[Roundtable] A Calvinist Looks at the promise of Healing - Part II

[RAY MARSDEN]

This, in fine, is why to take the Lord's name in vain is a very serious matter indeed, attracting to us all manner of problems when we name the LORD but do not truly reflect His character.



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From: Jefferis Peterson <jefferis at petersonsales.net>
To: Roundtable [Posts] <roundtable at scholarscorner.com>
Sent: Thursday, 29 October, 2009 18:58:07
Subject: [Roundtable] A Calvinist Looks at the promise of Healing - Part II

As I continue with the article I’m writing, this is part 2, on the covenant names of God and what is meant by the Name. Part 1 was about the meaning of the Good News of the Dominion (Kingdom) of God. 

The Names of God
“If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I put upon the Egyptians; for I AM the LORD, your healer.” Exodus 15:26, RSV.

 
God revealed himself to Moses by his personal name. The divine name, YHWH, is not only his name but also a verb for Being. God’s revealed Name is translated as I AM or I AM Who I AM, or I AM Who I WILL BE.  The modern translators usually translate it as I AM the LORD, but it is all one word, YHWH, pronounced either as Yahweh or Jehovah, depending on your interpretation of the vowels. 
 
The point is that whenever God was revealing himself by his personal name, he was revealing his Covenant Name to his covenant people.  He was revealing his identity, his Being, and he was revealing how he would act towards his people (who he would Be to them). There are seven names of God by which he reveals himself as caretaker of his people:
http://www.gotquestions.org/names-of-God.html:
1.     YAHWEH-JIREH: "The Lord will Provide" (Genesis 22:14<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Genesis%2022.14> ) – The name memorialized by Abraham when God provided the ram to be sacrificed in place of Isaac.

2.    YAHWEH-RAPHA: "The Lord Who Heals" (Exodus 15:26<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Exodus%2015.26> ) – “I am Jehovah who heals you” both in body and soul. In body, by preserving from diseases, and by curing them when afflicted with them and in soul, by pardoning their iniquities.

3.    YAHWEH-NISSI: "The Lord Our Banner" (Exodus 17:15<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Exodus%2017.15> ), where banner is understood to be a rallying place. This name commemorates the desert victory over the Amalekites in Exodus 17.

4.    YAHWEH-M'KADDESH: "The Lord Who Sanctifies, Makes Holy" (Leviticus 20:8<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Leviticus%2020.8> ; Ezekiel 37:28<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Ezekiel%2037.28> ) – God makes it clear that He alone, not the law, could cleanse His people and make them holy.

5.    YAHWEH-SHALOM: "The Lord Our Peace" (Judges 6:24<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Judges%206.24> ) – The name given by Gideon to the altar he built after the Angel of the Lord assured him he would not die as he thought he would after seeing Him.

6.    YAHWEH-TSIDKENU: "The Lord Our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 33:16<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Jeremiah%2033.16> ) – As with YHWH-M’Kaddesh, it is God alone who provides righteousness to man, ultimately in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, who became sin for us “that we might become the Righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/2%20Corinthians%205.21> ). 

7.    YAHWEH-ROHI: "The Lord Our Shepherd" (Psalm 23:1<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Psalm%2023.1> ) – After David pondered his relationship as a shepherd to his sheep, he realized that was exactly the relationship God had with him, and so he declares “Yahweh-Rohi is my Shepherd. I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1<http://bible.logos.com/passage/niv/Psalm%2023.1> ).


In other words, God was revealing himself in Covenant as a promise to be to us what he says about himself in his own name. To be false to his own name would be to violate the very ground of existence.“I will bow down towards your holy temple and will praise your Name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your Name and your Word,” Psalms 138:2, NIV. God has made his Word his bond, and he cannot violate it without violating himself. So when he says I AM Your Healer, he is telling us who he is to us. 


Therefore to say that God is not our healer or does not heal or that he no longer heals is to say that either God has changed or that God is a liar and that he is not truthful about himself. To believe he is not our healer is to believe something that is not true about God. He cannot be in covenant with us without honoring the covenant he has made with us. His Name is his identity, and when he gives us his Name, he tells us who he is in relationship to us. He can be no less. Some say, “Well, God has healed us ultimately in the resurrection, but that doesn’t mean he is a healer for our diseases today.”  This statement is true enough in that we shall all ultimately be healed, but if we cannot look to him for healing today, we are saying, in effect, “I don’t believe your Covenant Name has any validity today. I’m just going to ignore that part of who you say you are…. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe you are any of those things for me on
 this earth right now. You are not my provider or my righteousness, or my shepherd…  All that is in the future in heaven… Right now I have to do all those things for myself. I have to earn my keep, go to doctors for healing, make myself as good a person as I can be, and protect myself. Then someday, in heaven, I’ll be able to trust you for all these things. But right now, today, I can’t because they don’t work on this earth… ”  
 
This may sound silly, but how can we pick and choose which part of God’s covenant promises to us to believe and accept? If he says, “I AM Your Healer and I AM Your Righteousness,” can we say, “I accept you as my righteousness here and now because I have none of my own, but I reject you as my healer because I don’t believe that you really are my healer today”? You have to understand, when God says his Name, he is saying “I make a solemn promise, sealed in the blood of my own Son, that I AM the God who heals you.” If we are so bold as to reject that, we are rejecting God’s personal face towards us. 
 
Some will say that “yes, God is our healer, but he only heals now through natural means.” Well, if disease is the enemy, why restrict God to only one type of healing? Who are we to say, “God can or will only heal through natural means today”?  Are we God that we can put limits upon him? That is presumption. Surely God can use natural and supernatural means. In fact, everything God does is supernatural because God is Spirit. So every time he breathes upon the Creation it is His Spirit intersecting nature. So if he wills a natural recovery or a miracle, these are both supernatural influences upon the created order. 
 
Now Jesus approached healing as a necessary component of this covenant relationship between humanity and God.  When Jesus saw a woman who had been bound by a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, he healed her on the Sabbath, which made the religious people angry, but he said, “And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” Luke 13:16, RSV.  What did he mean by calling her a daughter of Abraham?   He was reminding his fellow Jews that this woman was a daughter of the covenant which God made with Abraham, and so she had the full rights and privileges promised by that covenant.  Healing, Jesus was saying, was part of that covenant between God and the children of Abraham.  Jesus healed her on the basis of the covenant.  Notice in this passage that Jesus did not say to the woman that her faith had made her well, for indeed, she expressed no faith towards Jesus
 that was recorded. Jesus just saw her suffering and he healed her because she was a daughter of Abraham. 
 
Lest one think that this old covenant has passed and is no longer applicable, we only need to look at what Paul said about this covenant in Galatians:
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us--for it is written, ‘Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree’-- that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith…. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many; but, referring to one, “And to your offspring,” which is Christ... And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise,” Galatians 3:13-16,29, RSV.
Jesus did not discard the old covenant. Jesus fulfilled it so that the blessings of the old, and the new, might come upon us as we inherit the blessings of Abraham through him.
 
It is plain that some of the curses that come from breaking the Law are sickness and disease: 
“If you are not careful to do all the words of this law which are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awful name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting. And he will bring upon you again all the diseases of Egypt, which you were afraid of; and they shall cleave to you. Every sickness also, and every affliction which is not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will bring upon you, until you are destroyed,” Deuteronomy 28:58-61, RSV.
 
If Jesus came to redeem us from the curses of the Law, then he came to redeem us from their effects as well. It is for this reason that the Scriptures say, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed,” Isaiah 53:5, RSV.  Peter quotes this verse (1 Peter 2:24) as a sign of Jesus’ Messianic mission. Since the obverse of the curse is the Blessing, the blessing that came upon Abraham, and which belonged to the woman in the synagogue, also belongs to us through Christ Jesus:
“Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock,” Deuteronomy 28:4, RSV. 
Our health and wholeness are part of the blessing of Christ, who was given to us to save us from Satan’s power and to make the blessings of God flow as far as the curse is found. He was sent by God the Father to uphold, establish, and fulfill the Covenant Promises God made to his people to be their healer, their deliverer, their provider, and their righteousness, as well as all the other promises he made as the I AM. 

Jesus, as the representative of the Covenant, is the one who upholds the Name of God, and included in that Name is the Name “I AM Who Heals You.” God has been faithful to his own Name, so should we be to him. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jefferis Peterson, Pres.
Web Design and Marketing
http://www.PetersonSales.com
(724)-482-2015
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