Article January 30, 1989 Issue

Seeking wholeness in Immanuel, "God with us"

Healing in the name of Christ is not a thing of the past. It is the present evidence of God with us.

Frances Smart Engel

People must have stood wide-eyed to see a beggar walk and leap when he had never walked since birth. The Bible records how Peter and John brought this gift of healing to the man.^{See Acts 3:1–16 .} Peter explained to the people who gathered around them that the healing was done "in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth," not through any personal healing power they possessed.

A person's name brings to mind more than an indication of a particular individual. It can also include the work he or she did, an outstanding talent, even a theory. For example, when one hears the name "Einstein" one immediately thinks of his genius and of relativity. The physicist cannot be separated from his theory.

Similarly, Jesus' name cannot be separated from his divine nature, the Christ, which is ever one with God. The healing power of his "name" is derived from understanding the nature of the Christ, which presents the unbreakable relation of God and man as the son of God. Christ Jesus lived and embodied the fact that God, the Father, is never separated from the Son. This is different from the human parent/child relationship, where the child is separate from the parent and has a mind of its own. Christ Jesus never assumed he had a mind or will apart from God. His dominion over the ills of the flesh proved his divine thesis that God is the Father of all and that through the Christ we claim our sonship with God.

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