Health to All Our Flesh

Yesterday we’ve seen that God provides healing through His Word. This truth of physical healing through God’s Word is even more fully stated in Proverbs, where God says:

“My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes: Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh.” (Prov. 4:20-22)

What promise of physical healing could be more all-inclusive than that? “Health to all their flesh.” Every part of our physical frame is included in this phrase. Nothing is omitted. Furthermore, in the margin of the 1611 edition of the King James Version, the alternative reading for “health” is “medicine.” The same Hebrew word includes both shades of meaning. Thus God has committed Himself to providing complete physical healing and health.

Notice the introductory phrase at the beginning of verse 20: “My son.” This indicates that God is speaking to His own believing children. When a Syro-Phoenician woman came to Christ to plead for the healing of her daughter, Christ replied to her request by saying:

“It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” (Matt. 15:26)

By these words Christ indicated that healing is the children’s bread; in other words, it is part of God’s appointed daily portion for all His children. It is not a luxury for which they have to make special pleas and which may or may not be granted them. No, it is their “bread,” part of their daily provision from their heavenly Father. This agrees exactly with the passage we read in Proverbs 4, where God’s promise of perfect healing and health is addressed to every believing child of God. Both in Psalm 107 and in Proverbs 4 the means by which God provides healing is His Word. This is one further example of the vital truth which we stressed earlier in this series: that God Himself is in His Word and that it is through His Word that He comes into our lives.