The Problem of “Does God still heal”? (or Not)

Healing:  The problem of "Does God still heal"? 
Does God heal today? Yes.
What does the word "heal" mean? That depends.

This is from a very special article I wrote almost four years ago.  I'm updating now and moving it over here to prepare for a class that I'll be doing soon.  Updates for that purpose will be in italic rust colored text, so you can tell the original portions.

Here's the verse that got me started on the road to updating this article -

Jas 5:13 Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14 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. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

The question that came to mind are these -

• What does "sick" mean?
• What does "make the sick person well" (heal) mean?

"sick"

It's worth noting that the word "sick" appears twice in these verses, and each of them has a different word in the original Greek.

Is any one of you sick?

In this case, the connotation is 1 to be weak, feeble, to be without strength, powerless. 2 to be weak in means, needy, poor. 3 to be feeble, sick.
Strong, J. (1995). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.

 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.

 to grow weary, be weary. 2 to be sick.
Strong, J. (1995). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.

There's also a note here  -

As in the case of expressions for health and vigor, it may also be necessary in some languages to specify more precisely the nature of the illness, disease, or weakness. Often the context provides a clue, but in some instances this is not possible, in which case it is important to try to employ a term for sickness or illness which will be the most generalized.  
Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., Vol. 1, p. 269). New York: United Bible Societies.

We tend to look at this as a case of Jesus bringing people back to good physical health when they are "sick".  And to be sure - He did that.  However, the primary goal for Him was to "heal" (save) their souls, as we see in this verse in Matthew 9 -

Mt 9:9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
Mt 9:10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
Mt 9:12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus was using a word in a non-traditional sense.  He did heal people in the physical sense, but the more important meaning behind what He said was about their eternal health.

healing - "make the sick person well"

And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well

By itself, this seems to back up the physical healing definition.  

But - looking at the original Greek, there are no words that correspond to the English translation for the words "person well".  Seriously - it says nothing about making that person well - which means healing in the sense of making a disease or physical health problem go away is not what this verse says.

Going to Young's Literal Translation, we read -

and the prayer of the faith shall save the distressed one, and the Lord shall raise him up

It would seem that the promise here isn't for a physical healing, but for the salvation of the person's soul.

Does this mean physical healing is a thing of the past?

Read on for that...

The original article, from November 13, 2010, starts here.