The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: - Vital Christianity

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The Greek word “savior” (soter) is applied to salvation or rescue from disease as well as sin.
The word “save” (sozo) means heal as well as save. When John the Baptist began to wonder
whether Jesus really was the Messiah, Jesus answered him by pointing to His ministry as outlined
by the prophet Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Lk. 4:18-19).
This Old Testament prophecy, which Jesus accepted as the charter of His ministry, shows
Jesus’ wholistic approach to ministry. He came to deliver His people physically, emotionally and
spiritually. He came to make people whole as He met every dimension of human need.
IS IT ALWAYS GOD’S WILL TO HEAL?
As Jesus began His public ministry He announced that the kingdom of God was “near” (Mk.
1:15). Immediately He began healing the sick and casting out demons. After He healed a
demonized man who was blind and mute, He told the Pharisees,
“If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come
upon you” (Mt. 12:28).
In Luke 17:21 Jesus proclaimed,
“. . . the kingdom of God is within you”
In I Corinthians 10:11 Paul refers to the Corinthian believers and himself as
“. . . on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.”
Jesus, then, ushered the ‘kingdom of God’ or the fulfillment of the ages” or “the age to come”
into what Paul calls “the present age” (Eph. 1:21) or “the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4). Yet the
Bible states that we have only “tasted” of “the powers of the coming age” (Heb. 6:5). Although
the kingdom of God has broken into “this age” it has not been fully manifested.
In living between the first and second comings of Christ we are living between what the
biblical scholar George Ladd calls the “already and the not yet.”