What Is the Gift of Healing?

The gift of healing is listed by Paul among the manifestations of the Spirit: 'to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit.' In the Gospels and Acts, Jesus and the apostles healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead as signs confirming their message and displaying the compassion of God. Healing in Scripture is always connected to the kingdom of God — it is a foretaste of the complete restoration that will come when Christ returns and 'death is swallowed up in victory.' The gift of healing is not a guarantee that every Christian will be healed in this life, nor is it a reward for faith or a sign of spiritual maturity. Paul himself had a 'thorn in the flesh' that God declined to remove. Timothy had frequent infirmities. Yet God does heal, and He often uses His people as instruments of that healing. The gift must be exercised with humility, without financial exploitation, and with the understanding that physical healing is a sign of the greater healing — the forgiveness of sins and the renewal of the soul. The ultimate healing is glorification, when every believer will receive a resurrection body free from pain, sickness, and death.