The gift of healing is corrupted most grievously by the health-and-wealth and faith-healing movements, which transform a Spirit-distributed gift into a guaranteed entitlement. On their teaching, sickness is always contrary to God’s will, healing is the birthright of every believer, and the only obstacle is insufficient faith. This doctrine collapses under Scripture’s own witness: Paul, a man of no small faith, was left with a thorn in the flesh that God refused to remove; he left Trophimus sick and prescribed wine for Timothy’s ailment rather than a healing word; and Scripture everywhere presents affliction as often the sanctifying instrument of a loving Father, with full bodily healing reserved for the resurrection.

Worse than the bad theology is its pastoral cruelty and its commerce. To tell the suffering that they remain sick for want of faith is to add guilt to grief, to crush the afflicted under a burden Christ never laid, and to slander the providence of God. And the spectacle of healers extracting money from the desperate—promising cures in exchange for “seed faith” offerings, staging counterfeit miracles, and growing rich on the anguish of the dying—is among the most shameful frauds perpetrated in the name of Christ. The sound doctrine, whether cessationist or continuationist, holds that God heals sovereignly and graciously according to His will, that the church is to pray earnestly for the sick and anoint them as James directs, that affliction may be God’s good and sanctifying gift, and that no man may demand healing as a right or peddle it for gain. The sufferer’s hope rests not in a healer’s technique but in a Father whose grace is sufficient and whose resurrection will at last wipe every tear and abolish death itself.