One of the most quoted healing verses in the Bible, and one of the most misused. Here is what it says, how two apostles read it, and what it means for the person praying in a hospital room tonight.
By his stripes we are healed comes from Isaiah 53:5, where a suffering Servant takes blows that belonged to other people, and the people watching finally realize that his wounds are their healing.
The New Testament reads it two ways, and both are right. Matthew applies the passage to Jesus healing sick bodies. Peter applies it to sin carried away and wandering sheep brought home to the Shepherd.
Sound of Heaven believes Jesus still heals today, and we pray like it. We also believe this verse has been turned into a formula that hurts sick people. Both of those things get said plainly below.
Isaiah 53:5 sits inside the fourth of the Servant Songs in the book of Isaiah, a poem that starts at 52:13 and runs to the end of chapter 53. Pulling one line out of the middle of a poem is how most of the trouble with this verse started.
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:4-5 (NIV)Notice who is talking. It is a group, a “we”, and they are confessing that they got it wrong. They watched the Servant suffer and assumed God was against him. Then it dawns on them. He was not suffering for his own failures. He was carrying theirs, and his wounds were what made them whole.
It is worth being fair about the Jewish reading. Isaiah calls Israel the servant in places like 41:8 and 44:1, and Reed Carlson, writing for Working Preacher, notes that a collective servant is “how many Jewish interpreters throughout history have interpreted Isaiah 53.” That is a serious reading. The first Christians read the same poem and saw one person in it, the one they had watched die outside Jerusalem, and they came back to this chapter in Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Romans and 1 Peter.
A welt, bruise or wound, the visible mark a blow leaves on the skin. The King James word “stripes” captures it well.
It shows up in the law of Exodus 21:25, stripe for stripe, and in Psalm 38:5, where the psalmist's wounds fester.
The verb comes from the Hebrew root rapha, to heal, the same root behind Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals, in Exodus 15:26.
Peter uses the Greek word mōlōps, a bruise or welt. It appears only once in the New Testament, in 1 Peter 2:24.
Two New Testament passages quote this part of the poem directly, and they do different things with it.
Pain, suffering, transgressions and iniquities all land on the Servant. The poem does not split the body from the soul. Whatever is broken in the people, he takes.
Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law of a fever. That evening many are brought to Him and He heals all the sick. Matthew says this fulfilled Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.” That is verse 4, applied to bodies, during His ministry and before the cross.
Peter quotes verse 5 in a letter to believers suffering unjustly, many of them household slaves. He applies the wounds to sin, and to people who had wandered off and have now come home.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
1 Peter 2:24-25 (NIV)Look at Peter's tense. “You have been healed.” He is not promising a future cure. He is telling people who are still being mistreated that the deepest wound has already been dealt with. They belong to the same Shepherd Jesus described when He said I am the good shepherd.
Matthew uses Isaiah 53 for bodies. Peter uses it for sin and belonging. You do not have to choose. The Servant carries the whole person, and both apostles are telling the truth about Him. For a related piece, see what the Bible says about pandemics.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Some churches read Matthew 8 as a sign that ended with the apostles. We think that is wrong. The Kingdom Jesus brought is present and active now, the Spirit who healed through Him has been poured out on His people, and nothing in the New Testament announces a day when the gifts switch off. Paul lists gifts of healing among the gifts the Spirit gives in 1 Corinthians 12:9, and he treats them as ordinary church life.
At Sound of Heaven we believe God heals today, in body, mind and heart. We lay hands on the sick, we anoint with oil the way James 5 describes, and we expect God to answer. We are not embarrassed by that and we are not going to stop asking.
We also believe doctors, nurses and medicine are among the ways God heals. Luke, who wrote a Gospel and Acts, was a doctor (Colossians 4:14). Paul told Timothy to use a little wine because of his stomach and his frequent illnesses (1 Timothy 5:23). Praying and seeing a doctor are not competing acts of faith. Do both, and never stop a treatment because someone told you to prove your faith.
What we will not do is promise you an outcome or a timeline God has not promised. His willingness to heal is settled in Jesus. How and when He answers is His.
Call the elders, anoint with oil, pray in faith. The instruction assumes sickness will happen in a healthy church and tells the church what to do about it.
Gifts of healing, given by one Spirit. Plural gifts spread through the body, not stored in one famous minister.
For the wider pattern across Scripture, see our study of miracles in the Bible.
Now the other side, and we need to be just as clear. A popular teaching says that because healing is in the atonement, every believer who stays sick simply has not claimed it. Confess the verse, refuse the symptoms, and if you are still sick, the problem is your faith.
Take the best version of it first. It wants people to expect God to move and it takes Matthew 8 seriously. We share all of that. Where it goes wrong is the last step. It turns a promise about who Jesus is into a guarantee about your schedule, and when the guarantee fails, it blames the sick person.
Look at who that gets used on. The woman in chemotherapy told she is still sick because she doubts. The parents of a disabled child told to find the sin that is blocking it. The family at the funeral told that more faith would have kept their father alive. People with chronic pain, depression and disability who quietly stop coming to church because every prayer line ends with a verdict on them. That teaching has stopped being good news. It has become an accusation, and Scripture already has a name for the accuser.
Healing was fully paid for at the cross, so a believer who stays sick is failing to receive it. Say the verse enough and the symptoms have to go.
Paul left Trophimus sick in Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20). Epaphroditus nearly died (Philippians 2:27). Timothy had frequent illnesses. Nobody blamed their faith.
Jesus Himself shut this down. His disciples saw a man born blind and asked who sinned, the man or his parents. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus said (John 9:3). Carlson makes a related point from the Servant Song itself, that “not all adversity needs to be moralized.” Sickness is not a report card on your faith.
Faith matters, and what you set your mind on matters. We have written about as a man thinketh in his heart, and renewing the mind is real work. But a thought is not a medicine and a verse is not a spell. Believing harder is not the thing that heals you. God is.
Who did Paul leave sick in Miletus?
2 Timothy 4:20. Paul, through whom “God did extraordinary miracles” (Acts 19:11), still left a friend sick and said so plainly. He never treated it as a failure of faith.
If you are reading this after praying for years, or after burying someone you prayed for, hear this first. You did not fail a test. God is not disappointed in the size of your faith. The Servant in Isaiah 53 was “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.” He is not standing at a distance waiting for you to try harder. He is in the room with you.
It is all right to be angry, tired or confused, and it is all right to keep asking. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and Scripture says so out loud. If you want someone to stand with you, send us a prayer request, and keep listening to your doctors while we pray.
How you read this verse shapes how you see God. The King James says “the chastisement of our peace was upon him.” Plenty of people have heard that as an angry Father beating the Son so He can stop being angry at us. We do not believe that.
Go back to verse 4. The people who thought God was punishing the Servant were the onlookers, and the poem records that they misjudged him. He was not being punished for anything he had done. He was carrying what our sin does, its violence, its shame and its death, as our representative and in our place, so that it would not crush us.
Verse 10 is the hardest line in the poem: “it was the LORD's will to crush him.” We will not pretend it is not there. Here is how we read it. The Servant's suffering was God's plan to heal, not God's rage looking for a target. Father, Son and Spirit are one God, and at the cross God was giving Himself, not punishing Himself. Jesus said anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father, and on the cross He prays for the people killing Him. That is what the Father is like.
The punishment that brought us peace was on him. The result of the wounds is peace with God, not a score finally settled.
He bore our sins in His body. The charge against us is gone, and we are free to live for righteousness.
Sheep that scattered are back with the Shepherd. Healing, in Peter's hands, looks like belonging again.
We walk through this at length in what the cross represents and in our study of the atonement in the Bible.
Here is what I love about this verse. The one who heals is wounded. He describes someone who got hurt, badly, and whose hurt became our healing.
So when you pray for healing, and please do, you are not trying to talk a reluctant God into something. You are coming to the one who already carried it. Sometimes the body recovers quickly. Sometimes healing comes slowly, through surgeons and friends and time. Sometimes it is peace in a waiting room at Good Samaritan when the diagnosis has not changed. In every one of those, He is the same Jesus, and He is for you.
For related reading, see intercessory prayer, fervent prayer and the power of prayer, or plan a visit if you want people to pray with you in person on Commack Road.
Isaiah's Servant took the blows meant for us, Matthew saw it in bodies healed, Peter saw it in sins forgiven and sheep brought home, and the same Jesus still heals today without ever making the sick carry the blame.
Tell us what you are facing, a diagnosis, a long wait, or a question this verse raised, and someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
It comes from Isaiah 53:5, the fourth Servant Song. The Servant takes blows that belonged to others, and the people watching realize his wounds are their healing. Stripes is the King James word for the welts a beating leaves. The New Testament applies the passage two ways. Matthew 8:17 connects it to Jesus healing sick bodies, and 1 Peter 2:24 connects it to sin forgiven and wanderers brought back to the Shepherd. Both readings belong together, because the Servant carries the whole person.
Both, and the New Testament shows it. Matthew quotes the verse just before it, Isaiah 53:4, when Jesus heals the sick in Capernaum, so the passage clearly includes bodies. Peter quotes verse 5 about sin and returning to the Shepherd, so it clearly includes the soul. Isaiah never separated the two. Pain, suffering, sin and guilt all land on the Servant. Reading it as only spiritual loses Matthew, and reading it as only physical loses Peter.
Because the New Testament never promised that believers would not get sick or that healing would come on our schedule. Paul left Trophimus sick in Miletus, Epaphroditus nearly died, and Timothy had frequent illnesses. None of them were blamed for weak faith. Jesus carried the whole person and He still heals today, but this verse is a promise about who He is, not a formula that guarantees a result when you say it often enough.
Yes. At Sound of Heaven we pray for the sick and we tell people to see their doctors, and we do not think those pull against each other. Luke was a doctor and traveled with Paul. Paul told Timothy to use a little wine for his stomach. James tells the sick to call the elders for prayer and anointing. Medicine, prayer and the gifts of the Spirit are all ways God cares for people, so never drop a treatment to prove your faith.
Isaiah 53 says the punishment that brought us peace was on the Servant and that he carried our sin. We believe that fully. What we do not believe is that the Father was venting rage on the Son. In verse 4 the onlookers thought God was punishing him, and the poem shows they misjudged. At the cross God in Christ carried what sin does to us, as our representative, and answered it with forgiveness. Father, Son and Spirit are one God giving Himself.