HOW did God heal people? I mean the actual physics, the mechanics of WHAT HAPPENED in an arm that He healed, or a leper that He cleansed – HOW did He do it? What chemical reactions went on in that person to make them better?
And although these questions don’t at present seem related, did God create mature trees, magically, or did they grow? Which came first, the tree or the seed? Before we’re done you’ll see that these questions are foundational to HOW GOD HEALS!
Genesis 2:8-9 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;
The key words here are “planted” and “Made the lord God to grow”. These answer all our questions. First of all, if God just *poof* made a full grown tree, it would not need planted, nor would it need to be “made to grow”. This shows that God did NOT do it that way. But how then? How did God take a tree from a seed or seedling to maturity (large enough to cover Adam and have mature food ripe for eating) in three days?
Matthew 12:10,13 And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. … saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.
We can imagine a man with an atrophied limb, twisted and gnarled, reaching forth his arm and watching it literally GROW and straighten into a normal arm in the sight of everyone! What power of God did this? To answer these two questions we have to first ask what happens in a normal growth process.
In a tree, the light absorbed by the sun, through the process of Photosynthesis, activates the Carbon Dioxide(CO2) “breathed” in from the air and the water sucked out of the ground. This activation process splits the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. The Oxygen is given off into the atmosphere, and the Hydrogen is combined with the CO2 to form a simple sugar. This sugar is used as the energy source for every reaction that takes place in the plant, including the one we are currently interested in, growth. It uses this sugar to create new cells and provide the energy for all reactions necessary for cell division.
A human body on the other hand, takes in food in the form of Proteins, Fats, Carbohydrates and Sugars. All of these foods must go through a digestion process and be broken down to usable forms by the body, the primary purpose of which is to reduce them to a simple sugar called Glucose. This glucose, through a fascinating but rather involved process provides the cell with energy for work, thought, and growth.
Essentially the same system as a tree, although much more complex. Which is not too surprising considering we had the same Designer. Now if you deprive a tree of it’s glucose source, as soon as its reserves are consumed it will die. If you deprive a human of it’s glucose source, then as soon as it has metabolized everything it can and used it to keep the heart beating and lungs breathing, it will also die.
If you deprive the body of part of its minimum required food source, it will only function partially as well. Witness the malnourished and underfed people the world around, and their often stunted growth. But what if this food source was somehow augmented? What if, instead of the relatively inefficient glucose powering the cells of plant and man, there was something better? Hold that thought.
Mark 5:25-30 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?
Here, the operative phrase is “virtue had gone out of Him”. Just like the man with a withered arm, here was someone who had a crippling illness, who upon receiving something (virtue?) from Christ, had it GROW better! What WAS this virtue that she received from Christ?
Luke 6:19 And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all.
Here we see that it was this Virtue that gave Christ the power to heal people – to make their bodies instantly fight off diseases, fevers, even leprosy; something that made even their bones regrow! What was it?
The word Virtue is translated into the English from the Greek word “Dunamis”, the word from which we get Dynamite. The simplest one-word translation is “Power”. Or perhaps, in this context, “Energy”. Energy to replace the crude Glucose and give the body the ability to regrow muscles, tissues, even bones!
If you’ve ever taken a 12 volt fan and plugged it into a 110 volt outlet, then you know it will run VERY fast. If you take a truck designed for diesel, and fill it with gasoline, it runs VERY rich. A car designed for Gasoline gets a great boost out of using Nitrous Oxide. Throughout the universe, a more efficient fuel means that reactions take place at greater speed, all other things being equal.
The woman who was unable to stop bleeding after 12 years had what appears to be a clotting problem. Her body just wasn’t able to stop the blood from leaking out. Now, most people’s bodies are able to do this; so why wasn’t she? Without going into too much detail, we can deduce that her body was too busy doing something else – keeping her breathing, keeping her heart beating, digesting her food, etc, to have energy left over to repair this minor problem which most people never have.
Similarly, the man with the withered arm didn’t have the energy available to repair his arm. But a lizard, who is also designed by God and whose body works essentially the same as ours in this respect is able to regrow a tail if it loses one. Every rural child knows that. A starfish is able to grow a completely new body from one arm. So why cannot man, with the same basic laws in effect, do the same thing?
Under ordinary circumstances, man will not regrow a lost finger or leg; he will often regrow the tip of a finger, and almost always repair deep cuts and gashes in the flesh. So why not a leg? Simply because that leg was built slowly, with energy from the food allocated to it over dozens of years of growth to produce it in the first place. The normal human body simply hasn’t the resources to grow a new one.
It’s as if you slowly saved your money over a period of twenty years to buy a car, a house, a boat, and a plane. If you lost one of them, you couldn’t just run out and buy a new one – you don’t have the resources! You saved up money over decades to buy it the first time, and it will take many more years before you can save enough to buy a new one!
But if your rich neighbor were to notice your plight and feel sorry for you, and remember the nice things you’ve done for him in the past, he could supply you with a great deal of money right away, to cover your loss and get you back on your feet, so to speak; he could supply you with the resources to rebuild your loss!
In exactly the same fashion, your body does not have the energy available to grow a new limb if you lose one, or get it damaged badly! It has the ABILITY, and the KNOW-HOW to do it, but not the fuel! And so if God were to supply you with POWER, with the ENERGY to do it, your body can regrow miraculously, practically instantaneously, with power! If all the reactions are sped up because your body is hopped up on the power of God, it can repair itself literally in a fraction of a second!
THIS is how the withered arm GREW in the sight of everyone! This is how the woman’s issue of blood was healed, and how the Garden of Eden grew to maturity in just a few days! God simply gave power, the same power He used to create the universe in the first place, to those trees, and watched them GROW!
God gave them POWER to grow, He gave the sick POWER to grow better, and it is that POWER of God that holds the very fabric of the universe, the warp and woof of space itself together!
Hebrews 1:3 … upholding all things by the word of his power …