Thy Faith Hath Made Thee Whole

And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague (Mark 5:37).

Read the entire Daily Lectionary reading (Mark 5:21-43) here.

Modern preachers of the prosperity gospel have ruined the preaching of this passage. In the second half of Mark 5, Mark recounts the stories of two people who receive miraculous healing from Jesus. The one, the woman with the issue of blood, Jesus meets while going to the aid of the other, Jairus’ daughter. After agreeing to go to Jairus’ house and heal his daughter who is near death, a woman with a serious medical condition reaches out from in the midst of the crowd and touches Jesus’ clothes: For she said, if I may touch but His clothes, I shall be whole.[1] This turns out to be true; Jesus ends up telling her, “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.”[2] Jesus then goes on to raise the now deceased daughter of Jairus to life again.

The problem with this passage isn’t in it’s recounting of events, but in how it has been twisted by prosperity gospel heretics for years and years. These types of preachers point to what Jesus tells the woman, “…thy faith hath made thee whole.” They tell their eager and oftentimes desperate hearers that, if they just have faith as this woman did, God will grant them the healing, the financial security, or well, whatever they ask for. This woman’s faith healed her, after all; your faith can heal you as well. She demonstrated her faith by reaching out to touch Jesus’ clothes. You can demonstrate yours by writing a check for the largest seed offering you can to Kenneth Copeland, or one of the other health and wealth heretics. If you don’t receive your blessing, you must not have had enough faith.

Such an understanding of these events, however, gives us a wrong impression of what Jesus came to earth to do, and what the purpose of His miracles was. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus goes about preaching that the kingdom of heaven has arrived: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.[3] He tells the people in the synagogue at Nazareth that He is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Messiah;[4] and, to validate His proclamation, He does those things only the Messiah should be doing. He heals the blind and deaf; He raises the dead; He forgives sins.

We see a similar incident when Jesus heals the paralytic: When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.[5]

The woman wanted something more from Jesus than only physical healing, something that the paralytic also received from Jesus. The Greek word which the KJV translates “make whole” is sozo. Sozo means save, heal, preserve, or rescue, and is certainly used to indicate physical healing.[6] It is used also, however, to indicate spiritual healing and deliverance. This is the word used in Matthew when the angel tells Joseph in a dream that Mary is pregnant by the Holy Ghost, and will bear a son who will save His people.[7] When Jesus sends out the Twelve to preach and heal, He describes to them what it means to be sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves. He tells them of the tribulations they would endure for His name. Sozo is the word Jesus uses to indicate how, after enduring worldly tribulation at the hands of those who don’t believe, they will be saved – to be made partakers of the salvation of Christ: And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.[8] The miracles Jesus, and the Apostles performed were to show that, in Christ were both physical and spiritual healing. Those things will be ours fully and completely upon Jesus’ return to judge the quick and the dead.

Jesus didn’t come to make our lives on earth better. In fact, being a Christian will oftentimes make our lives more difficult. Jesus told his disciples, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”[9] He came to earth as the lord of life and death. His healing miracles demonstrate this; they are not a guarantee that, if we have the right attitude, or demonstrate just the proper act of our will, God will give us whatever we want. God is not a vending machine; He certainly cannot be manipulated. Jesus’ healing of the woman, and His raising of Jairus’ daughter, shows us that He is God incarnate; He does indeed hold the power of life and death. He is the one who heals all our diseases. But He doesn’t heal us as we might expect: Jesus saith unto her [Martha] I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?[10]

Jesus doesn’t promise us healing of all our physical illnesses and hardships in this life. He promises us that, by His stripes, His death on the cross, we are healed. For even the Son of Man came to earth not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.[11] He promises us an eternal healing, and that is so much better than just getting rid of the physical problems we face in this world. He promises us healing from sin; sin is a far deadlier disease than the issue of blood the woman in the gospel faced, or the diabetes, heart disease, or cancer we may be facing. It is even more serious than the death which Jairus’ daughter suffered. Sin, in fact, is it’s cause; scripture tells us that the wages of sin is death.[12] In our baptism, Jesus washes our sins away, by water and the Word. He connects us to Himself and to His resurrection. He gives us His body and blood to eat and to drink, to nourish our faith, and forgive our sins, and as a pledge that the redemption He promises to fully realize in us on the Last Day, belongs to us fully, right now.

If Jesus should delay His coming, we too, like generations before us, will experience physical death. But, because of the resurrection of Jesus, we understand that our physical death will be nothing for us to fear; it will be for us a fearful as going to bed. When we go to sleep at night, we know that it isn’t permanent; we will awake in the morning. We know that, because of Jesus’ resurrection, death has been defeated for us as well. This is how our faith heals us. We can take great comfort in Jesus’ words about Jairus’ daughter: the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.[13]

Teach me to live that I may dread

The grave as little as my bed.

Teach me to die that so I may

Rise glorious at the awe-ful Day.[14]

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[1] Mark 5:28

[2] Mark 5:34

[3] Matthew 4:17

[4] Luke 4:16-37

[5] Mark 2:5-12

[6] "4982. Sozo." Strong's Concordance. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://biblehub.com/greek/4982.htm.

[7] Matthew 1:21

[8] Matthew 10:16-22

[9] John 16:33

[10] John 11:25-26

[11] Mark 10:45

[12] Romans 6:23

[13] Mark 5:39

[14] Ken, Thomas. "All Praise to Thee, My God, This Night." In The Lutheran Hymnal. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1941. Stanza 3.

Your Best Life Now

Creflo Dollar: Word of Fatih Preacher

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

This is one of the favorite verses for prosperity gospel heretics to twist. Jesus, they say, wants us to have life abundantly. The more faith we have, the more God will bless us. He’s just waiting for us to give Him the go-ahead. Prosperity preachers, like Creflo Dollar, then try to convince people that Jesus’ plan was that everyone who believes in Him should have a happy and fulfilling life.[1] You see, God is a god of abundance. He wants us to enjoy life.[2] When we really believe in Jesus, and attune ourselves to Him, we get supernatural results.[3] That sounds fantastic! How can I get God to bless me like that? How do I have faith and attune myself to Him? Here is where the aptly named Dollar and his prosperity gospel preaching heretic friends step in. They can help you step out in faith. All you have to do is get your mind right by not allowing the wrong thoughts to enter into our minds, and dwelling on those thoughts, which causes us to think wrong.[4] We also have to sow a seed offering into one of their anointed ministries. Your blessings will be on their way, in size and speed directly proportional to the size of the seed (read: monetary offering) that is sown. If you don’t, by some chance, receive your miracle cure for that case of terminal cancer, your job promotion, or the monetary blessing, it’s your fault. You simply didn’t have enough faith. Maybe you need to be bolder, and sow another, bigger seed that really shows God you’re serious. The health and wealth preachers will be happy to accept your seed. After all, private jets are expensive to maintain.

This, of course is dangerous and heretical false teaching. Christ is not saying here that He wants us, to borrow a phrase, to have our best life now. Jesus explains that in the world, rather than peace and happiness, we will have trouble.[5] The reason we can be happy and take heart is because Christ has overcome the world by His death and resurrection. Our sins are forgiven. He is ultimately concerned with mankind’s eternal well-being, not how comfortable our lives are here on earth. He has not promised us physical healing, no matter how badly the prosperity preachers mangle Isaiah 53:5: But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and By His stripes we are healed.

Far from having happy lives, free from disease and filled with monetary blessing, Jesus promises His disciples that they will be betrayed by their unbelieving family members. They will be delivered up to be killed. They will be hated by everyone on account of His name.[6] Jesus calls His disciples to confess Him before men. He warns not to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth, but rather treasures in heaven, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.[7] No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.[8] The word mammon means material wealth. Rather than using God as a magic genie to seek after material wealth, possessions, and long life, we are called to seek first the kingdom of God. Jesus teaches us to pray, not for an abundance of wealth, but for daily bread. We are commanded not to covet and steal our neighbor’s possessions, but to help and be of service to our neighbor in keeping his money and possessions.

Knowing that we are of more value than the birds of the air, who neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet are fed by our Heavenly Father, we recognize what is truly important, and sing with Martin Luther: And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife; Though these all be gone, Our victory has been won; the Kingdom ours remaineth.[9]

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[1] "Living Life to the Fullest." Creflo Dollar Ministries. March 27, 2017. Accessed May 10, 2018. https://www.creflodollarministries.org/Bible-Study/Articles/Living-Life-to-the-Fullest.

[2] Dollar, Creflo. "Sow Your Seed Until You Reach Your Destiny." Creflo Dollar Ministries. August 01, 2014. Accessed May 10, 2018. http://zoe.creflodollarministries.org/zoeclub/impartationletter_aug2014.

Let me ask you a question. Do you believe it is God’s will for you to be successful in every endeavor in life? If you don’t believe it, you should because that is what total-life prosperity means. Don’t allow religion to rob you and tell you that God doesn’t want you to be successful in every way. God’s will is that everything you touch prospers! He wants you to depend on and trust Him for your success. His grace is on your life for a reason—to bear fruit. God’s grace is what empowers you to have sweatless victory in life. If you’re sweating to produce something, you’re not yielding to God’s grace that’s been bestowed upon your life.

[3] "Living Life to the Fullest." Creflo Dollar Ministries. March 27, 2017. Accessed May 10, 2018. https://www.creflodollarministries.org/Bible-Study/Articles/Living-Life-to-the-Fullest.

[4] Dollar, Creflo. "Abundant Life to the Fullest." Creflo Dollar Ministries. January 22, 2018. Accessed May 10, 2018. https://www.creflodollarministries.org/Bible-Study/Articles/Abundant-Life-to-the-Fullest.

[5] John 16:33

[6] Matthew 10:22-31

[7] Matthew 6:19-21

[8] Matthew 6:24

[9] Luther, Martin. "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." In Lutheran Worship. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1986.

Stanza four; Composite translation.

Why I Quit the Gideons

When I was a little kid, I found the pocket-sized New Testament that my father received from a Gideon when he was drafted. I used to carry this King James New Testament around with me and read it constantly, even though I found the language to be awkward and had difficulty understanding a lot of it. That was the first Bible that was really “mine.” I had other Bibles, but they sat on the shelf. This pocket New Testament went with me everywhere. It fascinated me that I was reading that particular New Testament because a Gideon gave it to my father in 1965.

My next encounter with the Gideons was when I was in college at Murray State University. They did a “blitz” on campus. One day in the fall of 1995 the Gideons took up their posts on campus and began handing out their green PWT’s (personal worker testaments). There were several students, friends of mine among them, who made a game out of collecting as many of the pocket-sized books as possible. By the end of the day, there were dozens of the testaments strewn about the lobby of the Fine Arts Building (which is where I spent most of my time). While walking across campus I spotted many more in trash cans. This didn’t sit well with me so I began rescuing the New Testaments. I also began to look at the men who gave up their free time to pass out New Testaments and endure ridicule from college students with more respect. It was at that time that I thought I would like to be a Gideon one day.

It just seemed, however, that I could never connect with them. Either I couldn’t find an active chapter, or I didn’t meet the membership requirements. The one time I did manage to get in touch with someone, our meeting ended up getting cancelled and never rescheduled. Then one day my cousin introduced me to a friend of his who attended The Moody Church. He just happened to be a Gideon. Long story short – he was my “in.” I was finally a Gideon and would get to go out and put God’s Word into people’s hands.

After attending the meetings for a while, though, I knew that I couldn’t stay. Despite their claims of being a non-sectarian para-church organization, the nature of the organization lends itself to certain idiosyncrasies of American Evangelicalism which are, at best, suspect. Among the issues I ran into were Pelagianism, the prosperity gospel, works righteousness, and the idea that people are converted by your testimony rather than by God working through means as he has promised (the means of grace - Word and Sacrament). 

At camp meetings, there were a lot of heart-wrenching stories of how this-or-that person’s life was changed for the better after they received their PWT. It was also sobering to hear the accounts of Gideons in other, more hostile parts of the world, enduring great hardship in order to get Bibles and New Testaments into the hands of Christians who desperately needed them. 

What we never really seemed to talk about was Jesus. Well, Jesus was mentioned a lot. We just never seemed to talk about His death and resurrection as our atoning sacrifice, repentance, or the forgiveness of sin. We certainly never talked about our need for those things. I heard people discuss how they had been terrible sinners before their conversion, but that was the end of the talk of sin After all, we were already Christians. Now that we were saved, it was our job to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, right? To many in the organization, I’m afraid, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” translated to, “Live your best life now.” Knowing what is in my heart, however, I also recognized my need to repent and receive forgiveness for my sin constantly. It didn’t take long for the tension level to rise.

Jesus was there, to be sure, but he wasn’t the focus – D.L. Moody was. The important thing was the presentation – how being a Christian will make your life better, how to package this message in the most effective way to reach the unchurched. That may sound strange, but it was my experience.

After one particular fundraising luncheon last year, I knew that I couldn’t remain. The function involved a number of rather peculiar “pastors” who seemed to me like second-rate, charismatic, prosperity-preaching, TBN rejects. I decided (no pun intended) that I just couldn’t stick around any longer. This is the letter I wrote to my Camp Leader (the names have been removed):

February 28, 2015

Dear Brother,

Greetings to you in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I hope this card finds you well, I am writing in response to your previous message regarding my membership renewal in the Gideons. After much thought I have decided that I will not be renewing my membership. This is not a decision I have made lightly, and I continue to admire my brothers in Christ who continue doing the work of the Gideons. There is, however, a difference in theology between the organization and myself which causes me too much cognitive dissonance for me to ignore any longer.

As you are well aware, our pocket sized New Testaments contain a decision page on the back cover, with a space for a person’s signature and date for the purpose of recording when that person made their decision to accept Christ. This indicates to me that, while the Gideons International intends to be an organization which is pan-denominational, it maintains a definite theological stance regarding conversion, free will, and grace. This stance is in direct opposition to that which I have learned from Holy Scripture.

Scripture teaches that man cannot, by his own reason or strength, come to our Lord Jesus Christ, or believe in him. Conversion, faith, and even the “drawing” of man to Christ are all God’s acts, which man is powerless to initiate or complete. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient (Ephesians 2:1-2).

The unregenerate man is spiritually dead. He is as powerless to make himself spiritually alive as a corpse is to raise itself from the dead. Indeed, the restorative action comes from outside of man – from God – who makes the unregenerate alive in Christ. This undeserved mercy is the grace to which St. Paul refers:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgression – it is by grace you have been saved (Ephesians 2:4-5).

Paul continues, emphasizing that we are saved by the unearned, undeserved favor of God toward us (Grace) through faith in Jesus.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by work, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:8-10).

St. Paul says that we are God’s handiwork. He granted us the repentance and faith, through His Word by the power of His Spirit, which made us alive when we were dead in our transgressions. Even the good works which we are called to do as regenerate Christians, St. Paul says that God has prepared for us. We play no part in our conversion, aside from simply being the person God converts. Consequently, far from making a decision for Christ, Christ made a decision for us:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8).

God provides the gifts Jesus won for us on the cross through the means of his Word and Sacraments – Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. If it were left up to our own decision and act of our will, there would be no hope for conversion. The mind of the unregenerate man is incapable of making such a decision:

The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, or can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8:6-8).

Indeed, St. Paul was right when he wrote, “…the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…” Therefore, before anyone decided to sign the back of their PWT and to accept Jesus, he had already been converted by the Spirit’s power through the means of the preached Word. It isn’t until after a man’s conversion that he has free will, and is able to act according to God’s will.

The problem with the idea of decision theology such as that which is promoted by the Gideons International is that it puts the decision in man’s hands rather than God’s. It gives people the false idea that their own work of making that decision is what saved them, rather than Christ’s holy, precious blood, and His innocent suffering and death.

We are certainly called to proclaim the Gospel. Men, however, are not converted from unbelief – they are not raised to newness of life in Christ Jesus – by some clever apologetic we might make, or by some heart-wrenching emotional experience which they will constantly seek to replicate in order to confirm their justification before God. God’s gift of salvation doesn’t depend on our work, but on God’s grace from beginning to end. The work was accomplished for us by the death and resurrection of Jesus, while mankind was still His enemy; it is given to us by the grace of God through faith in Christ. That gift of faith is given to us also by God through his means of Word and Sacrament.

I shall maintain a warm place in my heart for the Gideons in general, and my fellows from my former camp in particular, especially you. I love you all as brothers in Christ. I continue to admire you for bringing God’s word – his means of grace – to the lost. I cannot, however, continue to be a member of the Gideons International, while it promotes the pelagian heresy that is decision theology.

Brother: If you would like to discuss this further, and in person, I would be open to meeting you at your convenience. I wish you and all the brothers, and their families, God’s richest blessings in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Sincerely,

The Hodgkins Lutheran

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

For all their theological faults, the one redeeming characteristic of the organization is the thing for which they are best known - handing out Bibles and New Testaments. In the end the Gideons, at least the ones I met, all believed that the Bible is the divinely inspired, inerrant Word of God. And, while I can't associate myself with them because of their doctrinal error, I pray that God will continue to use the scriptures they disseminate to regenerate people who are dead in their trespasses and sins.