We should realize that if the Lord Jesus only forgives our sins without healing our sicknesses, His salvation is still not complete. Although He has saved our "soul," He still leaves our body behind to be dominated by sickness. Hence, when He was on earth, He took care of both things equally. Sometimes He forgave the sin first and then healed the sickness. At other times He healed the sickness before He forgave the sin. He gave to man according to what he could receive. If we study the Gospels, we will see that the Lord Jesus seems to have done more healing work than anything else. This is because it was harder for the Jews to believe in the Lord's forgiveness of sins than in His healing of sickness (Matt. 9:5). However, believers today are completely the opposite. In those days, men believed that the Lord Jesus had the power to heal sickness, but they doubted His grace to forgive sins. Believers today believe in His power to forgive sins, but doubt His grace to heal sickness. Believers seem to think that the Lord Jesus only comes to save people from sin, but they have forgotten that He is also the healing Savior. Man's unbelief always divides up a perfect Savior into two halves. Nevertheless, Christ is always and forever the Savior of man's "soul" and body. He forgives as well as heals.

To the Lord Jesus, it is not enough for a man to be only forgiven but not healed. Therefore, after He said to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven," He also said, "Rise, take up your bed and go to your house." To us, even though we are full of sin and sicknesses, it is enough as long as we receive forgiveness from the Lord—we should bear our own sickness or think of other ways for healing. But the Lord Jesus never intended for the man who was sick of palsy to be carried home again after he had seen the Lord and been forgiven of his sins.

The Lord Jesus' perception of the relationship between sin and sickness is different from ours. In our eyes, sin is an item of the spiritual realm; it is something God dislikes and condemns. Sickness is merely a condition in our human lives and does not seem to have any relationship whatsoever with God. However, the Lord Jesus regards both sin in the "soul" and sicknesses in the body as the works of Satan. He came to "destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). Hence, whenever He met demons, He cast them away. Whenever He encountered sicknesses, He healed them. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle wrote concerning His healing: "Healing all those who were being oppressed by the devil" (Acts 10:38). Sin and sickness are as closely related as our "soul" is to our body. Hence, forgiveness and healing are mutually dependent upon each other.