THE POWER OF JESUS' STRIPES

Isaiah 53:5 … The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes, we are healed.


Isaiah says, “By His stripes, we are healed”.

This is a prophecy of Jesus being beaten and flogged by the Roman soldiers. In Matthew 27:26-31 it says that they flogged Jesus, took Him into the Praetorium and a whole company of soldiers gathered around Him, stripped Him and beat Him.

When Jesus was being beaten and flogged by these soldiers He had you in mind. He received these beatings so that you would be healed. It’s by these very stripes laid upon his back, that you are healed.

1 Peter 2:24 says …it is by His wounds that you have been healed. Other translations repeat what Isaiah says, “it’s by his stripes you are healed”.

Some people say that it was for your spiritual healing, not your physical healing. The truth is, it’s for all your healing – spiritual, physical, emotional and mental! But Matthew 8:16-17 makes it very clear that Jesus was beaten and flogged for your physical healing.

Jesus had just healed Peter’s mother-in-law and then the scriptures say:

When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘he took up our infirmities and bore our diseases'. (Matthew 8:16-17)

Matthew is directly quoting from Isaiah 53:5!

Friend, Jesus didn’t just go to the cross so that you could be forgiven and recreated as a child of God to receive eternal life. He went to the cross so that you would also be made physically well and whole.

I remember as a young man in my late teens and early twenties when I first heard this teaching. One night after one of these meetings and on my way home, I accidentally walked into a wire fence and it sliced my eye where my eyelid was actually dangling off. I was taken to the doctor and was given a grim report, even after surgery. But I decided to wake up early every morning and walk several laps around the sports oval declaring: “by Jesus' stripes, my eye was healed”. I did this for several weeks.

Well, that eye recovered fully and today there is no evidence except for a mild scar if you look with a magnifying glass, that I had surgery on my eye. The key to walking in the truth of God’s Word, especially healing, is to simply believe that God’s Word heals and to declare those scriptures of healing over yourself every day.

Faith comes by hearing Jesus' Word (Romans 10:17) and as you hear your own voice declaring the truth of that Word, faith rises up and your hearing will become a reality!

Pastor Wayne Simpson


THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

It’s by the stripes laid upon Jesus' back, that you are healed.