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8 Bible Verses For The Sick - Scriptures for Healing

January 17, 2022

8 Bible Verses For The Sick - Scriptures for Healing

Healing Scriptures for the Sick

Find comfort in the Word of God for healing and support. May these Bible verses for the sick strengthen your faith in God for protection from disease.

1 Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”

When the Apostle Peter wrote about Jesus’ bearing our sins on the cross, he referred to Isaiah 53:5 which says, “with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5b), but it was in the context of spiritual healing and not a physical sickness, as Jesus “was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace” (Isaiah 53:5a). The healing that this passage promises is beyond a physical recovery that even if a person is healed, they’ll eventually die, so the greatest healing of all is the removal of our sins by Jesus bearing them on the cross. That was Isaiah’s intent in writing chapter 53.

James 5:13-14 “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.  Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.”

James apparently knew enough of the Old Testament to know that “the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:15-16).  There is no guarantee in this verse that God will heal everyone if they have enough faith, but perhaps James is insinuating that if a person is sick due to sin, the sins that cause the illness will be forgiven and perhaps their sickness will be removed, but James was certainly noting the importance of believing faith. 

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Paul was beaten, stoned, whipped, given lashes, and suffered hunger, thirst, and cold while in prison, but even with all this which could have weakened him physically or emotionally, he knew that Christ’s power is easier to see in weakness. That’s why he was glad to boast in his weakness “so that the power of Christ may rest upon” him.  That’s why when he was weak, he was really strong.

Matthew 25:36 “I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

When Jesus commanded the church to be the Body of Christ, He fully intended that we walk in the works that God has foreordained long ago for us to do (Eph 2:10), and so when we seek the poorly clothed, we can help them.  When others are sick, we can visit them.  If there are others in prison, we can go to them. That’s what our little church does.  We might not be able to heal the sick, but we can at least visit them.  As far as Jesus is concerned, “as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40).

Exodus 23:25 “You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you.”

When God called His own people out of the land of Egypt and out of their harsh bondage of slavery, He insisted that they serve Him and not the other nations around them by worshiping their false gods.  If they remained faithful in serving the one true God, He promised them bread and water, but also that their sicknesses will be taken away.  The fact that obedience brings blessings is found throughout Scripture.

Matthew 14:14 “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”

The word “compassion” means “with passion” or having a passion with someone over something, and in this case, when Jesus came ashore, there was a great crowd and He knew why they had come.  They came for healing and indeed Jesus “healed their sick.”  Today, God is still performing miraculous miracles of healing, but it’s when it is clearly His will and not ours.  Regardless of whether God heals them or not, we too should have compassion for the sick.

Acts 28:8-9 “It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him, healed him.  And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.”

The Apostle Paul was involved in a lot of healings but he never took the credit for himself.  God worked powerfully through Paul, but he’d be the first to tell you that it was God and not him. On a couple of occasions, they tried to bring gifts to Paul after healing but he was not happy about it and gave God the glory, saying we are only men like yourselves.  In the Book of Revelation, where the Apostle John encounters an angel, he falls at his feet, but the angel rebukes him, saying “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God” (Rev 22:9). Whatever healing occurs, if it does at all, all glory must go to God and to Him alone.

Deuteronomy 7:15 “And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you.”

As a final reminder about sickness or diseases, we come to the Book of Deuteronomy where God says, from His own mouth, that “the Lord will take away from you all sickness” but also, “none of the evil diseases of Egypt” will be inflicted upon them.  Those diseases and sicknesses were reserved for them alone.  God’s tender guardian care is evident throughout Israel’s wilderness wanderings, still being kind to them even after they refused to cross over into the Promised Land.

Conclusion of Healing Verses

I hope these verses can help you better understand these Bible verses about sickness, illnesses, disease, and praying for the sick.  There are many other promises of God like the gift of eternal life (John 3:16), but there is no promise anywhere in the Bible that God guarantees that He will heal everyone unconditionally.  That is God’s choice.  And that’s okay because we know that whatever we go through will work out for our ultimate best (Rom 8:28). We have God’s promise on that, and that’s enough for me.

Article by Jack Wellman

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