Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Fourteen
IS HEALING INCLUDED IN THE ATONEMENT?
Scripture Reading: verses 19-22
LET US THEREFORE FOLLOW AFTER THE THINGS WHICH MAKE FOR PEACE, AND THINGS WHEREWITH ONE MAY EDIFY ANOTHER. FOR MEAT DESTROY NOT THE WORK OF GOD. ALL THINGS INDEED ARE PURE; BUT IT IS EVIL FOR THAT MAN WHO EATETH WITH OFFENCE. IT IS GOOD NEITHER TO EAT FLESH, NOR TO DRINK WINE, NOR ANY THING WHEREBY THY BROTHER STUMBLETH, OR IS OFFENDED, OR IS MADE WEAK. HOST THOU FAITH? HAVE IT TO THYSELF BEFORE GOD. HAPPY IS HE THAT CONDEMNETH NOT HIMSELF IN THAT THING WHICH HE ALLOWETH. AND HE THAT DOUBTETH IS DAMNED IF HE EAT, BECAUSE HE EATETH NOT OF FAITH: FOR WHATSOEVER IS NOT OF FAITH IS SIN.
The keynote of this entire passage is struck in the seventeenth verse: “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
The economy of Christianity is a spiritual affair and was never intended to be for the social or material blessing of mankind. Incidental to its spiritual benefits, material blessings come with it, but these are not its intent. Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost are the essential elements in the kingdom of God. “The kingdom of God” is an expression used in the New Testament to indicate that spiritual realm where the authority belongs to God. It is not a material realm such as Palestine, or the Land of Canaan. It is a spiritual realm. In order to enter that kingdom, we must obey the Gospel of Christ and be born again.1 The Lord Himself taught this to Nicodemus in John 3, where it is clearly stated that in order to see or enter the kingdom of God we must be born again. Thus it is a spiritual entrance into a spiritual realm. By this new birth we are given new sensibilities and new inclinations. So in John 3 the Lord goes on to say “He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that it might be made manifest that his works are wrought in God.” The natural man avoids the light because his deeds are evil. The one who is born again comes into the light, because God has created in his heart new desires that are clean and holy. God’s kingdom is the realm of light, the realm where God is known.
Any of us who claim to be born again and yet go on in sin, practicing the works of darkness in this world as we did formerly, can hardly be recognized as being real children of God. The new birth ought to make as radical a change in our spiritual being as natural birth makes in our physical being. It is a new beginning under the authority of the Lord.
The kingdom of God cannot subsist in eating and drinking, for these are practices that, although legitimate, belong to the natural man. The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. It devolves on the truth that comes before us so often in this Epistle, that the Christian is a complex being with two identities. As a natural man he is identified with the first creation, and as long as he is in the body that identity, in one way or another, will be maintained. However, God has made a new beginning in his life, and he has a new identity that is associated with the Lord Jesus who has died and risen. Regarding the first identity he is still a physical being with a mortal body. He has to eat and drink, the same as any ungodly person. He is subject to the same diseases and the same article of death as ungodly men. Of course he has the providential care of a loving Father, but to a certain extent unbelieving men have this same care. God’s sun shines on the just and the unjust. We should not that since we have been inducted into God’s kingdom, our physical being is essentially changed. We are still in bodies of humiliation, according to the Philippian Epistle.
The thought of this precludes the idea that healing our diseases is involved in the work of the atonement. That verse in Isaiah 53 – “by His stripes we are healed” – has no reference to physical disease. The subject of Isaiah 53 is essentially the spiritual diseases; first of Israel nationally, and secondly of mankind in general. These diseases come from unbelief and the rejection of the Messiah. There is not a word in Isaiah 53 that would lead us to believe that the Lord’s death on the cross guarantees any of us a healthy body. This is not a denial of the power of God to miraculously come in and heal the body, which He sometimes does, but which is apart from the atoning work of Christ. The fact remains that God leaves us in sickness, or heals our bodies, or raises us up according to His own will.
If healing were a part of the atonement then surely there are two men in the New Testament in whose lives it might be expected – Paul and Timothy. Paul journeyed all the way through life with a thom in the flesh that God refused to remove. He speaks of it as “my trial which was in my flesh” (Gal. 4:14) and he commends the Galatians for their consideration regarding it. Was God denying the atoning work of the Lord Jesus by not healing Paul? Certainly not. This comes more fully into evidence with Timothy. He had what Paul called an “often infirmity.” It was a chronic stomach condition; Paul tells him to take a little wine for his stomach’s sake and his often infirmity. If Paul had believed that the healing of the body is a legitimate part of the atoning work of Christ, he would have made a flagrant error in giving these instructions to Timothy.
The kingdom of God is not a material system of blessing. It is a spiritual realm of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Because of this, Paul is now impressing on the brethren at Rome not to stumble a brother who is weak in the faith by insisting on eating things forbidden under the ancient Jewish economy. It is not a question of whether these things are right and wrong, but rather that they are inexpedient. Paul gives this admonition to all of us, “Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God.” This is a vindication of the strong in their possession of Christian liberty. They truly enjoy this liberty in God’s presence and are not called upon to surrender it; but, of course, they must not flaunt it to the discomfiture and destruction of the weak. Romans 14:22a is another exhortation to the strong and means that they are not to parade and protest their rights to the detriment of the weak and with the evil consequences delineated in the preceding verses.
Paul is here presenting a grand word. We have our own individual path to tread before God. We cannot travel on each other’s faith. One may have faith to go forward in a certain direction, but if another is going to travel that way then they must have faith for themselves. Yet there are many Christians who are trying to travel on the faith of others. Such a course will invariably lead to disaster.
Sometimes older Christians will work younger people into an enthusiasm for certain types of Christian work for which they have neither the faith nor the competence. Many young believers have been encouraged to assume responsibilities beyond their faith and a downfall is inevitable. “Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God.” The foreign mission field, as well as service at home, is littered with men and women who have undertaken service in the false enthusiasm of glamorous expectation only to find they did not have the faith for it, and could not carry on. It is a great matter, as Paul says, “for every man to be persuaded in his own mind” (Rom. 14:5). Each of us stand individually under the authority of the Lord.
