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Lemma v1.1

Questions for the Reader

This study has presented the evidence from four directions --- Scripture, Christ’s own words and actions, the ancient witnesses, and the lived experience of the church --- without rendering a verdict. The evidence is genuinely complex. Faithful interpreters have reached different conclusions. The question “Does Isaiah 53:5 include physical healing?” does not have an answer that can be read off the surface of any single text.

What follows is a set of questions organized by the four SCAR quadrants, followed by questions of integration and a closing word. These questions are not designed to lead the reader toward a predetermined conclusion. They are designed to help the reader think --- honestly, carefully, and prayerfully --- about what the evidence means and how it shapes their faith.

There are no trick questions here. There are no “right” answers hidden in the phrasing. These are genuine questions that the author of this study has wrestled with, and they are offered to the reader in the same spirit of honest inquiry that has governed the study from the beginning.

Questions from Scripture

Section titled “Questions from Scripture”

  1. The Hebrew word choliy in Isaiah 53:4 means “sickness” or “disease” in the majority of its Old Testament occurrences, yet the KJV translates it as “griefs.” The NASB changed its rendering from “griefs” (1995) to “sicknesses” (2020). When you read “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows,” does the English translation shape how you understand the verse? How might your reading change if the verse read “Surely he hath borne our sicknesses, and carried our pains”?

  2. When Matthew quotes Isaiah 53:4 in the context of physical healings (Matt 8:17), he deliberately departs from the Septuagint’s rendering of “sins” and uses Greek words that mean “infirmities” and “diseases.” What does Matthew’s deliberate choice tell you about how the Holy Spirit guided the apostle to understand and apply the prophet’s words?

  3. Peter quotes Isaiah 53:5 --- “by whose stripes ye were healed” --- in a context that is entirely about sin and righteousness (1 Pet 2:21—25). Does Peter’s application settle the meaning of “healed” in Isaiah 53:5, or does it represent one dimension of a passage with broader scope? How do you decide when an inspired author’s application of an Old Testament text is exhaustive versus selective?

  4. Matthew quotes Isaiah 53:4 (about sickness). Peter quotes Isaiah 53:5 (about healing through stripes). Neither quotes the other’s verse. Is this distinction between verse 4 and verse 5 significant, or are the two verses a single unit that should be read together?

  5. James 5:14—15 instructs the church to pray for the sick and promises that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” James also connects healing to the forgiveness of sins in the same sentence. How do you understand this passage? Is James describing a guaranteed outcome, a normative expectation, or a sovereign possibility?

  6. Paul describes the body’s redemption as something believers are still “waiting for” (Rom 8:23), yet Matthew describes Jesus fulfilling Isaiah 53:4 through physical healings during his earthly ministry (Matt 8:17). How do you hold these two realities together? Is bodily healing a present experience, a future hope, or both?

  7. The healings in Matthew 8 take place before the crucifixion. Some argue this makes it difficult to ground them in the atonement. But David was forgiven before the cross (2 Sam 12:13), Abraham was justified by faith before the cross (Gen 15:6), and Jesus himself connected the bronze serpent --- an Old Testament physical healing --- directly to the cross (John 3:14). Does the forgiveness parallel change how you view the timing objection? If God could apply forgiveness before the cross in anticipation of it, could He do the same with healing?

  8. The Hebrew word choliy appears in both Deuteronomy 28:61 --- “every sickness, and every plague” among the law’s curses --- and Isaiah 53:4 --- “Surely he hath borne our griefs [choliy].” Paul writes that “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law” (Gal 3:13, KJV). If the curse of the law includes disease, and Christ redeemed us from the curse, does the redemption include healing from disease? Or is Paul’s argument in Galatians 3 narrower than the full scope of Deuteronomy 28 --- about justification, not healing?

  9. The Bible traces a curse arc from Genesis 3 (the fall introduces death, pain, and the conditions producing sickness) through Deuteronomy 28 (the law codifies disease among its curses) to Galatians 3:13 (Christ redeems from the curse) to Revelation 22:3 (“there shall be no more curse”). How do you read this arc? Does it support the view that Christ’s redemption includes physical healing now? Or does the “no more curse” of Revelation 22:3 indicate that the full removal of the curse --- including disease --- awaits the new creation?

Questions from Christ’s Example

Section titled “Questions from Christ’s Example”

  1. Jesus healed extensively and compassionately throughout his ministry. He also did not heal everyone --- at the Pool of Bethesda, a “great multitude” of sick people lay nearby, and Jesus healed only one man (John 5:1—9). What does Jesus’s selectivity in healing suggest about how God relates to sickness and healing?

  2. The Gospels do not record a single case of an individual coming to Jesus in faith for physical healing and being turned away. Every person who sought healing from Jesus in faith received it. Does this pattern carry weight for how we should understand the relationship between faith and healing today? Or does the post-ascension experience --- where the picture grows more complex --- set the norm for the church age?

  3. Jesus used the word sozo for both physical healing (“thy faith hath made thee whole,” Matt 9:22) and spiritual salvation (“the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” Luke 19:10). Do you think this shared vocabulary reveals a unified redemptive vision --- that saving and healing are two dimensions of one work --- or is sozo simply a versatile word that carries different meanings in different contexts?

  4. In Gethsemane, Jesus prayed three times for the cup of suffering to pass, and the Father’s answer was not removal but empowerment (Matt 26:36—44). Paul likewise prayed three times for his thorn to be removed, and God’s answer was “My grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Cor 12:8—9). But Paul’s thorn is unidentified --- it may have been physical illness, or it may have been persecution or opposition (the Greek angelos and kolaphizō suggest a personal adversary). Does the nature of Paul’s thorn affect how you weigh this passage? If the thorn was not physical illness, does that change the argument?

  5. Jesus explicitly rejected the assumption that sickness is caused by personal sin: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:3). How does this statement shape your understanding of what it means when a faithful believer remains sick?

  6. Jesus told his followers, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The promise of tribulation is unconditional. How does this promise relate to the expectation of physical healing? Can a believer hold both promises --- tribulation and overcoming --- without contradiction?

Questions from the Ancient Witness

Section titled “Questions from the Ancient Witness”

  1. The earliest post-apostolic Christians (Clement, Barnabas, Ignatius, Polycarp) consistently read Isaiah 53 as being about Christ’s substitutionary suffering for sin. Not one of them connected “by his stripes we are healed” to physical healing. Does this silence carry weight for you? If so, how much? If not, why not?

  2. The early church clearly practiced healing --- Justin Martyr, Origen, and the Apostolic Tradition all testify to this. Yet they did not ground their healing practice in Isaiah 53 or in a theology of the atonement. They grounded it in the gifts of the Spirit, the authority of Christ’s name, and the compassion of God. Does this distinction --- between practicing healing and grounding it in the atonement --- matter theologically? Can you affirm that God heals without affirming that healing is “in the atonement”?

  3. Cyprian of Carthage wrote to his congregation during a devastating plague (c. 252 AD). His pastoral counsel was not to claim healing through the atonement but to endure with faith, care for the dying, and trust in the resurrection. Does Cyprian’s response --- from a major bishop to a suffering congregation during a literal pandemic --- inform how you think about the church’s posture toward sickness?

  4. The Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 53 identifies the Servant as “the Messiah” but systematically removes the Messiah’s suffering, replacing physical language with teaching and forgiveness. The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 98b) preserves a different tradition: the Messiah as “the leper scholar,” sitting among the sick, identified with physical illness. What do these two contrasting Jewish readings tell you about the range of meaning the passage carries?

  5. The messianic reading of Isaiah 53 appears to be earlier than the corporate-Israel reading. The shift toward the corporate reading correlates with Christianity’s adoption of the passage. Does this trajectory affect how you read the passage? Does the age of an interpretation make it more likely to be correct?

Questions from Lived Experience

Section titled “Questions from Lived Experience”

  1. Have you seen genuine healing in response to prayer --- healing that you cannot attribute to coincidence, psychosomatic response, or medical intervention? If so, how does that experience shape your reading of the biblical passages on healing?

  2. Have you experienced or witnessed persistent illness despite faithful, earnest prayer for healing? If so, how did that experience affect your understanding of God’s character and His relationship to suffering?

  3. Have you ever been told --- or have you told someone else --- that their sickness was caused by insufficient faith? What was the effect of those words? If you hold the healing-in-the-atonement view, how do you ensure that your theology does not become a weapon against the suffering?

  4. Have you ever been in a church where prayer for healing was absent, perfunctory, or offered without genuine expectation? What was the effect of that absence? If you hold the spiritual-healing-only view, how do you ensure that your theology does not extinguish hope?

  5. The global church --- especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America --- reports extensive healing testimonies. Craig Keener’s Miracles (2011) documents many such cases with medical corroboration. How do you weigh this testimony? Does the experience of the global church carry evidential weight for you?

Questions of Integration

Section titled “Questions of Integration”

  1. Is it possible that all three major views are capturing part of a larger truth? Could it be that Isaiah 53:5 encompasses both spiritual healing (as Peter applies it) and physical healing (as Matthew applies Isaiah 53:4) --- and that the “already/not yet” framework describes how both dimensions unfold in the life of believers?

  2. If you had to explain your position on healing in the atonement to a believer who has just been diagnosed with a serious illness, what would you say? Would your words bring comfort or add to their burden? Would they encourage faith or extinguish hope? The pastoral test is not the only test of a theology, but it is a real one.

  3. The Christocentric evidence from Chapter 2 showed that Jesus’s explicit atonement language (Matt 20:28, Matt 26:28) centers on sin --- ransom, remission, salvation. But his broader ministry addresses the whole person, and his vocabulary (sozo) bridges saving and healing. How do you weigh the tension between Jesus’s narrow atonement language and his broad redemptive ministry?

  4. Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130—202 AD) developed a theology of “recapitulation” --- Christ takes up all of human experience and redeems it. Melito of Sardis (c. 160—170 AD) placed in Christ’s mouth the most comprehensive exchange language of any pre-Nicene document: “I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of your salvation, I am the lamb which was sacrificed for you, I am your ransom, I am your resurrection, I am your king.” Do these early voices --- whose scope reaches beyond sin alone --- suggest that the earliest Christian instinct was to see Christ’s work as total, encompassing the whole person? Or is there a difference between doxological scope and doctrinal claim?

  5. The NASB translation committee changed its rendering of Isaiah 53:4 from “griefs and sorrows” (1995) to “sicknesses and pains” (2020). This shift reflects a growing scholarly recognition that the physical meaning of choliy and makob deserves representation in the English text. Does the movement in modern translation affect your confidence in one reading over another?

  6. Romans 8:23 says believers are “waiting for… the redemption of our body.” The word “redemption” (apolytrosis) connects the body’s future healing to Christ’s atoning work. But the waiting is real --- the body is not yet redeemed. How do you live faithfully in that gap between the redemption purchased and the redemption delivered?

A Closing Word

Section titled “A Closing Word”

This study has not told you what to believe about Isaiah 53:5 and physical healing. That was intentional. The question is genuinely difficult, and the evidence is genuinely complex. Faithful believers who love Christ, honor Scripture, and serve the church have reached different conclusions --- and they have done so in good faith.

Whatever you conclude, here are some things that remain true regardless:

God is compassionate. He draws near to the suffering. He hears the cry of the sick. His character is not in doubt, whatever your theology of healing.

Prayer is never wasted. Whether God answers with healing, with strength to endure, or with a deeper revelation of His presence, the prayer of faith reaches His ears and moves His heart.

The person next to you matters more than the debate. When you encounter a brother or sister who is suffering, the first thing they need is not your position on healing in the atonement. They need your presence, your love, and your willingness to weep with those who weep (Rom 12:15).

The day is coming when the question will be moot. There will be no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain (Rev 21:4). Every tear will be wiped away. Every body will be raised in glory. Every wound will be healed --- fully, finally, and forever. That hope is not debated by anyone in this study. It is the common inheritance of every believer in Christ.

“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” --- Romans 8:18 (KJV)

Until that day, we walk by faith, not by sight. We pray with hope. We hold our convictions with humility. And we love one another --- across every theological boundary --- with the love of the One whose stripes are at the center of this whole discussion.

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” --- 1 Corinthians 13:13 (KJV)

Cross-References

Section titled “Cross-References”