Fadimatu sold grains from a stall in one of the busy markets of Jos. Maize, millet, beans and rice in open sacks, measured out in a battered enamel bowl that had belonged to her late husband. She was forty-seven, a widow with three children in school, and for almost a year she had been living with a growth in her womb that caused heavy bleeding and a pain that sometimes doubled her over behind the sacks. The doctor at the hospital had explained that it would need surgery. The surgery had a price, and the price was more than she had.
One Friday a poster appeared on the electric pole outside the market. Healing and Miracle Explosion. Three Nights Only. There was a photograph of a man in a white suit with his hand raised. Fadimatu went on the second night, to a hotel hall packed so tightly that people stood along the walls.
Before the ministration began, an assistant explained the arrangements. Those who wanted to be prayed for personally by the man of God should sow a healing seed. Fifty thousand naira for the second row. One hundred thousand for the front. “Your seed is your faith speaking,” the assistant said. “Small seed, small miracle.”
Fadimatu borrowed the money from her cousin and a market thrift group. She sat in the front row. When the evangelist reached her, he laid a hand on her forehead and pushed, shouted a word of command, and moved on to the next person while a camera followed him. He never asked her name. He never asked what was wrong.
Nothing changed. Two weeks later, still bleeding, still in pain and now in debt, she called the number on the poster. A different assistant listened for a minute and then said, “Mama, the anointing was released. If you did not receive, check your faith. Maybe there is sin in your life. Sow again.”
She told me that she put the phone down and sat on a sack of maize and wept, not only because she was still sick but because she now believed God had looked at her and found her wanting.
What would Jesus have done with Fadimatu?
A leper on his knees
We do not have to guess. The Gospels show us Jesus meeting sick people again and again, and the meetings have a recognisable shape. Mark records one of the earliest:
And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.
To feel the weight of this scene, you need to know what leprosy meant in Israel. The term covered a range of skin diseases, and the law was strict about them. The leper had to wear torn clothes, leave his hair uncovered, cover his upper lip and cry out, “Unclean, unclean” (Leviticus 13:45) whenever anyone came near. “He shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be” (Leviticus 13:46). He was cut off from worship, from his family’s table and from ordinary human touch. People would cross the road to avoid him. He might go years without anyone laying a hand on him.
This man broke the rules to come close. He knelt. And his words are a confession of faith with a question inside it: “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” He had no doubt about the power of Jesus. What he did not know was whether Jesus would want to use it on someone like him.
Mark tells us what happened in Jesus before anything happened in the leper: “Jesus, moved with compassion.” The Greek word is splanchnizomai, from the word for the inward parts, the bowels. It describes a feeling so deep that you feel it in your gut. Jesus was moved, physically moved, by this man’s condition.
Then He “put forth his hand, and touched him.” Jesus could have healed with a word, as He did on other occasions. But He touched him first. Before the leprosy left, the loneliness was answered. For the first time in perhaps years, a clean hand rested on this man’s skin. And then the word: “I will; be thou clean.”
I will. The leper’s question about the willingness of Jesus was answered in two words. Whatever we come to say about unanswered prayer later in this teaching, we must start here. The heart of Jesus toward the sick is not reluctant. He does not have to be persuaded to care. He is moved with compassion, He reaches out, and He wills to make clean.
Authority that crosses the distance
Matthew places the same story at the head of a remarkable chapter. Jesus has just come down from the mountain where He preached the great sermon of Matthew 5 to 7, and Matthew follows the words of Jesus with His works. In quick succession we see Him heal a leper, a centurion’s servant and Peter’s mother-in-law, and then a whole town’s worth of sick people at evening.
The second healing shows a different side of His ministry. A Roman centurion, a Gentile officer of the occupying army, comes to Jesus because “my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented” (Matthew 8:6). Notice that this man is pleading for someone else, and for someone with no social standing at all. Jesus immediately says, “I will come and heal him” (Matthew 8:7). Once again the willingness is not in question.
The centurion protests that he is not worthy to have Jesus under his roof, and then says something that made Jesus marvel: “speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed” (Matthew 8:8). He explains that he understands authority. He gives orders and soldiers obey. He recognises that Jesus has that kind of authority over sickness. Disease is under His command.
Jesus answered, “Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour” (Matthew 8:13). The servant never met Jesus. The word crossed the distance.
There is great encouragement here for anyone who prays for someone else. The centurion’s servant could not come to Jesus. He lay at home, paralysed and in torment. Someone who cared about him came instead. Many of the people you love are in exactly that position. A father in a hospital bed in another state. A child too young to pray. A colleague who does not yet know the Lord. You may not be able to bring them to a meeting, and you do not need to. You can bring their need to Jesus yourself, as the centurion did, and trust the authority of His word to reach where you cannot. Distance is no obstacle to Him. And notice that Jesus commended a Gentile soldier’s faith above anything He had found in Israel. The faith Jesus honours is not the property of the religiously impressive. It belongs to anyone who takes Him at His word.
So the chapter has shown us two things already. Jesus heals with compassion, coming close enough to touch the untouchable. And Jesus heals with authority, commanding sickness from a distance. Neither of these is a performance. Both are expressions of who He is.
In Peter’s house at evening
Then Matthew takes us into a family home:
And when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them. When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
“He saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever.” Again Jesus sees before He acts. And again He touches: “he touched her hand.” No crowd, no platform, no announcement. A sick woman in a back room, and the Lord of glory taking her hand. “And the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them.” Her healing restored her to her place in the household, and she immediately used her strength to serve.
Mark tells us this was a sabbath day (Mark 1:21, 29), so the town waited until the sun went down and the sabbath ended. Then the whole town came to the door. “He cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick.” All of them.
Then Matthew explains what this means: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” He is quoting Isaiah 53:4, the great chapter of the suffering Servant. Matthew sees in the healing ministry of Jesus the character of the Servant who carries the burdens of His people. The One who would bear our sins on the cross was already, in Galilee, taking up our sicknesses and carrying them away.
That connection matters for us. The healing ministry of Jesus was not a sideshow to His saving work, nor a temporary demonstration that ended with His ascension. It flows from the same heart and the same mission. Healing belongs to the gospel of the kingdom. Peter summarised the ministry of Jesus in exactly those terms: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil” (Acts 10:38).
PunchlineJesus heals with compassion and with authority. He came close enough to touch the untouchable, and His word commanded sickness to leave. He has not changed.
God heals today
Let me say plainly what I believe. God heals today.
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). The compassion that moved Him in Galilee has not cooled. The authority that healed the centurion’s servant has not been withdrawn. Jesus sent His disciples out to heal (Matthew 10:8), and they “anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them” (Mark 6:13). After His resurrection He said of those who believe, “they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:18). The book of Acts is full of healings. Paul lists “the gifts of healing by the same Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:9) among the ordinary workings of the Holy Spirit in the church. Nothing in the New Testament suggests that these gifts were to be switched off.
I know sincere believers who hold that miraculous healing was given mainly to confirm the apostolic message and is rare today. They love the Lord and they pray for the sick too. I respect them. But I am persuaded from Scripture, and I have seen with my own eyes, that the Lord still heals in answer to prayer, sometimes suddenly and often gradually, sometimes through the hands of elders and sometimes in a hospital ward while a family prays in the corridor.
So pray for the sick. Pray with expectation. Do not apologise for it, and do not be embarrassed by it. Lay hands on the sick in your home and in your church. Anoint with oil. Ask God to heal your child’s fever, your mother’s pain, your friend’s diagnosis. And when He does, give Him thanks out loud.
Expecting God to heal does not mean despising doctors or medicine. Luke, who wrote two of the books we have been reading, was a physician, and God uses medical care as one of His good gifts. We give that subject its own full teaching in this series. Here it is enough to say that faith for healing never requires anyone to stop the treatment their doctor has prescribed. Let the doctor confirm what God has done.
Is any sick among you?
James gives the church its instructions for the sick:
Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? 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: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
Notice first who moves. “Let him call for the elders of the church.” The sick person calls, and the elders go. They come to the bedside. The sick person does not have to fight through a crowd, buy a ticket or qualify for a front row. The church goes to where the suffering is.
“Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Oil was used in the ancient world for comfort and treatment, and it was also a sign of consecration and of the Holy Spirit. Whichever emphasis we give it, the anointing is done “in the name of the Lord.” The power is His. The oil is not a product, and the elders are not its sales agents.
“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” Pay attention to whose faith is mentioned. It is the prayer of the elders. James places the responsibility for believing prayer on the people who come to pray, not on the sick person lying in bed. That is a mercy. A person in pain, exhausted by illness and perhaps frightened, is not required to work up a certain level of faith before God will hear. The church carries him.
“And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” The word if matters. James does not assume that sickness is caused by sin. He allows that it sometimes may be connected, and he assures the sick that forgiveness is available. But nobody reading this verse has the right to approach a sick person with the presumption that there must be hidden sin behind their illness.
“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” Healing in James is a community matter. It happens among people who are honest with one another and who keep praying for one another. And “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” James then points to Elijah, “a man subject to like passions as we are” (James 5:17), to remind us that this kind of prayer belongs to ordinary believers. You do not have to be famous for your prayer to avail much.
The person before the problem
NuggetLook back across these passages and you will notice something about the way Jesus heals. He pays attention to the person.
He sees before He acts. He touches lepers and fevered women. He asks questions. When blind Bartimaeus cried out by the roadside, Jesus stopped and said, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” (Mark 10:51). It was obvious that the man was blind. Jesus asked anyway, because He was dealing with a man, not a case. When the woman who touched His garment tried to slip away, He stopped the whole procession to find her and call her “Daughter” (Matthew 9:22). When He healed, people were restored to their families, their communities and their place in worship.
This gives prayer for healing its proper shape. If we follow Jesus, we will learn the name of the person we are praying for. We will ask what is wrong and how they are feeling, and we will listen to the answer. We will touch gently, with permission, and we will not push people over for the sake of the drama. We will not use the sick as props in a show, or film their suffering without their consent and post it on social media. We will treat a woman in pain behind her grain sacks with the same dignity Jesus gave a leper on his knees.
The ministry of healing is not finally about the minister. Any healing service where the man on the platform is more prominent than the people he is praying for has already drifted from the pattern of Jesus.
Freely ye have received
When Jesus sent out the twelve to heal, He gave them a clear instruction about money: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).
The early church held to that. When Peter and John met a lame man at the temple gate, he expected money from them. Peter’s answer has become famous:
Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.
“Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.” Peter had nothing to sell and nothing to charge. What he had was the name of Jesus, and he gave it away. He took the man by the hand, as Jesus would have done, and lifted him up.
A few chapters later a man named Simon, who had practised sorcery in Samaria, saw the power at work through the apostles and tried to buy it:
And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.
“Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.” Peter’s response is fierce, and it should be. The gifts of God cannot be bought. The same principle applies in the other direction: they cannot be sold. Elisha refused the gifts Naaman pressed on him after his healing (2 Kings 5:16), and his servant Gehazi, who ran after Naaman to take them anyway, carried the leprosy home with him.
So let us speak clearly about what happened to Fadimatu. A “healing seed” sold for a seat on the front row is not faith. A price list for the anointing is not ministry. Telling a sick widow that the size of her miracle depends on the size of her offering turns the compassion of Jesus into a commercial transaction. Peter warned of teachers who “through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you” (2 Peter 2:3). Merchandise. That is exactly what such ministries make of the sick.
Generous giving is a good and joyful part of the Christian life, and nothing here is meant to discourage it. Giving to God’s work is grace. But giving must never be presented as the purchase price of healing. If anyone tells you that God’s healing is for sale, walk away, keep your money, and go and find elders who will pray for you freely.
When healing has not yet come
PunchlineThere is one more thing the assistant said to Fadimatu that we have to address. “If you did not receive, check your faith. Maybe there is sin in your life.”
That sentence has broken many hearts. It takes a person who is already suffering and adds a second burden on top of the first: the suspicion that God is displeased with them. It must never be said by anyone who follows Jesus.
The New Testament itself shows us faithful believers whose illness continued for a time. Paul left Trophimus “at Miletum sick” (2 Timothy 4:20). Epaphroditus was “sick nigh unto death” (Philippians 2:27) while serving the work of Christ. Timothy had “often infirmities” (1 Timothy 5:23). Nobody in those passages suggests that these men lacked faith. And we have already seen that James places the prayer of faith in the mouth of the elders, not on the back of the sick.
We do not always understand why one person is healed quickly and another slowly, or why some are not healed in this life. Scripture does not give us a formula that explains every case, and we should be suspicious of anyone who claims to have one. What it gives us is the character of Jesus, who is moved with compassion; the command to keep praying; and the promise of the resurrection, when “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4). Every healing now is a foretaste of that day. Every illness that continues will finally bow to it.
So if you are still sick, hear this. Your continuing illness is not a verdict on your faith. God has not looked at you and found you wanting. Keep asking Him for healing. Keep taking the treatment your doctor has given you. Let others pray for you when you are too tired to pray. And refuse every voice that tells you your suffering is your fault.
If you are praying for someone whose illness continues, do not drop them from your prayers or your visits. Do not quietly decide they must be doing something wrong. Keep coming to their bedside, as James tells the elders to do, and keep praying with the same compassion you had on the first day.
A month after that phone call, a woman from Fadimatu’s own church noticed she had stopped coming to the Wednesday fellowship and went to find her at the market. Fadimatu told her everything, in a rush of tears behind the sacks.
That Saturday, two elders of the church and the pastor’s wife came to her one-room apartment. They sat on the bench and on the edge of her bed. They asked her name, though they already knew it, and they asked her to tell them about her pain, and they listened for a long time. Then they read James 5, anointed her forehead with a little olive oil from a small bottle, laid their hands on her shoulders and prayed. One of the elders prayed in Hausa, slowly, the way her own father used to pray. Nobody pushed her. Nobody asked for money.
She told me she slept through that night for the first time in months.
The next week the church’s welfare committee met and agreed to pay the balance of her hospital bill, with members contributing what they could. Her cousin was repaid as well. When she went back for her review before the operation, the doctor frowned at the new scan for a long time and then told her the growth had shrunk considerably. He postponed the surgery and asked her to keep coming for checks. She has kept every appointment. The bleeding stopped. The pain has not returned.
“I used to think God was in the front row,” she told me, “and you had to pay to reach Him. Now I know He comes to your room and sits on your bench.”
She still measures out maize with her husband’s enamel bowl. And she has a small bottle of olive oil on the shelf above her bed, which she takes with her when one of the market women falls sick.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What do the stories in Matthew 8 and Mark 1 show you about the heart of Jesus toward the sick?
- How does the touch of Jesus on the leper speak to people who feel isolated by illness today?
- Why do you think James places the “prayer of faith” on the elders rather than the sick person? What difference does that make?
- Have you ever encountered healing ministry that felt commercial or that blamed the sick? How does Acts 3 and Acts 8 help you think about it?
- How can you keep praying with compassion for someone whose illness has continued for a long time?
This Week
This week, choose one sick person you know, whether at home, in your church or in hospital. Visit or call them. Ask how they are, and listen properly before you say anything about yourself. Then ask if you may pray for them, and pray simply and expectantly for their healing in the name of Jesus. If they live with long-term illness, commit to praying for them by name every day this week, and tell them you are doing so. Ask for nothing in return.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that You are moved with compassion toward the sick, that You touch the untouchable and that Your word has authority over every disease. Thank You that You are the same today. Heal the sick among us, I pray, and give me faith to pray boldly for them. Make me like You in the way I treat those who suffer: patient, attentive and gentle. Keep me and Your church from ever selling what You have given freely, and from ever laying blame on those whose healing has not yet come. Let my prayers carry them, as the elders carry the sick in James. And keep my hope fixed on the day when there shall be no more pain. In Your name I pray, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.