Healing In the Atonement, part 4 of 16

A. Paul became sick as a result of some personal sin.

Some people believe Paul had something wrong with his eyes because he said, "if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me." I personally think that's a little speculative, but the exact physical ailment he had is irrelevent in this discussion. There are several problems with this view. The most frequent explanation given by healing in the atonement proponents for why all Christians do not enjoy perfect health is because of sin. In this view, when a person sins, he comes out from under the covering of the blood of the atonement and becomes vulnerable to sickness. All sickness, therefore, is a result of personal sin. The argument can be summarized this way:

• Sin causes a person to come out from under the blood of the atonement.
• If a person is not covered by the blood, he will be vulnerable to sickness.
• Therefore, all sickness is a result of personal sin.

There are three major problems with this argument.

1. If healing is guaranteed in the atonement only when we do not sin, and everybody sins, then nobody's healing is really guaranteed. In summary:

• Perfect health is guaranteed for the believer unless he sins.
• Everybody sins. (1 John 1:8)
• Therefore perfect health is not guaranteed for any believer.

It would be quite the cruel joke for God to dangle something in front of us knowing we could never have it. Some will argue that an isolated sin now and again is not enough to cause a person to come out from under the blood of the atonement, but rather, if a person habitually sins, he will come out from under the blood of the atonement and become vulnerable to sickness. The problem with this argument is that the person making it has to defame Paul's character, making him out to be a habitual sinner. But we have already shown that Paul was an exemplary Christian, urging people to imitate his way of life. (1 Corinthians 4:16) We have also seen that the disciple, Tabitha, was commended for always doing good, rather than being condemned for habitually sinning. The only alternative is to go with the second argument, that Paul was not physically sick at all. Of course, we can't use that with Tabitha because we know she was physically ill. She died from it.

There are some churches who are consistent in their view of sin and sickness. The "holiness" churches believe that a Christian can live a sinless life. Some of them go so far as to say that if a person is saved, he will never sin at all--not even an isolated sin. Because holiness is such a major debate, it would require a seperate article for me to adequately refute this view, so I'll just let it go for now, and maybe if I ever write that article, I'll add the link to it right here.

2. If healing is guaranteed in the atonement, and a person is not healed, then he is not covered under the blood of the atonement. Healing in the atonement proponents will agree with me on this point. The argument goes like this:

• Healing is guaranteed in the atonement.

• Bob is not healed.

• Therefore, Bob is not under the blood of the atonement.

Now watch what happens when we replace Bob with the Apostle Paul.

• Healing is guaranteed in the atonement.
• Paul was sick.

• Therefore, Paul was not under the blood of the atonement.

This should immediately look peculiar to you, and I will tell you why. The blood of Jesus is what saves us. Jesus shed his blood on the cross for our sins, as I showed above. That's what the atonement covers. So if a person is not under the blood of the atonement, then that person is not saved. Jesus atoned for our sins. That's what atonement is. In summary:

• If a person is sick, then they are not under the blood of the atonement.
• If they are not under the blood of the atonement, then they are not saved.
• Therefore, if a person is sick, then they are not saved.

Most of you should immediately see the problem with this view. You want to reject the conclusion because it seems unreasonable to think that Paul lost his salvation, and worse, that he was evangelizing the Galatians as an unsaved person. But if the two premises are true, then the conclusion logically follows. So the only way to reject the conclusion is to reject one of the premises. The second premise is obviously true. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. Nobody goes to the Father except by him. Nobody will be saved if he rejects the gospel that Jesus atoned for sins by dying for them, and that he rose from the dead. The only option is to reject the first premise. Therefore, not every sick person is sick because he came out from under the blood of the atonement.

There actually are people who would agree with the above argument on the basis that (1) a person can lose his salvation, and (2) a person can live a sinless life. People don't come in and out from under the blood of the atonement because of sin. The blood of the atonement covers sins. That's what it's for. I completely reject the notion that a sick person is an unsaved person because we find in the Bible that several Christians got sick, and some even died. Paul's conversion experience was marked by blindness (Acts 9:3-9). Paul became ill in Galatia (Galatians 4:13). Many of the Corinthian Christians became sick, and some died from sickness (1 Corinthians 11:30). Trophimus was unable to travel with Paul because he became sick (2 Timothy 4:19). Paul urged Timothy to drink some wine for his frequent stomach problems (1 Timothy 5:23). Epaphroditus was sick and almost died from it (Philippians 2:25-30). Tabitha became sick and did die from it (Acts 9:36-37). Besides all that, we find in our own experience, devout and sincere Christians who suffer from all kinds of physical maladies. Surely we don't think they are all unsaved, yet there are some who think they are!

There are a few people who believe that a person may be sick and yet be under the blood of the atonement. In this view, an otherwise healthy Christian commits a sin, comes out from under the blood of the atonement, gets sick, repents from the sin, becomes covered under the blood of the atonement again, but the person may have to reap the consequences of that sin for the rest of their life. In other words, if a person gets sick as a result of sin, he may have to continue being sick for the rest of his life because of that sin even though he has repented and come back under the blood of the atonement. The problem with this view seems obvious. If this theory is true, then healing is not guaranteed for the person in this situation. That's essentially what this view is. That means that healing is guaranteed for everybody who gets saved, but if they get sick even once as a result of sin, then for the rest of their lives, their healing will not be guaranteed. (Are there many of us who have not at least suffered from a cold or a headache?) In that case, it makes no sense for them to say that healing is guaranteed in the atonement. If healing were guaranteed in the atonement, then they ought to be healed immediately upon repenting from the sin that caused their sickness and upon placing faith in their healing.

Continue to Part 5.