Pain and Healing from a Chaplain’s Perspective. Prophetic Prognosis: What and When?

Rev Lindsay Johnstone, Chaplain, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

Countless times a hospital chaplain will have only a very brief window of opportunity to share with a patient matters concerning forgiveness, eternity, relationship with God in Christ, salvation, and supernatural healing by God. Often a patient gives the chaplain the opportunity to move in one or more of these areas. Then the chaplain will be a part-provider. One prays that God will send other labourers of the harvest to come across the paths of those for whom they have cared, and to take them further.

Even those brief encounters, when a chaplain’s input is merely like a dot on a large curve, the ultimate outcome may be significantly affected by the gradient, which  may become steeper if at that point the chaplain is operating from a “world-view” with an increased hope and expectation.

Our expectations may be limited by denominational or peer group expectations. They may be limited to previous stages of learning, or they may be on a growing learning curve. They will be regulated according to our “operational theology”, which can be skewed by fear or by arrogance, restricted by peer – group anxiety, or by misapplication of Biblical passages.

Healing and Forgiveness as “partners” within the ministry of Jesus, fulfil prophecies such as that of Isaiah 53: 4-5 (ESV)

4. Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

5. But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

 

Matthew 8: 17 (ESV) uses this in relation to physical healings.

16 That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”

“oppressed by demons” is the better translation of the Greek word daimonizomai in its various forms. At verse 33 the same version (ESV) translates it as “demon – possessed”, but whatever the context might imply the Greek nowhere linguistically requires that translation, which has sometimes been used to argue that Christian believers cannot ever need the type of ministry described in verse 16.

 Within the context of Matthew 8, the quote from Isaiah is fulfilled in healing lepers, a paralysed person, someone with a fever, and people demonically oppressed.

1 Peter 2: 24 quotes the last clause in Isaiah 53: 5 in connection with our forgiveness and with consequences in righteous responses to maltreatment by others, where such responses have a healing effect. In principle, we were forgiven and healed two thousand years before we (ourselves) sinned or became ill. In practice this became true of any one of us, in our spirit, when we came into a personal relationship with Christ. Though eternally forgiven already, we wrestle with the pressure to commit sin until Christ returns. Though healed in our spirit, we continue to suffer the pains of the fallen world, until Christ returns. In the meantime, we are encouraged to grow in a life-style of forgiveness, repentance and reconciliation; and to appropriate healings of our body and mind within this present order. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (ESV)

 Isaiah 61: 1-4 (ESV) also prophesies evangelism and healing.

 

61 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;...

Luke 4:21 (ESV)

And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

It is evident that the scope of the healing covers spiritual, emotional, material and physical areas.

There are, of course, other theological and practical matters that relate to pain and healing which are worthy of attention, and which help with answering questions that arise out what has been said here.