Why God Heals Sickness

SICKNESS is an awful thing. It has no place in God's creation, and no part in God's nature. Sadly, though, people often try to explain who God is and what He does in terms of human experience, somehow linking things like illness and disease to His purpose for man. But this is clearly not like the God we learn about in Christ Jesus' life. Through Christian healing we can understand for ourselves the truth that God's nature and creation are good. Healing, then, helps us to understand God, and understanding God merits our strongest efforts.

So many grand spiritual characteristics of God are shown to us in the Bible's pages. Goodness, love, power, presence, creativity -- the list goes on and on. But most of all the Bible shows us God's allness. This allness comes naturally from the fact that God is infinite Spirit, or the All-in-all. And God, the All-in-all, surely has the ability and power to govern what He creates. We read in Isaiah, ``I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.''

Since God has all power, how could sickness have power? Sickness is not allied to or connected with God in any way, because its effect is totally unlike the goodness and love of God. Sickness is completely foreign to the spiritual nature of what God creates.

Healing, then, is a practical illustration of God's allness. It doesn't change God's nature, of course, but it helps us see what is already true about God and His spiritual, perfect creation, man.

By healing physically through spiritual means, Christ Jesus showed with authority that an understanding of the real nature of God heals disease. Some grasp of the ``why'' of this healing was often reflected in the response of those who saw it. When Christ Jesus healed the man ``sick of the palsy,'' for example, those watching saw this man actually rise to his feet immediately after hearing Jesus say, ``Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.'' This must have seemed like a wondrous, wondrous thing! And what did the people do? In Matthew's words, ``When the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God'' -- they showed their increased love and respect for God.

Because man is God's likeness, His reflection, the idea of sickness plaguing man is every bit as unthinkable as sickness plaguing God. As Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, points out in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``God is as incapable of producing sin, sickness, and death as He is of experiencing these errors.''

All of this goes right to the bottom of what man really is. Man is the offspring of God. Because sickness is totally unlike God, it can never be a part of His creation. The image of a vulnerable organism that sickness would present is clearly not man, the spiritual image and likeness of God that the Bible teaches. When his healing word caused the palsied man suddenly to rise and walk, Jesus proved that man is spiritual and showed that understanding this can make dramatic differences in our everyday lives.

The truth that man is made in God's image works as spiritual law. God governs with this law, and it works to heal because it shows us what God is. We place ourselves under the protection of this healing law as we begin to obey the demands it makes on us to open our hearts to God. Then we know more clearly every day why God heals, and we actually experience that healing.