If you had to choose one or the other - would you rather have excellent physical health or extremely healthy faith in God? Many people see God as a means to the end of good physical or emotional health. For them, good health is the goal, and God is the way to get there. There is some truth in their position. God, in fact, guarantees everyone who is in life-saving spiritual union with Jesus Christ perfect wholeness in paradise forever. However, temporal good health is not the end. Reconciliation with God is the end, and God uses health, good and bad, to win people to it. In the second miracle John records in his Gospel, we see Jesus winning a household to saving faith in Himself as God’s Messiah by mercifully restoring a man’s critically ill son to full health. This is not so much an account of ‘faith healing’ as it is an account of healing faith. Healthy faith is unconditional, active trust in God expressed through faithful actions. Our actions reveal what we actually believe. For example, if you tell me that you are going to pretend to hit me, and I tell you I have absolute faith that you will not actually hit me. Then I flinch, duck and cover when you swing. My actions indicate that my faith is not so absolute after all. I may doubt your motives or your eye-hand coordination, but I doubt something. Likewise, we can say that we have faith in God, but our actions sometimes demonstrate that we do not. In those moments, we may doubt that God is good all the time or that He is almighty, but we doubt something. Healthy faith acts according to the reality that God is always willing and always able to do the ultimate best for His glory and our good.
So, how did God use physical health to bring spiritual health to the household in our text? Well, what motivated the official to run to Jesus in the first place? It was not his desperation for reconciliation with God. He was driven to Jesus by the painful reality that his son was in the middle of a medical emergency. God can and does use such emergencies to turn us to Him, and I am glad He does! Many of you know my dad’s story. I would not wish the physical suffering he endured during his final years on anyone. It was a brutal combination of amputations and complications that eventually brought my dad to his breaking point. My dad was an extremely independent, self-reliant man, who was hardened to the gospel. That is until God met him at his lowest point and providentially used 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 to win my dad to Himself. I do not wish illness on anyone, but if that is what it takes to get a person to turn to God, I prefer them to find eternal wholeness through difficult means than to temporarily enjoy good health on their way to eternal destruction.
Jesus’ first sign was a miracle of transformation, water into wine. This was a miracle of restoration, illness to health. God promises everyone who turns to Him to save them from sin’s penalty, power, and presence both transformation and restoration. He transforms everyone who turns to Him into new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), and He promises to restore everything we lost in the Fall, including paradise and the eternally healthy bodies perfectly fitted for it (Revelation 21). You and I have a certain date with death unless Jesus returns first. No matter how we try to preserve it, our health is going to fail. A right relationship with God, not health, is the end. Jesus is the Way. Healthy faith in Him will never fail you.
So, how did God use physical health to bring spiritual health to the household in our text? Well, what motivated the official to run to Jesus in the first place? It was not his desperation for reconciliation with God. He was driven to Jesus by the painful reality that his son was in the middle of a medical emergency. God can and does use such emergencies to turn us to Him, and I am glad He does! Many of you know my dad’s story. I would not wish the physical suffering he endured during his final years on anyone. It was a brutal combination of amputations and complications that eventually brought my dad to his breaking point. My dad was an extremely independent, self-reliant man, who was hardened to the gospel. That is until God met him at his lowest point and providentially used 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 to win my dad to Himself. I do not wish illness on anyone, but if that is what it takes to get a person to turn to God, I prefer them to find eternal wholeness through difficult means than to temporarily enjoy good health on their way to eternal destruction.
Jesus’ first sign was a miracle of transformation, water into wine. This was a miracle of restoration, illness to health. God promises everyone who turns to Him to save them from sin’s penalty, power, and presence both transformation and restoration. He transforms everyone who turns to Him into new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), and He promises to restore everything we lost in the Fall, including paradise and the eternally healthy bodies perfectly fitted for it (Revelation 21). You and I have a certain date with death unless Jesus returns first. No matter how we try to preserve it, our health is going to fail. A right relationship with God, not health, is the end. Jesus is the Way. Healthy faith in Him will never fail you.
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