The Christian conviction that Christ “has destroyed death” (2 Tim. 1:10) has led some believers to deduce that he has also destroyed disease, and that from the cross we should claim healing as well as forgiveness. A popular exposition of this topic is Bodily Healing and the Atonement (1930) by the Canadian author T. J. McCrossan, which has recently been re-edited and re-published by Kenneth E. Hagin of the pentecostal Rhema Church. McCrossan states his case in these terms: “All Christians should expect God to heal their bodies today, because Christ died to atone for our sicknesses as well as for our sins” (p. 10). He bases his argument on Isaiah 53:4, which he translates, “Surely he hath borne our sicknesses and carried our pains.” He is particularly emphatic that the first Hebrew verb (nasā’) means to “bear” in the sense of “suffering the punishment for something,” as it is also used in Isaiah 53:12 (“he bore the sin of many”), “the clear teaching … is that Christ bore our sicknesses in the very same way that he bore our sins” (p. 120).

There are three difficulties in the way of accepting this interpretation, however. First, nasā’ is used in a variety of Old Testament contexts, including the carrying of the ark and other tabernacle furniture, the carrying of armour, weapons and children. It occurs in Isaiah 52:11 with reference to those who “carry the vessels of the LORD.” So the verb in itself does not mean to “bear the punishment of.” We are obliged to translate it thus only when sin is its object. That Christ “bore” our sicknesses may (in fact, does) mean something quite different.

Secondly, the concept McCrossan puts forward does not make sense. “Bearing the penalty of sin” is readily intelligible, since sin’s penalty is death and Christ died our death in our place. But what is the penalty of sickness? It has none. Sickness may itself be a penalty for sin, but it is not itself a misdemeanor which attracts a penalty. So to speak of Christ “atoning for” our sicknesses is to mix categories; it is not an intelligible notion.

Thirdly, Matthew (who is the evangelist most preoccupied with the fulfilment of Old Testament Scripture) applies Isaiah 53:4 not to the atoning death but to the healing ministry of Jesus. It was in order to fulfil what was spoken through Isaiah, he writes, that Jesus “healed all the sick.” So we have no liberty to reapply the text to the cross. It is true that Peter quotes the following verse, “by his wounds we are healed,” but the contexts in both Isaiah and Peter make it clear that the “healing” they have in mind is salvation from sin.

We should not, therefore, affirm that Christ died for our sicknesses as well as for our sins, that “there is healing in the atonement,” or that health is just as readily available to everybody as forgiveness.

That does not mean, however, that our bodies are unaffected by the death and resurrection of Jesus. We should certainly take seriously these statements of Paul about the body:

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body (2 Cor. 4:10–11).

The apostle is referring to the infirmity and mortality of our human bodies, specially (in his case) in relation to physical persecution. It is, he says, like experiencing in our bodies the dying (or putting to death) of Jesus, and the purpose of this is that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our bodies. He does not seem to be referring to the resurrection of his body, for he comes to that later. Nor are his words exhausted in his survival of physical assaults, in which he was “struck down, but not destroyed” (v. 9). No, he seems to be saying that now in our mortal bodies (which are doomed to die) there is being “revealed” (twice repeated) the very “life” of Jesus (also twice repeated). Even when we are feeling tired, sick and battered, we experience a vigour and vitality which are the life of the risen Jesus within us. Paul expresses the same thought in verse 16: “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”

That the life of Jesus should be constantly revealed in our bodies; that God has put into the human body marvellous therapeutic processes which fight disease and restore health; that all healing is divine healing; that God can and sometimes does heal miraculously (without means, instantaneously and permanently) – these things we should joyfully and confidently affirm. But to expect the sick to be healed and the dead to be raised as regularly as we expect sinners to be forgiven, is to stress the “already” at the expense of the “not yet,” for it is to anticipate the resurrection. Not till then will our bodies be entirely rid of disease and death.

~John Stott, ‘The Cross of Christ’, 1986; pp. 224-226; Inter-Varsity Press