‘By His stripes we are healed’ turns our focus to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. (Is 53:5) It means to re-enact the stripes, suffering, punishment, torture and wounds He incurred and endured on account of the death on the cross, and the victory and authority that ensued from the remarkable conquest He achieved over the kingdom of the devils. All power and principalities and might and dominion are in subjection to Him.
Devils and demons come to steal our joy, peace and health. These are thieves with masked faces and swiftly tasked to operate stealthily to steal, kill and destroy, but I AM come that they might have life and have it in abundance. Again and again, Jesus proved to us all, during His earthly walk, that devils/demons are behind every ailment and sicknesses and He had to cast them out first from their host (victims), and then immediately the process of recovery and healing begins to take place. That is why He gave the disciples power and authority to heal the sick and also to cast out demons.
Matthew 17:17-18, “Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour… Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” Jesus had to rebuke the sickness-causing agent or devil for the healing to set in. He has given us authority to resist devils in the power of His name. He is not here, but He has given us authority to carry on His work until He comes. We can go forth using that power of attorney – using His name.
Luke 9:1, “He called His twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.” He said they were to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He gave them authority. Christ did not need this authority, He already had it. He gave this authority to His followers. My people are destroyed because they lack knowledge. In other words, God’s people are destroyed because they lack revelation. Even though we are God’s people, we are not immune from suffering the devastating effects of ignorance owing to lack of revelation in certain spheres of our lives. Get revelation! Get epignosis! Get knowledge!
As servants of God we are His ambassadors. An ambassador has no power, but he has authority to wield and act in official capacities, and every nation recognizes the authority of an ambassador. If they don’t treat that ambassador right, it won’t be just the ambassador that they will have to contend with but the whole country, the whole government that is behind that ambassador. We are ambassadors of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We meet the devil and say, “Devil, take your hand off that body. Take your satanic influence away–take your oppressing hand from that body.”
This was the right and privilege Jesus procured for us through the sacrifice on the cross. Upon the realization of the revelation of ‘by His stripes I am healed,’ then sicknesses and diseases should either elude us or take its exit from us because Jesus sacrificially paid for it in His body, and thus, this dosage of revelation can be strategically applied in both pre-emptive and curative capacities. It is important to come into the revelation of this Scripture so as not to function in the position of the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the Scripture like a ‘Newspaper’ which he did not hitherto understand.
The Eunuch had recited that portion of Scripture with no revelation until Philip, a deacon who has been cut-off from the pulpit ministry yet so full of the Holy Spirit, showed up on the scene with a heavenly presence and brought him into the full revelation and actualization of faith in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Consequently, this influential eunuch was baptized and returned to Africa rejoicing in the spirit. Jesus came to make us whole on all fronts – spirit, soul and body. Isaiah 5:13, “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.”
– Demola Adeniran
