Healing Is a Part of Redemption
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pains – He hath carried them.” This is what the scripture is saying. In numerous other places,
these words are translated “sickness” and “pain.”
We know He bore our sins, that is widely known in Christendom, but did He bear our sickness
when He bore our sins? Did He carry our pain when He carried our punishment? The Bible says
that He did.
Isaiah is in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come on him. He is a prophet, a seer, and he is seeing
through the centuries into the future. He writes what he sees. He sees One Who came, and he
starts off by saying, “Who believes this report? Who believes this? And to whom has the arm of
the Lord been revealed?” He said He is coming, but He won’t stand out. “He’s coming; I see
Him.” There is no marvelous beauty in Him that will make you notice Him. He’ll be despised.
He’ll be rejected. He’ll be executed as the worst criminal. Oh, but this is what is happening: He’s
bearing our sicknesses. He’s carrying our pains. He goes on to say that He was bearing our
iniquities, and our sins, and the chastisement of our peace. We know from 2 Corinthians 8:9 that
He was made poor for us.
This is the great exchange. In the types of redemption, we saw the word “atonement” again and
again, and you see it all through the Old Testament. As I mentioned before,
atonement
is not a
New Testament word. I know we use it all the time, but it’s not.
Atonement
is an Old Testament
word that means “to cover.” But Jesus did not atone for our sins, which means He did not cover
our sins. Rather, the Bible says, He put them away once and for all. We do not have the
covering
of sin, we have the
remission
of sin, which means we are free from it. Once it’s done, it’s not
covered where someone can find it; it’s gone, and nobody can find it. It is removed. He took it
upon Himself, and He took it away during those three days and nights.
We’ve been taught some of this, but in many circles, we haven’t been taught that when He took
our sin, He was also taking our sickness. It’s true. He took our sickness, too.
Isaiah 53:4 begins with, “Surely…” If it just said “it happened,” it would be true, but it says
“surely.” “Surely he hath borne our griefs…” That word “griefs” is the Hebrew word “chŏlîy.” I
know of twenty times in the Old Testament when it was translated “disease” or “sickness.”
I heard something interesting about this passage—and this is hearsay, so don’t build a doctrine
on it—but Hebrew and Greek Scholars know these things. Several years ago, there was a
committee doing what we call “modern translations,” and it was made up of scholars from all
different “camps,” or denominations, because they wanted to make it fair. These were men who
were highly educated in the original languages, and when they came to Isaiah 53:4, one of them
said, “Well, this has been translated ‘sickness and disease’ consistently in the previous verses,
but it’s not what the King James Version says,” and there was a big discussion about it. Finally
one person said, “If we put ‘sickness and pain’ in there, people will get the wrong idea, and it
will play right into these divine-healing people’s error.” Two of the others said, “If you don’t
translate it the way we translated the previous ‘x’ number of places, we’re quitting, because it’s
just good Bible translation.” The result was they quit. They left the committee, and it was
translated “griefs” and “sorrows,” with a footnote.
