The Arminians are wrong about God’s sovereignty. God does directly and absolutely control and predestine all things. However, this is about ultimate metaphysics, which the Bible only mentions a little, while it mostly talks about the human level. That is the level where God commands us, relates to us, and where we deal with things day-to-day; it is how the Bible mainly speaks to us. We will follow that pattern here. Not talking this way most of the time means not talking like the Bible.

God says in Isaiah 54:15, “They will surely gather against you, but not by Me.” He quietly assumes His own sovereignty but speaks straight to us on our level. God is more God-centered than anyone, and He has no problem saying, “I didn’t cause them to gather.” Jesus, the most God-centered man ever, said about both healing and forgiveness, “Your faith saved you.” In Acts 10:38, Peter says all the sick people Jesus healed were “victimized” or oppressed “by the devil.” So, the Bible has no issue saying sickness isn’t from God; it is from Satan or the curse.

This matters because if we think sickness comes from God, we won’t fight it. That is one reason Jesus battled sickness so hard while tradition doesn’t. Jesus saw sickness as Satan’s direct attack on Him, His Father, and His people. So, He smashed it wherever He found it. The only time He didn’t stomp out sickness—which Satan was causing—was when unbelief blocked Him. Think about that: unbelief stopped Jesus, but Satan couldn’t. Jesus was a one-man wrecking crew against all the sickness the devil threw around.

So, sickness is Satan flipping the bird at Jesus’ atonement. Healing is Jesus slamming His fist into Satan’s face, again and again. There’s a real war here. As Jesus said, if you’re not with Him, you’re against Him (Isaiah 53:4-5, Luke 13:16, Acts 10:38).

In the substitutionary atonement, Jesus took 39 stripes in exchange for our healing. It is already done. In the Father’s mind, He decided our sicknesses were taken off us and put on Jesus as those 39 stripes. Jesus carried our sickness in our place. The verse before, as the Spirit explains through Matthew, says He “bore” (nasa) or took our sicknesses and diseases away. It is the same word used in verse 12 for Jesus bearing our sins, and in Leviticus 16 for the scapegoat, when the high priest transferred the people’s sins to it, and it carried them off into the desert. It is a word for substitutionary atonement, and Isaiah 53 applies it to our sickness and healing.

Yet, many pin sickness on God—not just in the ultimate metaphysical or decree sense, but on the human, relational level. That is wrong. In our New Covenant with God, sealed by oath and blood, God promises to always deal with us in certain ways. We are promised forgiveness, imputed righteousness, but also healing, the blessing of Abraham, and constant good—like a fish for a fish, healing for healing. If Jesus is my High Priest and mediator forever, He doesn’t switch in and out of that role. If He gave me sickness, He would be a minister of sickness in His ministry to me. If Jesus gives sickness, then His gospel ministry is one of pain and torment. But Jesus is only a minister of healing—He takes sickness away; He doesn’t hand it out.

This last point stands out in one example. Jesus sometimes told certain Jews or crowds they weren’t Abraham’s children because they refused to believe—proof they did not belong. So, it’s a big deal when He calls someone a child of Abraham. Take the woman bent over for 18 years. Jesus said she was a child of Abraham—not an outsider, but part of the blessings in God’s covenant with Abraham. In that context, He said Satan made her sick, not God. God’s covenant with Abraham included supernatural healing, not sickness—it was the opposite. So, in God’s relationship with her, Satan delivered the sickness, not God. Jesus used the Abraham covenant as the reason she had to be healed, saying it was necessary—not just a nice idea, but a must. God keeps covenants; He doesn’t break them. The covenant with Abraham must include healing, or it wouldn’t be necessary for Jesus to heal her.

Because she had a standing covenant with God for healing, and because Satan gave her sickness as a curse and middle finger against God’s kingdom, Jesus wiped it out. Unless we see things like Jesus did, we won’t hit sickness hard with God’s healing power. If someone doesn’t get their insider status with God—or that sickness is Satan’s attack to ruin them and, by extension, a middle finger to God’s kingdom—they will let Satan roll right over them. They will accept his attack, slap a “for God’s glory” label on it, and call it a day. That’s demonic.

When Satan attacks someone with sickness, it sidelines a Christian and stalls God’s kingdom. As with warfare, an injured soldier also takes other soldiers away from the front lines to help carry and tend to the injured one. This is why in war it’s often better to injure more than to kill. Satan plays the same war game tactics with Christians by attacking them with sickness. Just as injuries in our army are the glory of the enemy, sickness in Christians is Satan’s glory, not God’s.

A person’s mind is seriously broken when they can’t tell good from evil, God’s glory from Satan’s. When a so-called Christian doesn’t attack sickness with God’s healing power, they’re letting Satan hammer God’s kingdom—and they’re okay with it.

Sickness is not God’s autograph—it’s Satan’s victory lap. Jesus did not just patch up boo-boos; He threw haymakers at the devil’s disease factory. If you are calling it “God’s will” while Satan’s racking up points, you are not just off-script—you’re cheering for the wrong team in this cosmic cage match.