Christ Our Healer

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. JAMES 5:14

This is the most contested wheel of Simpson’s chariot, and it must be handled with more care than any other chapter in this book. Please read the cautions at the end. They are not an afterthought; they are part of the teaching.

The pine woods at Old Orchard

Simpson had been an invalid for much of his adult life. He suffered from a heart condition, had collapsed more than once from overwork, and carried a bottle of medicine with him for the attacks that came when he climbed a flight of stairs. A physician in New York had told him he had about three months. In the summer of 1881, resting at the conference grounds at Old Orchard Beach in Maine, he heard Dr Charles Cullis teach on divine healing. He was less moved by the arguments than by the testimonies of people who had been healed. He went away and studied his New Testament on the subject for himself, and became convinced. On a Friday afternoon in August he walked alone into the pine woods and made a threefold pledge: that he accepted the Bible’s teaching that Jesus heals the body; that he took Christ then and there as his physical life for every need of his body until his life-work was finished; and that he would use the strength given him for the glory of God and the service of others. The next day he climbed a mountain of three thousand feet. Shortly afterwards he prayed for his daughter Margaret, gravely ill with diphtheria — the disease that had killed his young son Melville a decade before — and she recovered. He lived thirty-eight more years himself, and worked at a pace that exhausted much younger men.

What he taught

Simpson set out his position in The Gospel of Healing (1885), and its core is a claim about the atonement.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows …he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. ISAIAH 53:4–5

Matthew quotes the first half of that passage and applies it explicitly to Christ’s healing ministry (Matthew 8:16–17). From this Simpson argued that Christ bore our sicknesses as truly as our sins, and that healing for the body therefore belongs within the provision of the cross rather than outside it. He was careful about what this did not mean. He did not teach that the body is already redeemed — he held firmly that full physical redemption awaits the resurrection. What he claimed was that a measure of resurrection life is available now, to be drawn upon by faith, as strength for the body while the Lord’s work for that person remains unfinished. His own phrasing was that he took Christ as his physical life until all my life-work is done — a qualification that is almost always omitted when he is quoted. He also insisted the doctrine be kept in proportion. When the healing evangelist John Alexander Dowie invited him to devote himself to a nationwide healing campaign, Simpson answered that he had four wheels on his chariot and could not neglect three to concentrate on one. He never allowed healing to become the message.

What is genuinely biblical here

Several things in Simpson’s emphasis are plainly scriptural, and churches that have reacted against the excesses have often lost them. God heals, and He heals today. Nothing in Scripture retires the practice. The church is instructed to pray for the sick, and specifically to anoint them with oil through its elders. James 5 is a standing command that a great many congregations simply ignore.

And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. JAMES 5:15

The body matters to God. He made it, Christ took one, and it will be raised. A spirituality that treats the body as irrelevant is closer to ancient paganism than to Scripture. And Christ’s compassion for the sick is one of the most conspicuous features of the Gospels. He was repeatedly moved with compassion before He healed anybody.

Where it must be qualified

Now the necessary corrections, and they must be stated without softening, because people have been badly hurt here. Scripture does not promise healing in every case. The New Testament records faithful believers who were not healed. Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20). Epaphroditus was ill to the point of death (Philippians 2:27). Timothy had a recurring stomach complaint, and Paul’s counsel was not a rebuke about faith but a practical remedy (1 Timothy 5:23). And Paul himself asked three times for the removal of his thorn and was refused.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9

That is God declining to heal an apostle, and calling the refusal grace. Any doctrine that cannot accommodate this verse has a defect. The sick must never be blamed. The teaching that continued illness proves deficient faith is cruel, and it is the error God rebuked in the book of Job. It adds guilt to suffering and drives the afflicted away from the church precisely when they need it. If you have been told your illness is your fault, that was not the mind of Christ toward you. Medicine is not unbelief. Luke, who travelled with Paul, is called the beloved physician. The Samaritan poured oil and wine into wounds. Isaiah applied a poultice of figs to Hezekiah’s boil in the same episode in which God miraculously extended his life. Scripture nowhere treats treatment and trust as rivals. Simpson’s own practice went further than this. After 1881 he set aside medical means entirely for himself and taught others to do the same, and some who followed him died of conditions that could have been treated. This is the point at which he must be respectfully declined. Nothing in this chapter should lead any reader to refuse, delay or discontinue medical care. Pray, and see your physician. And everyone dies. Simpson grew frail, lost his memory, and died at seventy-five. That is not a failure of his doctrine; it is the human condition. The final healing is not in this life.

Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. ROMANS 8:23

Held with those corrections, the substance remains and it is worth recovering. Pray boldly for the sick. Obey James 5. Expect God to act, and leave the outcome with Him. And when He does not heal, do not conclude that He has not answered — Paul did not.

How to pray for the sick

A practical note, since the doctrine can leave believers unsure what to actually say at a bedside. Pray boldly. Ask plainly for healing, without hedging every sentence into meaninglessness. The Lord invited direct requests, and the sick person is generally helped by hearing someone ask God for the thing they want.

Pray submissively. The pattern is in Gethsemane, where the Son of God asked for the cup to pass and added a clause.

Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. MATTHEW 26:39

That clause is not weak faith. It is the faith of the One who had more of it than anybody, and it belongs in our praying for the same reason it belonged in His. Promise nothing. Do not tell a sick person that God will certainly heal them in this life. You do not know, and if you are wrong they must bear both the illness and the collapse of what they were told. Stay. The most valuable thing most of us can offer is not a prayer formula but persistence — continuing to visit when the novelty has worn off and the condition has not improved. Job’s friends were at their best in the seven days they sat and said nothing. And pray for more than the body. Ask for endurance, for peace, for the absence of bitterness, for the person’s family. These prayers are always according to God’s will, and they are always answered.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 1 PETER 5:7

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Pray specifically and expectantly for someone who is ill this week, without promising them an outcome God has not promised. 2. If your church never practises James 5:14, ask your leaders why. 3. If you have been made to feel that your illness is a verdict on your faith, reject that. It is not the teaching of Scripture. 4. Take your medicine and keep your appointments. Trust and treatment are not rivals. 5. Sit with 2 Corinthians 12:9 until you can say it about the thing God has not removed from you.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You healed the sick because You were moved with compassion, and You are unchanged.

Teach me to pray boldly for the suffering, without pretending to know what You have not told me.

Where You heal, let me give You the glory. Where You do not, let me hear You say that Your grace is sufficient, and believe it.

And guard me from ever adding to another’s burden by suggesting that their sickness is their own fault. Amen.