When Faith Does Not Heal #039
On July 13th of this year, word broke on social media that Bill Johnson’s wife tragically passed after a prolonged battle with cancer. Most of the posts I saw in my feed were solemn, offering prayers and support to Johnson and his family. Others, however, weren’t so kind:
I stayed publicly silent for the last 2 weeks out of respect. I have met Johnson on a couple of occasions and found him pleasant and kind, but I also have deep-seated issues with his teachings and the results of his teachings have created multiple traumatic (yes, traumatic) moments in my life. I saw my heart go through a range of emotions and it would be very easy for me to post something out of the trauma that I would regret. So I waited until I could make sure I could post with a clear conscience so here we are.
A year ago Johnson said regarding his wife’s battle with cancer: “We’re not begging for a miracle. It’s already been bought and paid for. The entire Christian life for me is learning what’s in my possession and what’s in my account and how to make withdrawals, and that’s the entire Christian life…but what we know for sure is that divine health is our portion.” (source)
Immediately, anyone who’s intellectually honest will notice the difficulty present in these words with the current sad reality. If divine health is the Christian’s portion, what do we make of sickness, disease, and even death? If the entire Christian life is learning about our possession of an account and how to make a withdrawal from it, then what happens when the ATM does not give us what we input? What if it fails? Did I have the wrong pin? Did I do something wrong? Was my faith false? Or worse than all of that, was God’s account empty?
In 2015 a parishioner asked to speak with me one Sunday morning about a struggle they were having with their faith. We scheduled a time during the week and that Tuesday we sat in the sanctuary to discuss what was going on. This person was an avid Bethel Church follower. They listened to Bethel music, had every audiobook of Bill Johnson’s, and listened to Johnson’s podcast every Monday on the long drive down to Fort Lauderdale for work. Two months before our conversation, they had been diagnosed with a pretty serious disease and they had followed every guideline Bethel had laid out to receive “their portion” of healing. “Pastor Matt, if healing is in the atoning work of Jesus, and I don’t receive healing, does that mean I’m not saved?” And this question, one I had been hearing for over 10 years at this point, gets to the heart of why I’m addressing this publicly. But before we get there, let me give you my backstory first, and then I’ll tell you what happened with the rest of this story.
In 2005 I was a junior/senior in Bible college and to say that year was tumultuous would be an understatement. At the forefront of the heartaches was a book that was being passed around like drugs called When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles by Bill Johnson. Speakers in chapel referenced it, leaders in the dorms did devotions and floor meetings from the book, and professors who were considered intellectual at the expense of being Spirit-led were quietly looked at suspiciously as possibly demon-possessed.
As the influence of the book grew, a sort of Gestapo-like atmosphere began to build where the ring-leaders did checks to make sure you were on board. When one of these leaders, a person I considered a friend, came to my room and asked me my thoughts, I told them I thought there were some good things in the book, but I had serious concerns about Johnson’s Christology:
“He performed miracles, wonders, and signs, as a man in right relationship to God . . . . not as God.”p.29
his view of Scripture:
But in reality, the Bible is a closed book. Anything I get from the Word without God will not change my life. It is closed to insure that I remain dependent on the Holy Spirit.” p 93
and finally some really troubling parroting of the ancient heresy Gnosticism:
The invisible is superior to the natural . . . Because the invisible is superior to the natural, faith is anchored in the unseen. p.45
Pointing any of these things out was not the correct response apparently. It made me the very thing Johnson warned about in the book: “The Church has all too often lived according to an intellectual approach to the Scriptures, void of the Holy Spirit’s influence.” (p.76)
After my friend left I became persona non grata. My concern with Johnson even got up to some of the leadership in our school and upcoming chances to speak were removed from me, friends I normally saw daily weren’t coming into my dorm room anymore, and I started to have people approach me that they were hearing bad things about me on campus - even from teachers?
A few days after this conversation in my dorm, leadership began to watch my every move in chapel. Obviously, my conversation had now reached the top. This got so bad that during one voluntary pre-morning chapel prayer/mediation one of the higher-ups in my school saw I wasn’t praying so he kicked me out of the sanctuary. I was hindering the move of the Holy Spirit by not having an attitude of prayer but instead talking with friends. It didn’t matter that we were talking about what we were praying about, it didn’t matter many others in the chapel were doing the same thing, I was “one of the culprits preventing the movement of the Spirit on the campus.” After getting kicked out, I waited outside for the chapel to be over and caught up with our president as he walked out to tell him what had just happened. This leader was reprimanded shortly after, but I never received an apology and sadly it only made matters worse for me.
All of these moments came to head with a confrontation I had with a different RA who explained to me that the reason I was not open to Bill Johnson’s words & what God was doing on our campus was that my “dad was a cripple.” I was shocked. This man was a friend. He just used my dad’s disability as a “gotcha”? I knew about 3 different character and moral failures that would disqualify this RA from leadership and would easily get him kicked out of school. Do I go ahead and throw that in his face since he crossed the line like this? Eye for an eye? Thankfully, I did not, but to my shame, I didn’t spare him all my words. I remember saying something to the effect of “why hasn’t your faith healed your’s or Johnson’s eyes? Your glasses are proof you don’t have faith.” We obviously, for good reason, had to be separated.
I know it is completely unfair to hold Johnson accountable for people who claim to be his follower’s actions. I know for a fact that Johnson would not condone the behavior I experienced from those who claimed his teaching and his name. But, I do believe that these types of reactions are one of the outcomes of Johnson’s teachings on healing, miracles, and even salvation. Let me explain.
I found an interview with Johnson where he was asked:
“How do you keep yourself from disappointment when the people for whom you are pursuing healing do not get healed?”
Bill Johnson proceeded to explain his approach. First, he gives God credit for anything He does, and he doesn’t blame God for anything he doesn’t do. I like this! In an incredibly emotional sermon just a few days after his wife passed, Johnson echoed this sentiment powerfully (you can watch the whole thing here, I’ll be coming back to this soon). I do believe as a believer the gifts of the Spirit are available today, I do not know anyone who believes like I do that would dispute this sentiment. We are to pray to God for healing and healing is still for today. Amen.
Johnson continues that when someone does get healed, that’s all God, but when someone does not get healed, there is more to pursue with God. Jesus never turned anyone away who asked for prayer and everything Jesus prayed for happened. In John 14:12, Jesus promised that His disciples would do greater things than Christ did and we need to have that expectation.
Perhaps the best summary of Johnson’s teaching on healing comes from a sermon that has suspiciously been scrubbed from his website but is still available on his youtube channel. The Sermon is titled Jesus Christ is Perfect Theology and in it, Johnson claims that it is always God’s will to heal someone. Here is an excerpt:
How can God choose not to heal someone when He already purchased their healing? Was His blood enough for all sin, or just certain sins? Were the stripes He bore only for certain illnesses, or certain seasons of time? When He bore stripes in His body He made a payment for our miracle. He already decided to heal. You can’t decide not to buy something after you’ve already bought it.
There are no deficiencies on His end—neither the covenant is deficient, nor His compassion or promises. All lack is on our end of the equation. The only time someone wasn’t healed in the Bible (gospels) is when the disciples prayed for them. For example, in Mark 9 when they prayed for the tormented child. They did not have a breakthrough. But then, Jesus came and brought healing and deliverance to the child.
Jesus Christ is perfect theology—He is the will of God. We can’t lower the standard of scripture to our level of experience . . . or in most cases, inexperience. It’s a very uncomfortable realization—not everyone can handle it. Most create doctrine that you can’t find in the person of Jesus. He is the will of God.
In a response to an objection to this sermon, Johnson replied:
People ask, “What about Job?” I tell them, “I’m not a disciple of Job; I’m a disciple of Jesus.” Job was the question; Jesus is the answer. If I read Job and it doesn’t lead me to Jesus, then I never understood the question. All the law and the prophets were to create an awareness of need. That awareness prepared Israel for a saviour. To return to the standards of the law and the prophets at the expense of ignoring the perfect revelation of the Father given to us in the person of Jesus Christ is to fall to the ultimate expression of arrogance. It puts us back in the place of control where we do what is humanly possible—and call it ministry.
I would like to link to this last quote, but it also has been scrubbed from Johnson’s website.
So, while the confrontations and how they were handled by leadership and my RA’s in school are not the responsibility of Bill Johson, they did not misrepresent the teaching that drove them to that response. And when we see consistent results like this across states, across churches, and finally across denominations, it becomes hard to just blame it on a misunderstanding. What is it about this teaching that drives people to question their faith? What is about this teaching that drives people to condemn the infirm or the weak - the very people Jesus cared about the most? What is wrong with this teaching?
The denomination I’m ordained through is the Assemblies of God and on its webpage, there’s an entire position paper on healing’s relationship to the atonement and I think it perfectly contrasts with Johnson’s teaching on healing for everyone (interesting note, this is the denomination Johnson left…in 2005… what a year, right?). I won’t be able to highlight the whole thing here, but I think they begin to answer where his teaching goes wrong.
I.
Johnson states that God would not chose whether or not to heal someone - He just heals. This is not true in both the New and the Old Testament.
2 Corinthians 12:1-10:
“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 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. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
John 9:1-7
“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.”
Genesis 50:20
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
II.
Johnson explicitly states that when healing does not occur, “all lack is on our end of the equation”. Besides giving air to blaming the victim, this is not true because it fundamentally misunderstands Scripture’s use of the literary device “already/but not yet.”
We have received redemption for our sins (Colossian 1:4), but we are awaiting the redemption of our sins (Romans 8:23).
Healing is in the atonement (Romans 3:21–28), but we await the full healing in the atonement (1 Corinthians 15:51–54; 2 Corinthians 5:1–4; 1 John 3:2).
Atonement provides for the believer a cleansing from sin currently and in the future, and it provides healing from the consequences of that sin now and in the future. It is the will of God that His children be saved and it is the will of God that they are healed. But, the Bible is very specific that the “healing” and “redemption” is not fully realized until we join Christ and He makes all things new. Maranatha Lord!
III.
Finally, Johnson’s teachings on healing do not take to account the full counsel of Scripture. Instead, he’s made the four gospels a sort of a canon within a canon, and when you read Paul, Peter, Hebrews, and John you can sort of understand why? It was Paul after all who said, while in prison:
Philippians 1:29 - “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him,”
We see in these three points that Johnson’s teachings do not take into account the unanswered prayers for healing that are mentioned in Scripture. His teachings do not take into account that God allows people to not be healed for greater purposes that might not be available for them to see and his response can come off as blaming the victims of the ailments. And finally, his teachings do not take into account the half dozen or so Scriptures that explicitly state that Christians will experience physical suffering, disease, and even death. This finally leads us back to the story I told earlier.
As I sat there with the parishioner, listening to their heartbreak over this diagnosis, I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me with two passages immediately:
“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.”
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
I shared with them that God is in the business of healing and I would join them in praying for complete healing of this disease! Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we could “boldly” come to the throne of grace and make our request known to God and expect Him to answer! I also shared we would also pray like Jesus: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Healing is in the atonement, but it is not the atonement!
As I watched Johnson’s sermon again this morning, I could clearly see he is experiencing incredible sorrow, pain, and grief. I cannot imagine losing my spouse and we’ve only been married for nearly 6 years - not nearly as long as he and his wife had been. I felt his pain, I felt his sorrow, and was deeply encouraged by his push for his church to join him in grieving with hope. We both know he will see his wife again.
Yet, I hope those around him are not comforting him with statements like “all lack is on your end.” I hope he is not being met with statements questioning the legitimacy of his faith like I was or the countless others like me have been. I hope God comforts Johnson with the whole of the Scriptures along with a real presence of the Holy Spirit. I hope he’s reminded that ALL THINGS work together for the good. Including this awful tragedy. I hope he doesn’t feel the temptation to doubt the sufficiency of his faith or its legitimacy of it because he did not see an aspect of the atonement play out in his life.
And most importantly of all, I hope that Johnson would consider this experience and continue to expand on his idea about how God can use the valley of sickness, death, and suffering to show us parts of Himself. If Johson can do that, then perhaps we can move on past the hurtful, condemning, and unscriptural approach to healing that’s condemned those who are where Johnson is now. No one deserves that.