Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues,proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.
Matthew 4:23-25
Imagine that you’ve never heard anything about Jesus. So you open the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, and you read all the way through it. What would you encounter there? A Jesus who just preached sermons? A list of “dos” and “don’ts?” No.
If you weren’t contaminated by western culture’s preconceived notions of Jesus, you’d encounter a Jesus who proclaimed a message about a new kind of kingdom on the earth. You’d also encounter a Jesus who was constantly healing people everywhere he went. You might expect that followers of Jesus would heal people everywhere they went.
Physical healing was central to Jesus’s ministry. So was setting free those who were bound by demonic darkness. These were not side ministries for Jesus. They were two out of the three main ways that Jesus demonstrated the Kingdom of God coming to earth. The third was His teaching/preaching about the Kingdom.
Jesus did not come to bring a disembodied gospel. Jesus came in a physical body and cared about physical bodies. It wasn’t about spiritual truths that help us escape the world. It was about the truth that His Kingdom came to transform this world, including physical bodies. Jesus did not bring a Gnostic gospel. He brought an embodied one.
Over and over again we see that healing physical sickness was central to the Kingdom of God. Besides story after story of Jesus encountering an individual and healing them, we get passages of scripture that seem to summarize mass healings as if there were too many to name. And we learn that this healing ministry wasn’t a side show. It was central to the fulfillment of prophecy about the coming Messiah.
When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“He took up our infirmities
Matthew 8:16-17
and bore our diseases.” [Isaiah 53:4]
When Jesus wanted to assure John the Baptist that He was, in fact, the Messiah, the message Jesus sent to John was all about healing. Healing physical sickness was one of the main signs that Jesus was fulfilling the prophecies about the coming Messiah.
When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.
Matthew 11:2-5
Physical healing wasn’t just something Jesus did on the side. It was one of the main things Jesus did with His limited time here on earth. It was central to demonstrating that God’s Kingdom had invaded the kingdom of this world. The light was breaking through the darkness.
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:35-36
It was also something He empowered His disciples to do. In other words, healing wasn’t just a ministry of the Messiah. It was something expected of every disciple of Jesus. Seeing people get healed by the power of God and seeing demons get cast out of people was always meant to be “normal Christianity.”
Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness…
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “… As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”
Matthew 10:1, 5-8
Healing the sick was something Jesus did everywhere He went. Healings were physical demonstrations of the truth of His Kingdom. They were evidence that He really was the Messiah and the Kingdom of God really was being inaugurated on the earth.
And the early followers of Jesus picked up this mantle and continued to carry it. They continued to proclaim the message of the Kingdom and continued to demonstrate the Kingdom through healings, deliverance, signs, wonders, and miracles. We see this reality all throughout the book of Acts.
Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.
Acts 2:43
The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.
Acts 5:12-16
The prayer of the early believers was, “…enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:29-30). They simply wanted to continue the ministry of Jesus. They wanted to boldly proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God and then demonstrate the Kingdom through signs and wonders. This was “normal Christianity.”
In the West, many churches have denounced physical healing and deliverance ministry. Or, if it is believed at all, we have relegated them to side ministries. How could something so central to the gospel, so central to the Kingdom, so central to Jesus and the early church get shoved aside? Church, we have to do better than this!
Our culture is tired of hearing about Jesus and the gospel. They are crying out, “Show me! Prove it! Demonstrate it!” And two of the primary ways Christians are meant to demonstrate the Kingdom of God coming to earth is through physical healing and deliverance. It was never meant to be a “special” ministry reserved for “elite” Christians or the “crazy charismatic” Christians. This was meant to be normal Christianity.
Normal Christianity looks like every church member praying for their co-workers and seeing them get healed right there in the office. Normal Christianity looks like having dinner with neighbors and, for dessert, praying and seeing them set free from the demonic oppression they’ve experienced for years. Normal Christianity looks like delivering a prophetic word to your boss that then shapes the future of your company. Normal Christianity looks like getting a word of knowledge for the person in front of you at Walmart, giving the word, and then leading them to give their life to Jesus. Normal Christianity looks like getting a prophetic dream for a family member that ends up encouraging them about their true identity.
Normal Christianity looks like every person in the church doing this all week long so that it becomes such a regular occurrence that there is no need for any fanfare about it. There’s no arguing over the legitimacy of these things because everyone experiences them daily. There’s no need to debate when it is just normal life. This is normal Christianity.
We need to return to the Bible’s definition of normal Christianity once again!
Fire and Light 
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