Divine healing is embedded in God’s plan of salvation. The necessity for this began when Adam, the first man, permitted sin to gain entrance into his life. At that moment, something very tragic happened. God had forewarned Adam stating, “Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; the soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4); however, Adam went ahead and sinned anyway. Regrettably Adam, and everyone born of Adam, came under the death penalty because as Romans 5:12 explains, “…just as through one man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” We can now clearly see the simple truth. Because sin entered Adam’s nature, all people born of Adam are born with a nature predisposed to sin.

The deterioration of life began when this law of sin and death began to operate (Romans 8:1-4). Sickness and disease began their destruction. Immoral behavior came into being and all of life changed because of the presence of sin in the world. God is most holy and cannot be in intimate league and fellowship with sin. God had to separate Himself from Adam and all of sinful mankind. Consequently man’s human spirit, which was originally connected to God’s Spirit of life, became disconnected from God because of the presence of sin. Spiritual death, or eternal separation from God, now resides in man’s spirit.

Whereas a man’s spirit to a great degree governs the thoughts and actions of that person, the entrance of sin into the inmost part of his being did in fact cause disorder to prevail. Man’s mind gained control over and above his human spirit and his flesh nature flared dominant. Ephesians 4:17-19 in essence says that from that time on people have walked in, “…the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened…”  They became “…alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart…” And they “…have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” The law of sin and death had swung into action bringing catastrophic results. James 1:15-16 building on this says, “…when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”

Death is the opposite of life.  Sin caused the forfeiting of God’s kind of life, and death now replaces it and rules. Please be aware: there are two kinds of death. There is natural death as when a person dies physically, and there is spiritual death, which means a person does have a conscious physical existence but that person’s human spirit is separated from God’s Spirit. The absence of God’s kind of life in their spirit means they are eternally separated from Him and all of His benefits. This absence of God’s kind of life has catastrophic consequences as we shall see in our next devotional study, but for now we just need to know that God has made a way out of this eternal muddle. He provided a way through Jesus Christ so that people could return to Him, receive eternal life and healing. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We can return to the Father for forgiveness, cleansing and healing through His Son Jesus Christ. We will focus more deeply on the incredible dynamics surrounding all of this in our next devotional study.