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Healing and God's glory

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Dead, stinking tradition says that God wants to be glorified through your patient suffering of sickness. The Bible has something completely different to say about how God is glorified in your body. Let's look at some places where God's glory is mentioned regarding healing and see exactly what gives God glory among men:

Matthew 9:2-8 tells us that when Jesus forgave and healed a paralyzed man, the multitudes "glorified God, which had given such power unto men." So the fact that God's healing power can flow through one man into another gives God glory. Mark describes the same incident and concurs that glory was given to God because of it (Mark 2:2-12). Luke also describes the incident (Luke 5:17-26) and adds that the man who was healed glorified God as he departed to his house.

Matthew 15:30-31 tells of the great healing miracles Jesus did, and the result was that the multitudes "glorified the God of Israel." Again, God received glory from the healing of the sick.


Luke 7:12-16 says that the people glorified God after Jesus raised the widow's son back to life.

Luke 13:11-16 tells of a crippled woman who was healed on the sabbath day. She glorified God over her healing. There is no mention that she ever glorified God for the privilege of staying sick for 18 years, bound by Satan.

Luke 17:12-19 tells of ten lepers who were healed, one of whom came back and with a loud voice glorified God for his healing. God is glorified through the healing of incurable illnesses!

Luke 18:35-43 tells us that when Jesus gave a blind man his sight, the blind man followed him, glorifying God, and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

In Acts 4:21, "All men glorified God for that which was done [the healing of the crippled beggar at the gate]." They weren't glorifying God for the man's endurance of his handicap before then.


Rescuing the afflicted glorifies God. "Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. For he hath not despised not abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard" (Psalm 22:23-24). "And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me" (Psalm 50:15).

Romans 15:9 says that the Gentiles should glorify God for his mercy. A quick tour through the Psalms should convince you that his mercy endures forever. This is different from trying to glorify God despite his lack of mercy to you. God wants his mercy and willingness to heal to be known, not his supposed unwillingness to heal.


God's glory and his goodness are inseparable. When Moses asked to see God's glory, God showed him his goodness. Thus, God himself relates the two. "And he [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy" (Exodus 33:18-19). We see in Exodus 34:5-7 that the "name of the Lord" that God himself declared was "The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in grace and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." Remember that this was the answer to Moses' request to see God's glory.


Jesus' miracle in John 2:11 was said to manifest his glory: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him." He equated seeing Lazarus raised from the dead with seeing the glory of God (John 11:40, read John 11:1-44 for the full account.)

Want to get more radical? Read John 14:12-14. The Father is glorified in the Son when you ask for something to be done in the name of Jesus and Jesus does it! God gets glory when you believe his promises and receive what he promised you: "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and Amen, unto the glory of God by us" -- 2 Cor 1:20. (Religious types don't like the by us part at the end, but it's there anyway.)

Now consider these words and see what God says about his glory filling the earth in these last days:


"But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD." -- Numbers 14:21.

"And blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory." -- Psalm 72:19.

"And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it." -- Isaiah 40:5.

"Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee." -- Isaiah 60:1-2.

"For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." -- Habakkuk 2:14.


"The desire of all nations [Christ] shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts" -- Haggai 2:7.

"The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former" -- Haggai 2:9.

"But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory." -- 2 Corinthians 3:7-9.

This much is clear -- the glory of God should manifest more under our new covenant than it did under the old. There were great miracles and signs under the Old Covenant, but these should pale in comparison to what we have under the New Covenant. If God's glory is going to overrun the earth, we should expect God's healing mercy to overrun the earth. We should expect signs, wonders and miracles now.


One thing is conspicuously absent in all of Scripture. Nowhere was God was said to receive glory from someone failing to receive healing and patiently enduring his sickness. If this glorified God, he should have received great glory at Nazareth, where people stayed sick because of their unbelief. Yet he got no glory there. You won't find one place where it is written, "The man patiently endured his sickness, being kind as the incurable cancer slowly destroyed his body and made him a burden to all those around him, and the multitudes glorified the God of Israel because of this man."

I am not saying that healing is the only way that God receives glory. He was glorified for many other reasons in the Bible, but never because someone remained sick.

No, if you want to hear that patiently remaining sick is the way God wants to be glorified, you will have to look somewhere other than the Bible. However, you won't have to look too far -- there are plenty of junky books out there that teach this. Better Christian bookstores don't carry them, but lousier Christian bookstores (not hard to come by) have big displays of them. I hope for their sakes that the owners carry them out of ignorance, not out of desire to make money on unbelief.

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