Being healed and made whole – Mark 5:29,34

The story of the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years inspires me.  She was sick.  For a long time.  She had spent all of her money on doctors, but she only got worse.  She had lost everything and was at the end of herself.

She heard that Jesus was in town.   She thought to herself, “If I can just touch His garment…”

How I would love to touch that garment…

Well she did, and Jesus felt the virtue come out of Him and the result was more that I had realized before…

Take a look at the different words used for healed and whole:

“And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in [her] body that she was healed (iaomai) of that plague.”  Mark 5:29

“And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole (sōzō) ; go in peace, and be whole (hygiēs) of thy plague.” Mark 5:34

Had she been physically healed?  Yes… iaomai tells us that the bleeding and the cause of the bleeding, the illness itself was gone.

But that wasn’t what Jesus chose to focus on first… He said, “whole.”  Sōzō speaks of saved, restored, made complete.  Jesus first focused on what her faith had done…

All she had given, all she had lost… all of it was coming back.  She was to be released from all of the effect of the illness… in every part. 

I wonder… did she go home and find that she had been refunded what she spent on the doctors?  Did she find a jar of oil that just kept going (like the widow of Zarephath)?  We don’t like to focus on material things, but Jesus didn’t exclude them…

How do we know this…?  Because He had not yet died for our sins, so this use of sōzō was not salvation of our souls, AND in the next part of the verse He uses hygiēs which focuses on the physical restoration of her body.

If you have spent all that you have, if you had looked to the world for your answers, if it has drained you and you are at the end of yourself…

Have faith… touch His garment…

See that you can be restored.

SDG