lismore said:
Hi there
I hope you are well.
I would just find it hard to believe that healing a bunch of lads in one village back then qualifies as "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases". I mean he took up our infirmities, how do I releate 'our' to those people back then? 'Our' would have to be theirs and mine too? Otherwise it would be better translated 'surely he carried their infirmities'
Hi Lismore,
Not bad thanks, though I probably should be in bed, or something.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that Jesus' healings were limited to when he was on earth. I've just always understood that verse to mean that Isaiah prophesied that God's chosen one would be someone who healed and was able to take away sickness, and this was fulfilled when Jesus healed people. Another evidence that he was the Messiah, because he healed just as it had been prophesied that he would.
This is how it reads, to me, in Matthew's Gospel. Matthew has already explained to his readers that Jesus' conception and birth were extraordinary, but that they were fulfilment of Jewish Scriptures. When Jesus began his preaching ministry, described in Chapter 4:12-17, it was a fulfilment of Scripture. All through the Beatitudes we read the phrase "you have been told ..... (reference to Jewish law) but I say to you." And in chapter 8 we begin to read about Jesus' healings, which Matthew says were a fulfilment of Scripture. His Jewish readers would have known immediately the Scripture in Isaiah, which talks about the servant of the Lord, as do chapters 42 and 49 onwards. "The servant of the Lord" came to be an accepted Messianic title. Matthew is saying to his readers, "look, Jesus is the Messiah, he fulfilled all these Old Testament prophecies." He, a Jew, took up our infirmities and healed our illnesses, i.e the sicknesses of the Jewish people among whom he was living. Or that's how I read it anyway.
I would have expected that if this verse referred to his death on the cross and atonement that Matthew would have repeated in later on in his Gospel so that there was no doubt. At the last supper Jesus said that he would die just as it had been written, and spoke of his blood as being of the new covenant, which was for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:28) Surely if his blood had been poured out for mankind's physical healing, he would have made the point clear? But neither Jesus nor Matthew quote Isaiah at this point, far less suggest that his death was for physical healing of mankind.
It is very clear from the New Testament that Jesus died for our sins. Surely if he had also died for our physical healing it would have been taught equally as much? God wants us to hear, and be clear about, all his Gospel, not just part of it.
Jesus does heal today, because he is alive and is the same yesterday, today and forever. The New Testament speaks of a gift of healing, of people being healed through the laying on of hands, the calling of elders and anointing of oil. Surely if healing were already provided for in the atonement, all that would have been needed would have been for the apostles to remind people that they were healed when they accepted Jesus?
Amen!
