Paul's thorn wasn't sickness.

[jriccitelli]

"This body is sown in ‘weakness’, it is raised in power.
It is sown a ‘natural’ body, it is raised a spiritual body"
(1 Corinthians 15:43-44)

"But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory" (1 Corinthians 15:54)

[steve7150]

Jesus did say we are blessed if we are persecuted for righteousness sake, but he never said we are blessed if we are sick for righteousness sake . It sounds like sickness is not God's will but just being in the fallen world.
What do we make of Mark 11.23 regarding the mountain being an illness, since Jesus did make only one qualification which was for us to forgive. Since he already made a qualification it would be logical for him to mention a second if there was another, such as "if it is God's will."

[TK]

This may have been mentioned before and if so I apologize, but how are we to interpret Mt. 8:16-17:

When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying:


“ He Himself took our infirmities
And bore our sicknesses.”

It seems that Matthew is specifically stating that the passage from Is. 53 is talking about physical healing (and not only "spiritual" healing).

TK

[steve]

Yes, Matthew 8 tells us that Jesus fulfilled that scripture by healing the sick. Thus it was fulfilled even before the cross. Scripture also says that He would be born in Bethlehem, of a virgin, and would ride a donkey into Jerusalem. These scriptures were fulfilled, along with Isaiah 53:4, and many others. In other words, Matthew tells us that Jesus fulfilled this prediction by healing sicknesses, just as he fulfilled the other prophecies. This does not give us any basis to expect additional fulfillments of this prophecy, any more than we expect Jesus to ride into Jerusalem again on a donkey.

The healing of physical sicknesses, predicted in Isaiah 53:4, was, I believe, the visible sign that He had come to heal the relational sickness of the lost in Israel, as Isaiah 53:5 seems to point out.

Faith does not always bring healing. That is the simple fact. We may live in a self-imagined fantasy that the truth is otherwise, if living in a delusion really appeals to us, but there has never been a time in history—even in the lifetime of Jesus and the apostles—when God healed everybody who had great faith (and refused to heal those with little faith). Pretending can only last so long. Eventually, we need to deal with the facts of scripture and of life.

The truth remains that there is no unambiguous promise of healing for all sick people in scripture—and we can be glad of that, too—since, if there were, we would be compelled to declare the promise false to fact. People trusting God with all their might for healing often die sick. Either God's word is false, or someone is misinterpreting it. I would rather remain sick that lose the reliability of scripture.