Here at Christians In Honesdale, we believe God is very much at work today. He hears prayer and answers it, and He cares for His people through providence, His steady hand in ordinary events. What we don't believe is that He still gives miraculous gifts, such as healing a person on the spot or speaking a language you never learned. Those gifts revealed God's word and confirmed it, and when His word was complete in the first century, they ended (1 Corinthians 13:8-10; Jude 3).
A Hard Diagnosis and a Fair Question
Say someone you love has just been given a frightening diagnosis. You're praying harder than you ever have. Then you hear a church say miraculous gifts have ceased, and it lands like a door closing. Does that mean God won't help?
It doesn't. Scripture says God can do far more than anything we'd think to ask (Ephesians 3:20), and nothing on this page asks you to pray less. The question we're answering is narrower. What has God said He's doing in our time?
What the Bible Tells the Sick to Do
James wrote to Christians scattered far from home, and he gave them plain instructions for sickness: "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven" (James 5:14-15).
Notice who James tells them to call. He doesn't say, "Find someone with the gift of healing." He says to call the elders, the men who shepherd the congregation, and to pray. And he says who does the raising up: "the Lord will raise him up." The healing is in God's hands, and prayer is how we bring it to Him.
A note on the Greek: "Anointing" in James 5:14 is aleipsantes, from aleiphō, the everyday word for rubbing on oil. It's the word Jesus uses for grooming ("anoint your head," Matthew 6:17). A different word, chriō, is used when God anoints Jesus for His work (Luke 4:18). Oil was the common medicine of the day. The Good Samaritan poured oil and wine on the wounded man's injuries (Luke 10:34). Many students read James's oil the same way, as care for the body offered alongside prayer.
The New Testament says each congregation should have elders, men who meet the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Some congregations, like ours, don't have elders yet, and we won't appoint men before they meet those qualifications. So what do we do without elders? We do what James tells every Christian to do in the very next verse: "pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working" (James 5:16).
God's people have always prayed this way. When King Hezekiah was told he would die, he turned his face to the wall and prayed. God answered, "I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you" (2 Kings 20:5). Then Isaiah told them, "Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover" (2 Kings 20:7). God heard the prayer, and He used a remedy. Seeing a doctor isn't a lack of faith. Luke, who wrote a quarter of the New Testament, was "the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14).
A note on the Hebrew: At Marah, God told Israel, "I am the LORD, your healer" (Exodus 15:26). In Hebrew it's ʾănî YHWH rōpʾekā, from rāpāʾ, "to heal." God didn't call Himself a healer only for one generation. Whatever means He uses, healing still comes from Him.
What the Signs Were Doing
When the Bible describes a miracle, it describes a sign, something people watched happen that no natural cause could explain. A man blind from birth was given sight (John 9). Lazarus, four days dead, walked out of the tomb (John 11). On the other hand, providence is something else. It's God working quietly through everyday events. Often we only recognize it looking back.
A note on the Greek: John's usual word for a miracle is sēmeion, "sign." A sign points past itself to something else. The miracles pointed to who Jesus was and to the truth of what He said.
Signs carried a message. Peter told the Pentecost crowd that Jesus had been "attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know" (Acts 2:22). When the apostles preached, God did the same for them: "It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will" (Hebrews 2:3-4).
Mark's Gospel says the same thing: "And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs" (Mark 16:20). The signs confirmed the message.
In those early years of the church, there was no finished New Testament yet. The signs showed listeners the message was from God. Today the written word does that, which is what John says about his own book: "but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31).
Even the Apostles Didn't Heal Everyone
If the gifts had been given to keep Christians well, we'd expect the apostles to heal every sick friend. They didn't. Paul writes, "I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus" (2 Timothy 4:20). He told Timothy, "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Timothy 5:23). When his co-worker Epaphroditus nearly died, Paul didn't say he healed him. He said, "Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him" (Philippians 2:27).
Paul prayed three times for God to take away his own "thorn in the flesh." The answer was no: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). Even in the age of miracles, God's answer to a sick Christian was often providence, mercy and grace rather than a miracle.
Why the Gifts Came to an End
Paul told the Christians in Corinth, who had these gifts, that they were never meant to last: "Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away" (1 Corinthians 13:8-10).
God's revelation came through those gifts a portion at a time. "Perfect" in the passage means complete, and we read it as the whole of what God set out to reveal, "the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). With everything delivered, the partial gifts had nothing left to add.
A note on the Greek: "The perfect" is to teleion, "that which is complete" or "mature." Paul sets it against ek merous, "in part," three times in two verses. The contrast is between pieces of revelation (the parts) and the whole of it. In verse 11 he compares it to growing up: "When I became a man, I gave up childish ways."
Many sincere believers read "the perfect" as the return of Christ. But Paul goes on: "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three" (1 Corinthians 13:13). Faith and hope remain after the gifts are gone. Hope can't remain once Jesus comes, because "hope that is seen is not hope" (Romans 8:24). So the gifts were to end while Christians were still waiting for Him.
Scripture also shows how the gifts were passed on. In Samaria, Philip preached and worked signs, and many were baptized. But the new converts received the Spirit's gifts only when the apostles Peter and John came and laid their hands on them. "Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money" (Acts 8:18). Paul did the same for Timothy (2 Timothy 1:6). When the apostles and those they had laid hands on passed from the scene, no one was left to pass the gifts on.
Ephesians 4 says Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to build up the church "until we all attain to the unity of the faith" (Ephesians 4:13). Evangelists, shepherds (the elders of a congregation) and teachers are still part of the church's life. Apostles and prophets did a different job, revealing the word once and for all, and the Scriptures now give a Christian all he needs for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
How God Answers Now
So keep praying. John writes, "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us" (1 John 5:14). We pray for the sick by name here, and we thank God when He brings them through.
Joseph's life shows how God often works. His brothers sold him. A false charge put him in prison, and he was forgotten there. None of it looked like a plan. But in the end he told those brothers, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20). God still works all things together for good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28).
We won't call an answered prayer a miraculous gift, and we won't treat a feeling as God speaking something new. He's already given His word in full. When someone recovers, we give God the credit, because He's the one who heals, whether through doctors, medicine, rest, or ways we'll never understand. When someone doesn't recover, we go to God in prayer seeking comfort and understanding.
We're an independent congregation with no denomination or headquarters above us, so we can only tell you what we believe. Many congregations like ours teach the same, but we don't speak for any of them.
What He Most Wants to Give You
Even a body God heals will one day give out. Lazarus walked out of his tomb, and years later he died again. What every one of us needs more is forgiveness, because we've all sinned (Romans 3:23). James puts the two side by side: the Lord raises up the sick, "and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven" (James 5:15). The gospel, the good news about Jesus, is God's power to save (Romans 1:16). Through it He forgives and gives life in Jesus' name.
Study These Passages With Us
If someone you love is sick, tell us their name and we'll pray for them. Drew De Grado is our evangelist. If you'd like to read James 5 or 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 with someone, you can set up a Bible study, read more about who we are, or contact us with a question or a prayer request.
Our gatherings:
We gather in Suite D at 416 Main Street, Honesdale, PA 18431. Park and come in at the rear of the building.