In Matthew 12:9-14, Jesus is in the synagogue and notices a man with a withered arm. As with any other incident described in the Gospels, it is likely that there were words spoken or things done in addition to those recorded. Regardless, all we are told here is that a man with a withered hand was present as Jesus was speaking and confronting the Pharisees and synagogue rulers over their hardness of heart and their blind adherence to the traditions of men.

Then suddenly, after first exposing the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, Jesus says to the man with the withered arm: “Stretch out your hand”. And immediately the man stretched it out and his arm and hand were restored to health.

Now, consider what would have been the outcome if the man had said “No”, or “it hurts too much”. Assuredly, in that case no healing would have ensued.

But for some reason, it seems that the man chose to believe the words of Jesus as authoritative for his infirmity, and he rejected as authoritative anything that he was concludng from his own sense knowledge of his infirmity – whether the appearance of withering, or any associated pain or numbness or any other sensory input. He then obeyed the words of Jesus.

As a result of his obedience, in essence his honoring Jesus as one with divine authority over sickness, he was fully restored.

Unfortunately, our approach is usually to reason as follows: “I will walk as soon as I’ve sensed that the numbness or pain has left, or I will walk until I feel pain. Then I will quit.” In thinking this way, aren’t we exalting our own reasoning over the authoritative words of God, that Jesus has “taken our infirmities and carried away our sicknesses?” (Mat. 8:17) Consequently, we end up choosing disobedience to the words of Christ. We don’t characterize our conduct that way, but fundamentally that’s what it is.

Now, before anyone gets too twisted off over what may seem to be a callous analysis which takes little account of real physical pain, let me make it clear that physical pain is certainly a great deterrent to obedience, in my case as much as anyone else’s. But we cannot base our theology on the vagaries of individual pain tolerances. We must base it on what should be authoritative for us – the Word of God. And if it is authoritative, we need to obey it, even if we need to work our way up to full obedience.

And what may really be happening here is this: our obedience in honoring the Word of the Lord somehow enables the force of that word to come crashing through and overwhelm all physical or temporal evidence to the contrary.

This is how we are healed. We take rebel territory by force (Mat. 11:12).