Then a man with leprosy came to him and, on his knees, begged him: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. “I am willing,” he told him. “Be made clean.”
Mark 1:40,41
We read about healing in the Bible, but there is such a difference between what we read in the Bible and what most of us see in our practical experience. Although God is not obligated to heal at our request, I believe that we often miss out on blessings He wants us to experience because we fail to believe the Scriptures. God has not lost His power, but often we don’t ask Him to work, and we don’t do what He asks of us. The Bible tells us what to do.
Community
Prayer for healing is supposed to be offered in the context of Christian community. A Christian community is a group of believers who know each other as intimate friends, not just as familiar faces on Sunday morning. This kind of community does not exist among acquaintances who simply see each other occasionally to pray, sing, give money and listen to a sermon. An authentic Christian community is made up of people who behave as brothers and sisters in Christ and who are ready to make sacrifices for each other as He has done for us.
While we often fail to model biblical Christianity in our local churches, the church is supposed to be a group of covenanted people who know each other in deep and meaningful ways and who take their covenant relationships seriously. Trust and accountability develop in this atmosphere.
The community of faith loves, prays for, and does things for and with each other. When needs arise, they become known and are met. This kind of intimate friendship doesn’t develop automatically. It happens through small group interaction such as Sunday school, home Bible studies, retreats, choir rehearsals, missions trips and other environments that build relational bridges between people.
Authority
In the context of Christian community, people recognize God-ordained authority. In James 5:14, the church is told: “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord…”
Obviously, the early church had elders, a recognition that within the local body God establishes and ordains authority and hierarchy. When the elders anoint the sick “in the name of the Lord,” this phrase indicates that they do so with the authority of Jesus.
God the Father and God the Son have a relationship of hierarchy in which there is submission by the Son to the Father. The Son is fully God, but He willingly submits to His Father. God the Son delights in doing His Father’s will. Jesus repeatedly makes it clear in Scripture that He only does what the Father says to do and He only says what the Father says to say.
Since there is hierarchy within the Godhead, we should not be surprised that God has ordained hierarchy in other relationships. Our failure to recognize God-ordained authority is an ancient problem. Satan got kicked out of heaven because of his refusal to submit. Although Lucifer was the highest of all the angels, he refused to be in a position of submission to God. He demanded equality. Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lie to them. Thinking they could become “like God,” they rebelled against God and became slaves to Satan. Because they failed to submit to God’s authority, they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
This problem has recurred for every person since that time. We don’t want to have to submit to God. We don’t want to do what God says. This is why, after we are born again into God’s family, we must learn submission to the Father. Remember, life in God’s kingdom involves obeying the King. Submission to the Father also involves submitting to the authorities God has ordained and placed in our lives.
God says, “The husband is the head of the wife” (Eph. 5:23). While women are just as good as men, maybe even better, they aren’t given the God-ordained role as head of the home. These roles are not meant to be egalitarian; God has a plan and His plan must be obeyed if we want to be truly happy.
Women are not given the role of head of the family, but women are spoken of as treasures to be loved, esteemed, respected and protected. When God created the woman to be the man’s helper, He used the same title for her that He gives Himself in describing the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, just as the Son is God. The fact that the Helper brings glory to the Son and the Son is always obedient to the Father should continually remind us that our greatest fulfillment occurs in the context of submission and is never obtained through rebellion.
Submission is not about value or worth. Authority and submission are about function. Women and men, shepherd and flock, are joint heirs in Christ. It is because of His loving wisdom that God chose to establish hierarchy in the home, the church, and in society. When we refuse to accept the hierarchy God has established, we create confusion and sin prevails.
