BY GREG CRUM

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Romans 10:9-10

Can you personally identify with the truth of Romans 10:9-10? If you are “born again,” you most definitely can. In some form or fashion, you have confessed with your mouth the lordship of Jesus, believing in your heart that God sent His Son to die for you and then be raised again so that death could be defeated and you could be justified before the judge of all the universe. When you did this, just as the Bible says, you were saved.

Saved, an often-used word in our Christian vocabulary, and a word that represents a powerful concept, but what does that word actually mean, especially in the context of what Jesus has provided for us through his death and resurrection? In the original language of our Bibles that word “saved” is the Greek word “sozo.” It means, as you would imagine, to save, deliver, or protect. But that is not all it means. In fact, that is not even its primary definition.

The first definition you will find when looking up the word “sozo” in many Greek dictionaries is “to heal and to be made whole.” Curious, right? What is even more curious is that elsewhere in the New Testament the same word “sozo” is used but translated as “healed.” That is the case in Acts 14:9. Same Greek word “sozo,” once translated “saved” and again translated “healed.”

Huh, how could those KJV scholars have accurately translated “sozo” in one place “saved” and in the other “healed?” The only logical explanation, and the theologically correct one in this instance, is that the “sozo” that God has provided for us through Christ includes both concepts.

Friends, our salvation is more than just a ticket to Heaven. What Jesus did for us includes so much more. The Kingdom of God does not just have the best retirement plan; it also has a wonderful healthcare policy available to all its members. The stripes of Jesus really did provide for our health and healing, as surely as his becoming sin for us provided our right standing with God. It is right there in the Scriptures, and all through the Gospels and the Book of Acts in particular, yet this reality is far from the typical experience of most Christians today. Why though?

Why is it that the revelation of the written Word does not match the reality of the physical health of most Christians today? Is it because the healings of God mentioned in the Scriptures are just of a spiritual nature? Are we who believe in the promises of physical health in this life misunderstanding and/or misapplying the text? If that is the case, then so were the earliest believers in Jesus, and the writers of the New Testament.

Think about I Peter 2:24, you know, the “by whose stripes ye were healed” verse. Some argue that phrase refers only to the healing of sin-sickness, but fail to acknowledge that it is a direct reference to Isaiah 53:4-5, which, in turn, was interpreted by the Holy Ghost Himself in Matthew 8:14-17 as referring to the Lord Jesus healing people’s physical bodies. Sure, Jesus healed our sin-sickness, but in context, I Peter 2:24 declares that he took those stripes to heal our bodies as well.

Well, as some propose, perhaps the healing the Bible describes was only for that time and is no longer available to Christians today. In short, access to physical healing stopped once the last apostle of the Lord died. First, healing was not just a first-century Jesus-and-the-apostles thing. Healing was an Old Testament thing as well, because healing is a God thing. Read Exodus 15:26 and explain that away with Apostolic cessation. You cannot.

Secondly, if you follow that cessationist line of thinking, you also, logically, have to conclude that access to Heaven stopped with the last apostle as well. Why? Because, textually, the word “sozo” that describes our salvation from sin and Hell is also the same word that represents this concept of physical health in the Lord.

Where is the Scripture that told us that the Lord did away with half the meaning of his salvation for us in our day? You will not find it in the Bible.

Greg Crum is the pastor at Calvary Temple Church in Lovely.