variety of other questions: Where else could there be complete and permanent healing for all things other than in the wounds of Jesus Christ? How soon will this be brought to bear?
Wherever we land on those questions, we must confess that the death of Christ is the only sure hope for undoing the curse under which our world groans.
Healing: Distorted, Deferred, and Displayed
Yet we can ask with Isaiah, “how long, O Lord?” I can still remember vividly sitting in a rural village. We were visiting a variety of different homes, and at one particular home, we came upon a woman who had a heartbreaking story. A year earlier, a charismatic “Christian” teacher had swept through the village and had promised this woman that, like Sarah in the Bible, she would have a child a year from then.
And there we were, one year later, seeking to share the good news with this woman. Unsurprisingly, she seemed very hesitant to believe anything we might have to say. Her look said, “I am not falling for this again. It hurts too much.” And who could blame her?
Perhaps we are less inclined to the error of the preacher mentioned above, but we may make another: the assumption that the methodology of modern science will (almost) defeat death. If all sickness is a harbinger of death, we ought to recognize that any and all healing is God’s gift of life and that all medical treatment, however helpful, is just like our life: a vapour that will pass.
Our hope for healing is a long game. In the context of the groaning for a new creation and new bodies, Paul writes, “For we were saved in hope. Hope which is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which is seen. But if that which we do not see, we hope for, with perseverance we eagerly wait” (Rom. 8:24-25). The charismatic preacher wasn’t wrong about God’s desire to heal, but he misunderstood God’s sovereign dispensing of it.
Of course, God can perform “supernatural” healings now (physical, physiological, mental, or otherwise) and sometimes he is merciful to do so. An older charismatic friend had prayed for the supernatural healing of others many times in his life, but was honest to say that he had never seen remarkable answers to such prayers.
Until, on one such occasion, while we were serving together, God was gracious to answer and miraculously restore a boy from a very serious sickness. By his wounds we are healed. And sometimes that healing is now.
We know that the healing of all our wounds and traumas will happen when Jesus makes all things new, and sometimes we get tastes of it now. Such experiences are like merciful glimpses into the complete healing of eternity secured by the death of Christ. But even if our wounds stay with us for our whole earthly lives, we have complete confidence in the future healing that is coming in Christ: shalom, shalom to those far and near.
