‘On earth as it is in heaven’ does not mean healing now
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
Does that mean we should all be healed on earth because there is no sickness in heaven?
That’s what many charismatics believe, especially in the movement that’s spearheaded by Bethel Church in Redding, California. The leader of that church, Bill Johnson, wrote a book titled When Heaven Invades Earth. If you go to Bethel’s website (at least as of this writing), the first text you see, in big letters, all caps, is ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.
The idea is that earth should be like heaven now — God’s kingdom should manifest in all its fullness on earth, in this age. Johnson has said, “Heaven is the model for our life and ministry. Jesus lived with this principle by only doing what He saw His Father doing. Learning to recognize the Holy Spirit’s presence and how to follow His lead enables us to do the works of Christ, destroying the works of the devil. Healing and deliverance must become the common expression of this gospel of power once again.”
See also:
Is this true?
To answer this, first consider, what will heaven be like?
Of course there will be no sickness, but what else won’t there be in heaven?
In heaven ...
There will be no suffering or discomfort of any kind.
No inconveniences. No fatigue. No eyeglasses (which Johnson wears).
Not even an itch or a sniffle.
There will be no pain, ever. No sadness, ever.
There will be no death of any kind.
And most wonderfully, there will be no sin.
In heaven, everything is always perfect in every way.
If there should be no sickness now because there’s none in heaven, there should be none of those things either.
Our flesh on earth
But obviously, all those things are still on earth, even for Christians.
Why? Because we still have bodies of the earth’s flesh.
The New Testament has a lot to say about our flesh, even as Christians.
In Romans 7:18, Paul writes, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells”; that passage is about the battle between his flesh and his spirit. Notice that he makes a distinction between his true self, his true identity, and his flesh. This distinction is at the heart of his struggle with sin. Further down in that passage, he writes:
22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. (Emphasis mine.)
So on one hand, Paul describes his “inward man,” and contrasts that against his members — his flesh, what he calls “this body of death.”
Paul also depicted this conflict in Galatians 5:17 — “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” There, he refers to the Holy Spirit, which dwells in our inward man.
So clearly, the flesh we Christians still have on earth is not as it is in heaven. It’s quite UN-heavenly.
The new birth has not rid our bodies of sin; therefore, it has not rid our bodies of death. We still have bodies of death, which Paul illustrates in 2 Corinthians 4:16 — “Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.”
The outward man — our body, our flesh — is perishing; it’s mortal. Other translations say “decaying,” or “wasting away.”
Not as it is in heaven.
As long as we still have these bodies, there will always be the presence of sin and death. Therefore, why should we think there won’t also be sickness as well? Does God have less tolerance for sickness than He does for sin and death?
When heaven will invade earth
But someday, we will receive heavenly bodies. Someday, we will be delivered from our bodies of death.
That glorious day is depicted in 1 Corinthians 15. In that chapter, see how Paul describes our current and future bodies:
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
There, Paul quadruples down on the stark difference between our earthly bodies and our heavenly bodies. Our current natural bodies are bodies of corruption, dishonor, and weakness; those words go right along with “body of death” and “wasting away.” In contrast, our future spiritual bodies will be bodies of incorruption, of glory, of power, which is what the Bethel movement says they should be now.
Verse 50 destroys their idea of heaven invading earth: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.”
Our current bodies cannot enter heaven, Paul says. Therefore, heaven cannot come to earth, in the way they think, as long as we’re in our current bodies. We need different bodies; we need new bodies. And someday, we’re going to get them.
When? At the resurrection of the dead.
Not the spiritual resurrection of our salvation, but the future physical resurrection of our bodies. This is described next:
51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed — 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality
Again, our current mortal, corruptible bodies will become immortal and incorruptible. Does this change come gradually, in this life, in this world, through miracles and healings? The text tells us how and when this will happen:
How: In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. This change will be sudden and instant.
When: At the last trumpet. In the future, at the end.
This is when every promise of healing will be fulfilled. This is when heaven will invade earth.
Until then, we wait
In the meantime, this life is a time of waiting for that; we see that in Philippians 3: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body ...” (20-21).
Paul uses the same wording in Romans 8: “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” (22-23).
Our souls have been redeemed, our spirits have been redeemed, but not our bodies; not yet. Until then, this life is a life of groaning and eagerly waiting for that instant transformation of our lowly flesh.
If heaven is supposed to come to earth and give us divine health now, so that our bodies are on earth as they are in heaven, why would that transformation even be necessary?
Put all this together, and overwhelmingly, we can see that “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” does not mean healing now. To say that it does erases a distinction that Scripture profusely shows us.
What does it mean, then?
“Your will be done” is a prayer of submission. It’s submitting our will to His.
It’s what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane: “not My will but Yours be done.”
It’s a declaration that we will be governed by God’s will.
That’s why we say “on earth”; that describes our lives, today. It’s saying, use us to do Your will on earth now.
In heaven, God has servants who always do His will, as Psalm 103:20-21 says:
Bless the Lord, you His angels,
Who excel in strength, who do His word,
Heeding the voice of His word.
Bless the Lord, all you His hosts,
You ministers of His, who do His pleasure.
Angels do His will in heaven. They serve and obey Him.
So the prayer is, let us, Your servants here, be like the angels in heaven and do Your will on earth.
In the meantime, it’s not like God does nothing. As 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, He is renewing our inner man every single day. That’s a far superior work than physical healing. That’s what His priority is, and that’s what our hope is.
If you’re suffering today, take heart in that, and eagerly wait for that glorious day when heaven will invade earth.
