The Wilful Sunflower

One of my uncles died of cancer many years ago. He accepted Christ just months before he died, when he was already weak and bedridden.

I saw the charismatic Christians pray for him, proclaiming that God would heal him, telling him to claim his healing in faith. He died anyway.

It's always seemed to me rather presumptuous to say or do such things, almost as if we are commanding God to heal. Sure, I know they're standing on His promises, and the Bible says He wants to make us whole... but isn't it obvious that God doesn't always heal our physical bodies??

Yesterday I read Michael Green, The Empty Cross of Jesus. He claims that this kind of "name it and claim it" theology is the result of separating the cross from the resurrection, focusing so much on one to the point of overlooking the other. Drawing a parallel with the Corinthian church, he says:

Finally, if you separate cross from resurrection you are prone to yet another distortion... Like the Corinthians there is the implication that we are already filled, already rich, already entered into our reign (I Cor 4:8). So real are the powers of the age to come, to Christians of this ilk, that they forget we are still children of this age, subject to its limitations and frailties.

A religion of the resurrection separated from the cross is a dangerous and an unlovely thing. It breeds arrogance... It assumes we may have anything we ask without qualifications - if only we ask in faith. This is a current danger in one wing of the charismatic movement, represented by large and growing churches... which are strong on the healing and prosperity principles.

In other words, so clear are they that Christians are sons of God and therefore heirs to all His riches, that we can rightly expect full prosperity in this life, provided we trust God and pay our tithes. And because God is a God of wholeness and salvation we can expect full health here and now in this life; healing is always available if we believe God sufficiently.

It may be that I have oversimplified; but that is certainly the impression given in considerable circles of the Renewal Movement... It was to counter this sort of emphasis at Corinth that Paul was determined to know nothing among them but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. They were so strong on the resurrection that they had forgotten the cross. They were so strong on the age to come and its power that they had forgotten that they were also still heirs to this age and its weaknesses. They revelled in the resurrection of Jesus, but did not want to share in His cross. But the two inevitably hang together, and any Christianity which stresses the one at the expense of the other is a perversion of the truth. The way for Jesus and for His followers alike is per ardua ad astra. No thorns, no crown.

I found it interesting - I never thought of it in that way before. Could it be that in this, at least, we have lost sight of the cross? We have forgotten that even Christ, the Son of God, had to suffer. Are we in any way better or more privileged than He is, that we should escape infirmities and physical pain?