Back to those inconsistencies I grew up with. I remember thinking that somehow Jesus & God had different roles to play. I could read the Bible and see what Jesus did, but somehow that was separate from what God did.

When someone we knew was diagnosed with a disease or suffered a debilitating condition, I remember hearing older people say things like, “that’s the way life goes” or “God works in mysterious ways” or “I don’t understand it now, but there’s a reason for the sickness”. I did not grow up in a belief system that held out hope and faith that God is good and doesn’t want people to be sick. As a result, the belief system that developed in me was more the opposite: that God intentionally gives people diseases or, if he’s not giving them directly, he’s not able or willing to change the condition.

So much of Jesus’ life and activity was spent healing those who were sick, lame, blind or deaf. The gospels give several summary statements about Jesus ministry and how he healed the multitudes (Mt 4.23f, 9.35; Lk 6.18). He healed because he had compassion (Mk 1.40-42 ), he healed to demonstrate he had authority to forgive sin (Lk 5.18-25), he healed to release people from the bondage of sickness (Lk 13.11-13 ;Jn 5.6), he healed simply because people requested it (Mt 9.19; Mk 10.51), he healed to demonstrate the present reality of his Kingdom (Mt 8.5-13, 12.28; Lk 6.22-23) and Jesus healed because he and Father are one and the same (Jn 14.11).

I was always happy with the first few reasons – because this was Jesus and healing is just a part of what he did. But I remember the first time I heard the idea that God is good and doesn’t want people to be sick – I recall getting defensive, even argumentative. I could agree that God is good but I didn’t know what to do with the idea he doesn’t want people sick. Hadn’t I learned all along that people get sick, suffer with disease and people in the church simply put it down to God’s purposes? Wasn’t it commonly understood that all things happen for a purpose and if someone gets a diagnosis it will work out for their good?

These are the conclusion I had come to. But I was now being presented with a conflicting idea and the more I investigated Jesus’ life and what the Bible reveals, I realised that my conclusions were very far away from what I was discovering in the Bible.

It all boiled down to this question: If Jesus healed the sick, how could God be the one making people sick? Jesus said that one of the reasons for healing was to reveal the nature and heart of God (Jn 10.38), then how could God be the one who is making people sick? If Jesus is the exact representation of God (Hb 1.3) then it doesn’t make sense that Jesus would go around healing if God is the one making people sick.

If Jesus only did what he saw the Father do and only said what he heard the Father say (Jn 5.19), then that meant Jesus ‘saw’ that the heart of God was to heal the sick. Jesus even said on a few occasions that he healed so people would know God sent him (Jn 11.42). Never once did Jesus tell someone that he wouldn’t be able to heal them because the particular condition had been given to them by the Father. Jesus and God are not playing out a ‘good-cop, bad-cop’ routine. They are completely united and in total agreement. They are genuinely good.