Throughout the Gospels, Jesus healed people with biblical disabilities. These seem like small, insignificant miracles, but Jesus does incredible healings for people who need them the most.

In my last post, I completed the second part of a post on how Jesus changed the lives of paralyzed people. In this post, I want to talk about why Jesus healed people with disabilities.

Have you ever read parts of the Bible and wonder why there is a one-sentence or couple-of-verse healing or prayer? We tend to think they are insignificant because they are like blips on the radar. The truth is that Jesus heal people with biblical disabilities all the time and we only catch glimpses of it in the Gospels.

We need to realize Jesus’s power to heal even the most insignificant disabilities we see in the Bible. We don’t think about what that person’s life was like until Jesus came along. The same can happen for you and me. I have been disabled since 2013. We can believe Jesus for healing in our disabled states.

Biblical Disabilities Come in Different Ways

Why did Jesus heal people with disabilities? To be disabled, just like today, a person would not be able to provide for his family. Women would not be able to carry out their daily duties.

I know all too well that a disability can completely change the trajectory of your career or even life. The same was true in the Bible for people with disabilities. Jesus didn’t just heal people to heal them. Of course, He healed disabled people to prove His power.

But it was more than that. He gave them their lives back. He gave them their jobs back. He gave them their ability to provide for their families back. Jesus doesn’t feel just to show His great power. He heals to restore us.

Peter’s Mother-In-Law Had a Biblical Disability

There’s this very short healing of Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. He is not well known at the time but has His disciples in place. It appears in the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8:14-15; Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:39). It may seem such a small thing to us to heal a fever but why do all three Gospels include it?

I know as a quadriplegic that a fever is my body telling me something is wrong. For many people, an infection lies behind a fever. It is the symptom of something worse. We don’t know what was happening with Peter’s mother-in-law and a fever can become quite serious.

This fever kept her from serving Jesus and the disciples in their visit. We see different perspectives on her healing. She was lying down, unable to move or serve them when they came in. Matthew and Mark tell us Jesus simply touched her hand and she was healed. Luke tells us Jesus rebuked the fever.

Luke tells us it was a high fever. As soon as she was healed, Peter’s mother-in-law arose and began to serve Jesus and the disciples. She was able to return to her normal activities because of Jesus.

A Man with a Withered Hand Has a Disability

In another account of Jesus’s healing ministry, there was a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on a Sabbath. I may have to do a post about Jesus healing on the Sabbath. It’s one of His favorite things to do!

Once again, we get different details from the three Gospel writers. In Matthew, the scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. But in Mark and Luke Jesus asks the question.

Only Mark tells us Jesus is angry at the Pharisees and scribes for their hardness of heart. They are more concerned with rules than they are restoring this man’s hand so he can be a contributing member of society again.

Why is the question even raised about healing on the Sabbath? The rabbis deemed healing a person work. Work was forbidden on the Sabbath according to the Ten Commandments, or at least their interpretation of them. Jesus doesn’t care about their man-made rules. He heals this man and restores his life to him.

Jesus Heals a Man with Dropsy, Another Biblical Disability

Another time on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a man with dropsy. Dropsy is an old medical term for excessive fluid in the extremities. Like fever, it is a symptom of a much more dangerous medical conditions such as heart, kidney, or liver disease. Only Luke tells us about this healing (Luke 14:1-6).

This man could not worship at the temple in Jerusalem because of his medical condition. He probably had trouble working and supporting his family. But Jesus took all that away as part of His illustration of how much God cares about us.

Jesus Heals a Woman with a Biblical Disability

In another Gospel account of healing, Luke describes how Jesus healed a woman with curvature of the spine (Luke 13:10-17). She is bent over and cannot straighten up, making her working and daily activities a chore.

Jesus shows more compassion than the synagogue ruler and the other scribes and Pharisees around the synagogue. The Gospels show Jesus giving similar illustrations of taking care of animals even on the Sabbath. We are of even greater value to Jesus. He does not want you to suffer from health issues.

Jesus Heals the Blind and the Lame from Their Biblical Disabilities

Matthew reports that Jesus healed the blind and the lame in the temple (Matthew 21:14-16). It is most likely they were outside the temple since their physical defects would not permit them to worship in the Temple.

Not only can these people not worship in the Temple like everyone else but they could not work for a living. They begged for money from passersby into and outside of the temple. This was the only form of “Social Security” in Jesus’s times. The blind and lame relied on the kindness of strangers to get by.

Jesus changed their Biblical disability for good and got to challenge the synagogue leadership for their hard hearts and indignant stances against the glory of God being displayed before their very eyes. While we can be thankful for the kindness of others and government programs that help the disabled, Jesus wants to heal us from these disabilities to restore our bodies and livelihood.

Praying for Your Healing

I want to pray for you and me that Jesus will restore us from our disabilities so we can do what we used to be able to do.

Lord Jesus, we know You have great power to restore us from our disabilities and give us the ability to provide for our families once again. We lift ourselves up to You and ask You to do the impossible and reverse our situations in this life. We want to serve You in Greater capacities than we can at this moment. We want to contribute all we can. Minister through us mightily we pray. In Your powerful name, amen.

Up Next

We have seen why Jesus healed people with biblical disabilities. Next, I will take a deeper look into the accounts of the woman with the issue of blood and Jairus.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay