When Healing Does Not Come¶

The text. "Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." (2 Corinthians 12:8-9, ESV)

The thorn¶

Paul had seen visions and revelations, and he had a thorn in the flesh. He does not tell us what it was, which is providential: every reader can put their own suffering in that space. What he tells us is that he asked three times, and the answer was no.

The answer was not a rebuke but a promise: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul did not conclude that the gifts had ceased, that prayer was useless, or that he had lacked faith. A refusal is not a verdict on the one who prayed.

Three more witnesses¶

Scripture is candid about this, and the candid passages are usually skipped.

Timothy's stomach. "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Timothy 5:23). The young leader had a persistent complaint, and Paul's remedy was medicinal, not a rebuke.

Epaphroditus. "Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him" (Philippians 2:27). The recovery is mercy — so the illness was not a punishment and the healing was not a wage.

Trophimus. "Trophimus I left ill at Miletus" (2 Timothy 4:20). One clause, no explanation, no blame. The Paul who wrote about anointing the sick left a companion sick.

The prayer of faith¶

James is the passage most often used to promise what it does not promise:

"Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven." (James 5:14-15, ESV)

Notice what it says: call the elders, pray, and the prayer of faith will save. It joins healing to forgiveness, and it adds, "confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed" (5:16). Notice what it does not say: that everyone anointed recovers, or that recovery is immediate, or that the outcome depends on the quantity of the sick person's faith. The faith in view is the elders' — "the prayer of faith" — and the verbs for saving and raising are used elsewhere of final salvation and resurrection. This is a promise too large to be reduced to a guarantee of a cure this week.

The already and the not yet¶

The kingdom has come, and has not come in full. The Spirit is poured out, and we "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). Healing is the age to come breaking into this one, not the arrival of that age — which is why the New Testament can have both extraordinary healing and sick saints and feel no contradiction.

The resurrection is the healing of the body, and it is still future. Everything short of it is a foretaste. That is not a reason to stop praying; it is a reason not to be destroyed when healing tarries.

A promise, not a formula¶

A promise tells you about the character and intention of God. A formula tells you the mechanism and the guaranteed result. "I will never leave you" is a promise. "Pray this way, for this long, with this much faith, and the sickness will go" is a formula, and Scripture does not give it.

Formulas are attractive because they put the outcome under our control — and the blame, when it fails, on the sick person.

The harm of blame¶

"If you had more faith." "There must be unconfessed sin." "The curse is still operating." These sentences have been said to dying people by people who meant well, and they are not the gospel.

Job's friends reasoned from suffering to sin, and God's verdict is that they had not spoken of him what was right (Job 42:7). Jesus refuses the equation outright: "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents" (John 9:3). Paul's thorn was given "to keep me from becoming conceited," not because of sin (2 Corinthians 12:7).

So the pastoral rule is simple: never assign a cause Scripture has not assigned.

How to pray honestly¶

The prayer "if it is your will" is not unbelief. It is the prayer of Gethsemane: "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). It is also the shape of the promise: "if we ask anything according to his will he hears us" (1 John 5:14).

So pray specifically: name the disease, ask boldly, ask more than once. And pray submissively, because we do not know the end from the beginning. The two are not in tension; they are what faith sounds like when addressed to a person rather than a procedure.

How to grieve, and how to keep hoping¶

Grief is not a failure of faith. "Weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15) is a command, and the Psalms are full of lament. The difference the gospel makes is not that Christians do not grieve, but that we do not "grieve as others do who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

And keep hoping, because hope is not certainty about a particular outcome; it is confidence in the person who holds it. Keep asking, keep anointing, keep bringing the sick to the elders. Use medicine as well as prayer — Timothy had wine, Hezekiah a fig cake on his boil (Isaiah 38:21), and Luke was a physician (Colossians 4:14). None of that is unbelief; it is the ordinary providence of God, which is also a gift.

What this does and does not prove¶

It proves: that Scripture expects prayer for healing sometimes to go unanswered; that the New Testament church had sick members and leaders; and that James's promise is not a formula that makes the sick responsible for their sickness.

It does not prove: that healing is not for today, that we should stop asking, or that God is indifferent. It proves that gifts are gifts, not wages.