Andrew Murray’s Divine Healing is one of the quieter classics of the great South African pastor — a set of thirty-two short meditations on sickness, faith, and the body, written by a man who had himself been laid aside by illness and then restored. It is not a manual of techniques, and it makes no promises it cannot keep. It is a pastor thinking aloud, with an open Bible, about whether God still cares for the bodies of His children as tenderly as He cares for their souls. This guide walks you through what the book says, how it is put together, and how to read it thoughtfully today — including how to hold its bolder claims with an honest and generous mind.
What the book is, and why Murray wrote it
Andrew Murray (1828–1917) was a Dutch Reformed minister in South Africa, a leader of revival, and the author of devotional books that have never gone out of print. For years his own preaching voice was threatened by a throat ailment that silenced him. During a season of quiet in the 1880s he sought and received what he believed to be a healing, and he came away convinced that the New Testament expects far more of God for the body than the modern church tends to ask. Divine Healing is the fruit of that conviction — measured, scriptural, and warm rather than sensational.
Murray’s starting point is that a human being is a single, twofold creature — soul and body together — and that Christ came to redeem the whole of it. He anchors this in the healing of the paralytic, where Jesus links pardon and cure in one act: “that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins … Arise, take up thy bed” (Matthew 9:6). The same pairing runs through Scripture, from the psalmist who blesses the God “who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases” (Psalm 103:3) to the Servant of whom Isaiah writes, “Surely he hath borne our sicknesses and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). Murray’s case is essentially this: healing is not a side-show but part of the salvation Christ purchased, offered to faith.
How the book is structured
The book is built for slow, devotional reading. Each of the thirty-two chapters is a few pages long, opens with a text of Scripture, and turns a single facet of the subject over in the light. The early chapters lay the foundation — “Pardon and Healing,” “Jesus and the Doctors,” “Health and Salvation by the Name of Jesus” — establishing that the God of the covenant declared Himself “the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26) and that the risen Christ still acts through His name.
A middle cluster turns to the body itself: “Your Body Is the Temple of the Holy Ghost,” “The Body for the Lord,” “The Lord for the Body,” drawing on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6:13 that the body is not a throwaway shell but a dwelling consecrated to God. The later chapters take up the hard questions directly — “Sickness and Death,” “Is Sickness a Chastisement?,” “The Will of God” — before closing on faith and prayer in “The Prayer of Faith” and “Anointing in the Name of the Lord.” Because the chapters are self-contained, the book reads well a page at a time; because they build, it rewards reading straight through as well.
Worth noticing is how personal the material underneath is. Murray is not writing as a theorist about other people’s sickbeds. He had lived the frustration of a servant of God set aside by his own failing body, and he had walked through the long uncertainty of whether to seek healing at all. That experience gives the book its particular tone — neither the breezy triumphalism of a man who has never suffered, nor the weary resignation of one who has stopped hoping. He writes as someone who prayed his way from illness to strength and wanted the church to know that road was open.
The central themes
Faith and healing. The thread that ties the whole book together is faith — not as a technique for bending God’s arm, but as the open hand that receives what He offers. Murray returns again and again to the centurion whom Jesus commended: “as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee” (Matthew 8:13). For Murray, healing is granted in the measure of faith because faith is simply the heart fully opened to God:
Faith in God is nothing else than the full opening of the heart to receive everything from God; therefore man can only receive divine grace according to his faith; and this applies as much to divine healing as to any other grace of God.
Andrew Murray
The place of means. Murray does not despise doctors or dismiss medicine as sin — he is careful and pastoral here — but he does press a question the church rarely asks: whether believers have quietly settled for remedies when Scripture invites them to look first to God. His model is James 5:14-15, where the sick are told to call the elders, be anointed with oil, and prayed over, “and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” He notes how singular this promise is:
The prayer of faith! Only once does this expression occur in the Bible, and it relates to the healing of the sick.
Andrew Murray
Healing and holiness. This is the theme most easily missed and, for Murray, the most important. He never treats bodily health as an end in itself. The body is “for the Lord” — consecrated, surrendered, offered up — and healing matters because it draws a believer into deeper dependence and sanctification. The Great Commission itself, he notes, sent the disciples to preach and to heal (Mark 16:15–18), and the early church prayed for signs to accompany the word (Acts 4:29–30). Healing, in his reading, is meant to glorify God and to bind the healed more closely to Christ, not to make life comfortable.
Sickness and the will of God. Murray meets head-on the objection that stops most prayers before they start — perhaps it is simply not God’s will that I be well. He grants that suffering can be a Father’s loving discipline (Hebrews 12:10), and he does not pretend every sickness is sin or unbelief. But he refuses to let uncertainty become an excuse for never asking:
It is a great mistake to think that the child of God cannot know what is His will about healing. In order to know His divine will, we must be guided by the Word of God.
Andrew Murray
His counsel is to pray “Thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10) not as a shrug of resignation before praying but as the very posture in which believing prayer is offered — surrender and expectation held together.
Who should read it (and an honest word)
This book is for the believer who is ill and wants to think biblically about it; for anyone caring for the sick; and for readers who love Andrew Murray’s devotional writing and want to meet him on unfamiliar ground. It rewards a reader willing to sit with Scripture rather than skim for conclusions.
Honesty requires a word here, because thoughtful Christians differ on divine healing. Some hold, with Murray, that bodily healing is part of the atonement and may be claimed by faith in this age. Others — reading the same texts — believe the New Testament healings were signs marking a unique apostolic era, that God heals sovereignly and often through medicine, and that Paul’s own unhealed “thorn” (and Timothy’s stomach, and Trophimus left sick) shows healing is not always granted to faith. Both camps read Scripture seriously; neither is careless.
Ochorus offers Murray’s book because it is a devotional classic worth reading on its own terms, not to settle that debate. Read him as he asks to be read — a pastor urging the church to expect more of God — while weighing his stronger claims against the whole counsel of Scripture and the counsel of wise believers. Where he presses you to pray with more faith and less fatalism, let him; where he seems to promise more than the New Testament guarantees, hold it open-handedly. Murray himself would rather you meet God in prayer than agree with him about a doctrine.
It is also worth saying plainly what this book will not do. It will not guarantee that every prayer for healing is answered with a cure, and it does not teach that the sick are simply lacking faith — a cruelty Murray would have refused. He knew that saints suffer, that some are not healed, and that death itself comes to the faithful. What he asks is narrower and gentler than the caricature: that believers stop assuming God is indifferent to their bodies, and that they bring their sickness to Him with real expectation before they resign themselves to it. Read that way, even a reader who finally lands in a different theological camp can be warmed and challenged by him.
How to read it today
Read it slowly — a chapter a day suits its rhythm, with the opening Scripture read in full from your own Bible before Murray’s meditation. Keep two questions in view: What does this text actually say about God’s care for the body? and What is this asking of my faith? Notice how often Murray moves from healing to holiness; when he does, follow him there, because that is where the book is really pointing.
It reads beautifully alongside Murray’s better-known devotional works. His Waiting on God deepens the posture of dependence that Divine Healing assumes, and Humility guards against the subtle pride that can grow in anyone convinced they have found a truth others have missed. You can also explore the rest of his writings on his author page. Taken together, they show a consistent mind: God gives Himself fully to the soul that gives itself fully to Him.
For reflection
- Murray argues that Christ came to redeem the whole person, body and soul. Where have you unconsciously treated your body as beneath God’s concern, and what would change if you prayed over it as freely as you pray over your heart?
- He defines faith as “the full opening of the heart to receive everything from God.” Is there a request you have stopped bringing to God because you assume the answer is no?
- James 5:14-15 tells the sick to call the elders and be prayed over. Is your church a place where the sick are prayed for with expectant faith — and if not, what small step could you take?
- Murray insists healing is meant to lead to holiness, not comfort. If God answered your prayers for health, how would you want the answer to change the way you live?
- Christians differ sincerely on divine healing. How can you hold your own convictions with conviction and still honor a brother or sister who reads the same Scriptures differently?
