Manifested For A Purpose!

1 John 3:5,8

5 And you know that He [being Jesus] was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.
8 He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
NKJV

Isa 53:5

5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
NKJV

My Comments:

The fundamental doctrine of Christianity is that Jesus came, bore our sin [or transgressions against God] upon His own body on the Cross at Calvary, died and rose again for our justification [right standing with God].

The Apostle John, in writing to the Church, expressed this fundamental doctrine as the purpose behind why Jesus was manifested on the earth. We know that as we express our faith [conviction] that Jesus bore our sins for us and that we have right standing with God because of what He has already done, we're justified by our faith.

Notice however that Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 53:5 that Jesus was not only wounded just for our sins, it is also by His stripes that we are healed! 

"For this purpose the Son of God was manifested [Or this is why Jesus came], that he might destroy the works of the devil" is what John wrote to the Church. Notice however that He only did that when He died at the Cross. Peter, in preaching to the Gentiles on who Jesus was and what He did, spoke in Acts 10:38,

38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

When Peter says that Jesus "healed all who were oppressed by the devil", he could not have been referring to spiritual healing, or bearing the sins of the people as He only did that on the cross; but Peter mentions that He "went about doing good". I believe that this "good" Peter referred to was the physical healing of the people who came to Jesus! Not only that, Peter would have referred to physical sicknesses as demonic oppression.

I am not implying that all sicknesses are demonic in origin, but I suggest that what Peter was saying was essentially this, sickness does not come from God. God is not the author of sickness and disease, and He won't strike people with illnesses just to teach them a lesson, or to get them to repent and turn back to Him!

By going through all four Gospels in the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), we can see that the ministry of Jesus throughout Israel was punctuated by Him going about healing the sick, casting out devils, and raising the dead.

So we can see that Jesus had a two-fold reason for His coming,

1. To bear our sins for us
2. To heal us of our sicknesses.

Therefore we can have full confidence in the reality that we can believe God for physical healing, knowing that sickness and disease does not come from Him! For this reason Jesus came, that we might be forgiven AND healed!