Is healing ‘the children’s bread’? No

That's a common phrase claimed by Christians who believe that physical healing in this life is always God’s will for Christians with infirmities. It’s included in the atonement. It’s guaranteed (IF certain conditions are met).

The phrase is derived from the story in Matthew 15 and Mark 7, when a Syro-Phoenician woman came to Jesus and begged Him to cast a demon out of her daughter. Jesus initially refused, saying, “It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.”

These believers take the phrase “children's bread” and extrapolate it. The thinking goes: Christians are God’s children, and bread is an essential, fundamental provision; therefore, whatever Jesus is talking about is provided to all Christians.

This is what’s called eisegesis: importing an interpretation of a text that is not indicated by the original context. Let’s examine the passage to see what its context is.

Defining terms

First of all, the specific “bread” referred to here is exorcism. So to define the term as healing of any kind is already expanding the meaning. If it were limited to demonic possession, I would agree that the promise applies to all Christians.

But let’s grant that it could apply any work of Christ, anything He did during His ministry.

The word that’s key to understanding the passage is “children.”

The gospel writers go out of their way to identify the woman’s Gentile ethnicity, because that’s central to what Jesus was saying. The clear, obvious point is that Jesus’ priority was His ministry to the children of Israel. The “children” are Jews.

Are Jews “children” in the same sense that Christians are? No. People become children of God by believing in Christ. Jesus was not making any doctrinal statement about what it means to be a child of God. Jews are no more “children” than the woman was a “dog.”

What Jesus was saying

Jesus was simply making an analogy: Israel was to the Gentiles as a child is to a pet. That was His point; it was about Jews and Gentiles. And in a wonderful story of true faith and grace, the Gentile humbly identifies with the pet, and Jesus grants her request.

The story does not teach guaranteed temporal healing for all Christians, and nor does anything else in the Bible.

Someday, all Christians will receive new bodies that will never suffer, and so in that sense, perfect eternal health is included in the atonement. But if that promise were guaranteed now, in this life, then Paul, writing the word of God, would not have advised a natural remedy for Timothy’s “frequent infirmities” (1 Timothy 5:23). In fact, Timothy wouldn’t even have had “frequent infirmities.” Paul would not have had the physical infirmity he mentioned in Galatians 4:13. Paul would not have left Trophimus sick (2 Timothy 4:20). Are they not the children? Why didn’t they just claim their bread?

If health now accompanied salvation, not only would Christians always be healed, not only would we never die of an illness, but Christians would never get sick. Our health would be as secure as our salvation. No Christian would even need to wear glasses.

Christians need to stop teaching this about healing. It goes against the teaching of Scripture and the witness of reality. It offers false hope, focuses our trust in the gift rather than the Giver, dictates to God what we think is best, makes Him subservient to our faith, and shipwrecks faith when it is not fulfilled. It’s a reproach to Christ, making us look no better than the charlatan “faith healers” on TV.

God sovereignly heals when He alone decides it’s best, and when it accomplishes His specific purposes, which are always best no matter what.