Why doesn't God heal everyone?

What the Bible says

This question usually comes from a hospital room. One thing must be said first. When someone is not healed, that is no sign that their faith is weak or that they are hiding some sin. Scripture does not teach that.

Jesus healed the sick, and the Gospels place this at the centre of his ministry.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Matt 4:23

Matthew reads this as the fulfilment of Isaiah: "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases" (Matt 8:17). God is not indifferent to the pain of the body.

The early church also prayed for the sick. James writes:

Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Jas 5:14

And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.

Jas 5:15

The passage tells the sick to ask for prayer and the church to give it. But read as a guarantee, it would imply that whoever is not healed must have too little faith. The rest of the Bible does not let us read it that way.

Paul healed others at times (Acts 28:8), yet of his own "thorn in the flesh" he writes:

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

2 Cor 12:8

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.”

2 Cor 12:9

His prayer was not refused for lack of faith. The Lord did not remove the thorn but promised grace. What the thorn was we do not know; many suppose an illness, but that cannot be proved.

Paul tells Timothy to "use a little wine instead, because of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Tim 5:23). He recommended a remedy, not a miracle. And he writes:

Erastus has remained at Corinth, and Trophimus I left sick in Miletus.

2 Tim 4:20

Paul left a sick colleague behind and did not hide it. Being healed is grace, and so is being sustained when healing does not come.

Scripture never blames the one who is unhealed. When the disciples asked whose sin had made a man blind from birth, Jesus was blunt.

Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him.

John 9:3

And Scripture says where the full healing of the body will come from. Not yet.

‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.

Rev 21:4

Paul says that we "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for … the redemption of our bodies" (Rom 8:23). Healing now is a foretaste; the resurrection is the fulfilment.

The church's witness

The church has always prayed for the sick and honoured physicians. Catholic and Orthodox churches have long celebrated the anointing of the sick as a sacrament, on the basis of James 5, and many Protestant churches have elders pray for the sick.

Matthew Henry, on James 5, observes that "where there may not be so much of miracle in God's answering our prayers, yet there may be as much of grace" Matthew Henry. On Paul's thorn he says: "Though God accepts the prayer of faith, yet he does not always give what is asked for: as he sometimes grants in wrath, so he sometimes denies in love" Matthew Henry. A refusal can be love, though that does not explain every case.

Rabanus says Christ "took" our sicknesses "not that He should have them Himself, but that He should take them away from us" Rabanus.

For the body's hope the church looked to the resurrection. The Apostles' Creed confesses the resurrection of the body The Apostles' Creed, and the Heidelberg Catechism finds comfort in life and death in belonging to Christ Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 1.

Christians differ about healing today. Cessationists, many of them in the Reformed tradition, hold that the miraculous gifts of the apostolic age were signs that established the gospel and are not given in the same form now, though God still heals as he wills. Continuationists, including Pentecostal and charismatic churches, hold that the gift of healing continues; they carry on healing ministries and urge the church to ask more boldly, since the kingdom those signs pointed to is still present. All of them agree that God can heal, that we should ask, that medicine is his gift, that the unhealed must never be condemned, and that complete healing comes with the resurrection.

In the original languages

The usual New Testament words for "heal" are iaomai (ἰάομαι) and therapeuo (θεραπεύω). The second originally means "to serve, to care for," and our word "therapy" comes from it. Healing is also care.

In James 5:15 "restore" is sozo (σῴζω), which can mean "to save" and also "to make well" from bodily illness. So readers differ on whether the verse speaks of bodily recovery, salvation, or both.

Paul's "thorn" is skolops (σκόλοψ), something sharp driven into the flesh, and "weakness" is astheneia (ἀσθένεια), which means lack of strength and also illness.

Common objections

"If God is good and all-powerful, why not heal everyone?" This is a strong objection, and "God has his reasons" can wound the parent of a sick child. Scripture does not fully solve it. When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, he did not go at once, and Lazarus died (John 11:6). Jesus did not rebuke the sisters' grief but wept with them. God treats death as an enemy. Sickness and death were not part of the world as God made it; Christ came to defeat them and will do so completely at the last day. Why one person is healed now and another is not, we do not know, and saying so is the most honest answer in a sickroom.

"Didn't Jesus say, 'Your faith has made you well'?" Faith and healing often appear together in the Gospels, but this cannot be made a law. Jesus healed a man who did not know who he was (John 5:13), while Paul's thorn remained and Timothy and Trophimus were not instantly healed. Faith is not a tool for extracting healing; it is trust in God, and to keep trusting when healing does not come is also faith. As Matthew Henry says on John 9:3, "Christ says of uncommon calamities, that they are not always to be looked on as special punishments of sin" Matthew Henry. Beside a sick person we are called to stay, not to search for causes.

"Then should we skip prayer, or is medicine a lack of faith?" No. Paul advised Timothy to use a remedy, and Luke is remembered as a physician (Col 4:14). Medicine can be received as a channel of God's mercy; praying while consulting the doctor is the biblical balance.

Going further

Before a disease that does not lift, Scripture gives less an explanation than company. What Paul heard was not "I will remove it" but "My grace is sufficient for you." Grace does not go around the place of sickness; it comes into it. And Paul could write, "I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us" (Rom 8:18). He did not make light of pain; he knew the end had not yet come.

You might ask yourself: have I sat beside someone who is not healed before I spoke to them about it? How can I ask for healing and also entrust myself to God?

To read further, see Is sickness a punishment for sin?, Does God answer prayer? and How can I bear grief?