Some Bible teachers advocate that there is healing in the atonement of Jesus’ on the cross based on 1 Peter 2:24: “By whose strips we are healed.” Can you imagine the audience of Peter who were suffering persecution for thier 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).
Thomas R. Schreiner’s refutation of the therapeutic view of the atonement
Robert Schreiner refutes this view that Isaiah 53 and the atonement include immediate physical healing. “The fundamental problem with the therapeutic view is that it centers on human beings instead of God himself. The God-centeredness of biblical revelation is shunted to the side and the consequences of the atonement for human beings comes to the forefront.”[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.[5]
D. A. Carson’s refutation of the therapeutic view of the atonement
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. 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.”[6]
[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] Thomas R. Schreiner, “The Penal Substitution Response” in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, James Beibly and Paul R. Eddy, eds. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 155, Kindle Edition.
[5] Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 140.
[6] D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” 206.