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Your days of sickness and disease are over.

I'll never forget the day God spoke those words to me. It was some of the best news I'd ever heard. I believed it and have been walking in the glorious truth of it for more than 25 years now.

If you're sitting there right now, wishing God would say those same words to you, I have good news for you: He has.

He has said it to every one of us.

He said it with such power and force that it made hell tremble and heaven ring. He wrote it in the covenant blood of His own Son. He shouted it down through the ages through prophets and apostles and preachers.

The problem is, most Christians haven't truly heard it. They haven't let it reach down into their hearts and become truth to them. God has said it...but they haven't yet believed.

If that is the case with you today, I want you to know that what you are about to read can change that forever. If you will take this message, study it out in the scriptures and see for yourself that it is the truth, if you will dare to believe it and act on it, it will not only change your heart, it will change your body.

This one message will forever alter how you see sickness and disease. It will put to rest every doubt about God's will for your healing and open the door of divine health to you.

A Supernatural Substitution
What message could possibly be that powerful?

Only one: The message of the Cross.

If you're a believer, you've already experienced how life-changing that message can be. When you first received it by faith, the anointing of God in it snatched you out of the kingdom of darkness and delivered you into the kingdom of the light of God's Son. It changed your eternal destination from hell to heaven. It transformed you spiritually and made you a new creation.

Think of the power it released in your life!

Yet the fact is, most of us have understood only a tiny fraction of what was accomplished at Calvary. We have only begun to grasp all that was done for us in that Great Exchange.

I like the phrase, The Great Exchange, because the Spirit of the Lord gave it to me, and it captures what happened during Jesus' death and resurrection. It communicates that Jesus did more than pour out His life to pay the penalty of our sin, He actually was made "to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21).

To understand how all-encompassing The Great Exchange truly was, you have to realize that the word sin there does not just refer to what we'd normally think of as religious errors. It includes everything in our lives that falls short of the glory and perfection of God's original design (see Romans 3:23).

If you want to see that original design, look back at the Garden of Eden. What you'll find is a man and a woman living in unbroken fellowship with Almighty God, untouched by sickness, grief or poverty, and exercising dominion over the whole earth.

Religion has tried to cheapen what Jesus did for us by teaching that He only brought forth a partial redemption, that He freed us only from the eternal damnation caused by sin and not from its damnable effects in the here and now. But thank God, that is not the case.

The crucifixion of Jesus at Calvary was the most complete event that has ever taken place.

God left nothing out of it. Not one cursed thing that came about through mankind's union with Satan was left standing. Jesus triumphed over it all. By taking upon Himself every foul thing that fallen man has ever suffered, He set us free—spirit, soul and body.

He became our substitute. He became poor, that we might be rich (2 Cor. 8:9). He became weak so that we might be strong. He endured death so that we might be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22). He "bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes (we) were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

A Mystery Hidden in God
Notice there that Peter lists redemption from sin, and healing in the same breath. So does Psalm 103. It says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases (vv. 1-3).

All through the Bible, healing and forgiveness go together like hand and glove. God does not separate them. The reason is simple. They are not separate!

Just as sickness entered the world through Adam's sin, healing came when Jesus paid the price for that sin. To believe otherwise would be tantamount to saying that what God did in Jesus on the cross was less powerful than what the devil did in Adam in the Garden of Eden. That could not possibly be so! For Romans 5:15 assures us:

"But God's free gift is not at all to be compared to the trespass (His grace is out of all proportion to the fall of man). For if many died through one man's falling away (his lapse, his offense), much more profusely did God's grace and the free gift (that comes) through the undeserved favor of the one Man Jesus Christ abound and overflow to and for (the benefit of) many." (AMP)

In other words, what God accomplished through redemption not only equaled what Satan accomplished through the Fall...it far surpassed it!

I'll admit, judging by the sickness-ridden, poverty-plagued, defeated lives of many Christians, it may not seem like redemption did much more than save us from hell. But that's because for the most part, we don't have any idea what really happened at Calvary. That lack of knowledge has destroyed many precious Christian lives.

"Well now, Brother Copeland, I know what happened at Calvary. I've read every gospel account of it."

That may be so, but quite frankly, you can't find out what happened there strictly by reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. For one thing, those books contain very little information about the Crucifixion. And for another thing, the men who wrote them had viewed it from a natural perspective. They didn't understand it themselves at the time it happened because it was a mystery hidden in God (see 1 Cor. 2:6-8).

To see the Crucifixion from God's perspective, you must read what the prophet Isaiah wrote about it. For God revealed to him not just the physical facts, but also the spiritual truths of what actually occurred the day Jesus died for us.

"Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pain (of punishment). Yet we (ignorantly) considered Him stricken, smitten and afflicted by God (as if with leprosy). But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement needful to obtain peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes (that wounded) Him we are healed and made whole" (Isa. 53: 4-5 AMP).

Some theologians have tried to rob this passage of its full power by teaching that the healing it refers to is merely spiritual healing. But the gospel writer Matthew makes it clear that they are mistaken. In Matthew 8:17, he quotes this very passage and applies it to the healing ministry of Jesus in which people were cured of every kind of physical sickness and disease.

With that said, look back at those scriptures again. Do you see there where it says He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities...and with the stripes that wounded Him we are healed? If you were to look up the Hebrew words that have been translated bruised and stripes, you'd find out that they both come from the same word saying He was bruised for our iniquities and with those bruises we are healed.

The same blood that poured from Jesus' body bought Healing and forgiveness of sin. He paid the same awesome price for them both. He took upon His own body every sickness and infirmity of every man just as He took on Himself the sin of every man. He suffered the torments of them all so that we could be free of them all.

The very thought of it staggers the mind. Just imagine, for a moment, if someone were to take every illness ever experienced by anyone in your city—everything from hangnails to the measles to cancer—and put them on one person all at once. It's hard to even think of such a thing, isn't it? We've never seen anybody that sick!

Imagine that same person must also take into his spirit every sin ever committed by anyone in your city. Violence, adultery, perversion, murder, hatred, jealousy, and resentment—all of it must enter into him at once. Can you imagine what that would do to someone?

Now expand that picture to include the sicknesses and sins of every man, woman and child who will ever live on this planet. Of course, you cannot imagine such horror. But if you could, you would be able to see the awful price Jesus paid for us at Calvary.

Isaiah described the sight of it, saying, "(...the Servant of God became an object of horror; many were astonished at Him.) His face and His whole appearance were marred more than any man's, and His form beyond that of the sons of men" (Isa.52:14 AMP).

The weight of all that sin and sickness on one man was so heavy it rocked the earth. It was so terrible the sun refused to shine on it. No wonder the Roman centurion who witnessed Jesus' crucifixion said, "Truly this man was the Son of God" (Mark 15:39). He had never seen a man die like that.

"If It Be Thy Will"
In the light of such a sacrifice, it is as grievous to the heart of God for us to pray, "If it be Thy will, heal me," as it is for us to say, "If it be Thy will, save me." God revealed His will once and for all when He laid our sicknesses on Jesus. Giving us that revelation cost Him dearly. Once, when He spoke to me of Calvary, He said, "It is as close to Me as if it had happened today. It is burned into My consciousness."

How dare we, then, ignore what happened there and tell some sick brother that it is God's will for him to be sick a little longer so he can learn something?

Isaiah 53:10 says, "It was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick" (AMP). If it was the will of God to bruise Him and make Him carry our sicknesses, how can it be the will of God to bruise us and make us carry those same sicknesses again? It can't be! That would be a travesty of divine justice!

If you want to see just how repulsive such a thought really is, switch things around for a moment. Think what your reaction would be if a fellow believer came to you and said, "Yesterday I got so drunk, I could hardly walk. Then I beat my wife and my kids. After that I robbed a gas station. But don't blame me for it. God put that sin on me to teach me something."

The very concept is revolting, isn't it? You would never tolerate it. You'd shut it down immediately. "Friend," you'd say, "you have the wrong idea. Jesus shed His precious blood to deliver you from sin. So if you choose to let it into your life, don't blame it on Him because it's not His fault!"

You may think that's an absurd example. You may think no one could ever be that foolish. But, the truth is, there were people in the Apostle Paul's day who preached that very thing. They went around saying that Paul's message of grace meant that we ought to sin so that grace could be shown.

That sounds silly to us today because we know that sin is repugnant to God. He hates it.

It's high time we realized that He hates sickness in the same way. Listen, sin, sickness and disease all came out of the same pit at the same time! God hates it when some devilish germ gnaws the life out of the body of one of His precious children. He designed and formed that body with His own hand out of the dust of the earth—and He made it perfect. How do you think He feels when He sees it twisted and tormented, bringing grief not only to the sufferer, but also to all those who love him?

Don't you ever let anyone tell you that God likes that. He is a Father—not a monster! Such suffering could never be His will.

If by some convoluted stretch of the religious imagination we could decide it is His will for us to be sick, then we'll have to put the hospital and the beer joint in the same category. We'll have to condemn every doctor and every nurse for trying to thwart God's will.

"Now, Brother Copeland, that's stupid."

Yes, it is! Religious tradition is always stupid. It makes men believe things in church they'd never believe on the street. It makes them sit in a pew and agree with a preacher who says we learn from sickness and pain. "Oh yes, amen!" they'll say. But if that same preacher were to take a hammer, go down to the school and start knocking kids in the head to help them learn better, those same Amen-ers would have him arrested!

Healing Always Comes
Of course, some sincere-hearted believers have gotten confused about healing because they've seen or heard of instances where a good Christian didn't receive it. We've all heard the stories. "Well, healing couldn't be included in redemption because Sister So-and-So who taught Sunday school every week for 65 years got sick and God didn't heal her."

I want you to know something about those stories: They are lies. Granted, those who tell them usually don't realize it, but they are lies just the same.

I realize that's a shockingly blunt statement, but the Bible itself is just that blunt. It says:

"What if some did not believe and were without faith? Does their lack of faith and their faithlessness nullify and make ineffective and void the faithfulness of God and His fidelity [to His Word]? By no means! Let God be found true though every human being be false and a liar" (Rom. 3:3-4 AMP).

God has made His Word plain to us. He has said, "By His stripes we are healed." He has said, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up." He has said, "[Jesus] Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses" (Matt. 8:17).

God always keeps His Word. Healing always comes. The problem has been in our receiving, not in God's giving.

Put that over in the realm of the new birth and you can easily see what I mean. The Bible says that by the righteousness of one, the free gift has come upon all men (Rom. 5:18). Jesus has already gone to the cross and been raised from the dead. He has reconciled us to God and made righteousness available to every person on the face of the earth.

Therefore, it always comes. To whom? To anyone who will obey the instructions in Romans 10:9-10: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

Healing comes to the same people. It comes to those who will believe in their heart that Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead to purchase their healing. It comes to those who will open their mouths in faith and say, "Glory to God, I receive it. I am healed!"

Actually, if you could read that verse in the Greek, you'd see that it pertains to healing just as surely as to the new birth because the Greek word sozo, which is translated saved, literally means to be made sound, to be delivered from every form of sickness and danger, both temporal and eternal.

What Do You Think Would Happen?
"But if receiving healing is as simple as receiving salvation," you ask, "why are so many Christians still sick?"

First and foremost, it's because the truth about healing has not been consistently preached. Since "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom. 10:17), our failure to teach the fullness of the gospel has left many Christians without enough faith to heal a headache—much less cure cancer.

You know there was a time not so very long ago when it was just as tough to get people born again as it is to get them healed today. It's true! Religious tradition had convinced people that salvation just couldn't be obtained by the average person. But then, praise God, people like Dwight L. Moody came on the scene and started preaching the new birth. They started telling people that Jesus bore their sins and if they'd receive the gift of salvation in simple faith, they'd be born again!

Whole denominations like the Baptists preached that message to everything that would stand still. You'd hear it in every church service. If you walked in the door and admitted you weren't saved, somebody would grab you and say, "Jesus died for your sins, man! You don't have to stay in that condition. Just trust Him, receive Him as your Lord and He'll save you right now. Then He'll take you to heaven when you die!"

Praise God for all those precious Baptists and every other denomination like them! They preached the new birth until getting saved seemed like the easiest thing in the world.

Now what do you think would happen if everyone picked up on the truth about healing in that same way? What do you think would happen if every born-again believer in town started knocking on doors and having testimony meetings and revival meetings and telling everyone they meet a thousand times over, "Hey, man! Jesus bore your sicknesses and carried your diseases! You don't have to suffer with that cancer. Just trust Jesus and He'll heal you. He does it every time!"

I can tell you what would happen. Healing would become as common as the new birth and we'd wonder why we had so much trouble with it for so long!

What's more, in that environment, if someone prayed for healing and then said, "I don't think I got anything. I don't feel any better," do you know what they'd be told? The same thing people are told today when they doubt their salvation because they don't "feel" saved.

Some mature believer would pull them aside and say, "Now listen, here. You can't go by feelings. You have to do this by faith. If you wait until you feel something to believe you're saved (or healed), you'll never be able to receive!"

Start Your Own Healing Revival
If you're sitting there right now wishing such a healing revival would begin, stop wishing and start your own! Dig into the Word. Study and meditate the truth about healing and the redemption. Listen to tapes of men and women of God who have the revelation of it.

Then start preaching. Preach it to yourself. Preach it to your children. Preach it to your dog if he's the only one who will listen. It probably won't do much for him, but it will help you—and that's what matters.

If you'll do that, you'll eventually get to the point where you'll fight sickness and disease the same as you do sin. You'll be just as mean to Satan when it comes to standing for the redemption of your body as you are when it comes to the redemption of your spirit.

When he comes at you with symptoms of sickness, you won't crawl up in the bed and whine, "Why does this always happen to me?" You'll stamp your foot and say, "Glory be to God, this body is off limits to you, Satan. I refuse to allow you to put that foul thing on my body after Jesus has already borne it for me. So you might as well pack it up and go home right now!"

I'm not saying it will be easy. It won't be. Not in this life. Not in this world. Just as you don't live in victory over sin without putting forth an effort, you can't bumble along in life and have God just drop healing in your lap.

No, you'll have to stand for it. You'll have to fight the good fight of faith.

But don't let that scare you. It's a fight you can win. I know you can because 2,000 years ago, Jesus gave you everything you'd ever need to win it. He took your weakness and gave you His strength. He took your sin and gave you His righteousness. He took your sickness and gave you His health. He took your every defeat and gave you His victory in its place.

You are the heir of the Greatest Exchange ever made.

Begin to live like it and this world will never be the same again.

Excerpt permission granted by
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Author Biography

Kenneth Copeland
Web site: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
 
For the last 50 years Kenneth and Gloria Copeland have been passionately teaching Christians all over the world how to apply the principles of faith found in God’s WORD to their lives.
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