Some Bible teachers advocate that there is healing in the atonement of Jesus on the cross based on 1 Peter 2:24: “By whose stripes we are healed.” Can you imagine the audience of Peter who were suffering persecution for their faith and witness being confused if Peter was teaching because of Jesus’ atonement, you should not be suffering. These persecuted believers were not suffering because of a lack of faith or sin. Additionally, they would have been equally confused because some of their loved ones had died. People don’t of good health.[1]
James Beibly and Paul R. Eddy considered the therapeutic view of atonement as of one of the four important views of atonement to be discussed in their book, The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views. Bruce R. Reichenbach detracted from the penal substitutionary view of atonement by subscribing to the healing or therapeutic view of the atonement based in part on Matthew 8:17 quoting Isaiah 53:4. Reichenbach defended his view from Isaiah: “Sickness describes not only our spiritual condition but our physical, economic, political, social and environmental conditions. In the Isaiah passage, Isaiah continues to record the fruits of sin.”[2]
Additionally, Reichenbach quoted Exodus 15:26 to support his view, “I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.” Reichenbach rejected penal substitution as “necessarily the way God had to bring about our reconciliation with him .... It might be that the penal substitution view provides one way to properly understand the atonement. But contrary to Thomas R. Schreiner, the atonement need not have happened that way.”[3]
Sickness is different from sin
Sickness is the result of the fall of mankind into sin. Isaiah 53 addresses far more than the physical effects of the curse of Genesis 3. Accordingly, Jesus was punished for our sin (1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 3:18) that causes sickness.
Healing is indeed a blessing of Jesus’ atonement (Matthew 8:17), though ultimately attained in the future glorified body (Romans 8:23). Currently, humanity carries the effects of the fall. Spiritual healing of sin and reconciliation, however, takes place now (1 Peter 2:24) because of the penal substitutionary atonement. The sinful nature and sin problem are rectified through the ultimate eradication of the curse, which occurs in the future (Revelation 21: 3-4).
Wayne Grudem’s refutation of the therapeutic view of the atonement
Wayne Grudem, although a continuationist who posits that the gift of healing is operative today, does not advocate the healing view of atonement in his commentary on 1 Peter:
By his wounds you have been healed is drawn from Isaiah 53:5. Peter here applies the words morally: by Christ’s wounds we have been “healed” from sin. Here again is the idea of the punishment of a substitute: the punishment deserved by us Christ took on himself and thus made us (spiritually and morally) well.[4]
D. A. Carson’s refutation of the therapeutic view of the atonement
D. A. Carson notes: “Thus the healings during Jesus’ ministry can be understood not only as the foretaste of the kingdom [in which there will be little sickness] but also as the fruit of Jesus’ death.”[5]
Thomas Constable’s refutation of the therapeutic view of the atonement
Constable explains Matthew 8:17, used by those who advocate physical healing in the atonement: That evening many other people brought their afflicted friends and relatives to Jesus for healing. In the Jewish inter-testamental literature the writers spoke of demons as responsible for making people ill. Jesus cast out many demonic spirits and healed many who were sick.
Matthew noted that Jesus’ healings fulfilled messianic prophecy (Isa. 53:4). Matthew’s citation from Isaiah really summarized all the healings in this chapter so far. He interpreted Isaiah freely as predicting the vicarious sufferings of Messiah. This was in accord with Isaiah’s prophecy concerning Messiah that appears in Isaiah 53. The Old Testament taught that all sickness is the direct or indirect result of sin (cf. 9:5). Messiah would remove infirmities and diseases by dying as a substitute sacrifice for sin. He would deal with the fruit by dealing with the root. Jesus’ healing ministry laid the foundation for His destroying sickness with His death. Therefore, it was appropriate for Matthew to quote Isaiah 53:4 here. Jesus’ healing ministry also previewed kingdom conditions (cf. Isa. 33:24; 57:19).
For Matthew, Jesus’ healing ministry pointed to the Cross. The healings were signs that signified more than the average observer might have understood. Matthew recorded that Jesus healed all types of people. Likewise, when He died, Jesus gave His life as a ransom for many (20:28). Jesus’ ministry of destroying sin in death was an extension of the authority that He demonstrated in His ministry of destroying sickness during His life.
Some Christians believe that Isaiah 53:4 and Matthew 8:16-17 teach that Jesus’ death made it possible for people today to experience physical healing now by placing faith in Jesus. Most students of these and similar passages have concluded that the healing Jesus’ death provides believers today will come when we receive our resurrection bodies, not necessarily before then.[6]
I agree with all of these conservative theologians. Matthew presents the miracles of Jesus as authenticating signs that He is the OT predicted Messiah, who will set up His kingdom if Israel repents. According to Matthew’s quote of Isaiah 53:4, the physical healing provided for in Jesus’ death pointed to the future kingdom, when one of the fruits of Jesus’ death is healing. Peter quotes Isaiah 53:4 to emphasize Isaiah’s teaching that in the atonement, Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins [not dead to sickness in this life] should live unto righteousness: [not be free from physical disease now] by whose stripes you were healed [from sin to live righteousnessly, not excempt from pain].”
[1] Stephen Davey in a sermon: “The Wounds of Christ.”
[2] Bruce Reicherbach, “Healing View” in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, James Beibly and Paul R. Eddy, eds. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 124-125, Kindle Edition.
[3] Bruce Reichenbach, “The Healing View” in The Nature of the Atonement, 106.
[4] Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 140.
[5] D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” 206.
[6] Thomas Constable, netbible.org.