Body, mind, and soul—true healing

At this point we are faced with two profound facts of which the New Testament is deeply conscious. First, the fact that when God in Christ comes to heal or save sinners in all their helpless distress, there takes place a struggle with evil will, a struggle which is waged between God and evil not only in the sinner’s heart, not only in their thoughts and desires, but in their bodily and spiritual existence, for the whole creaturely realm is the sphere of this struggle. Hence the Gospels see the closest relation between the spiritual and the physical. The wages of sin is death, as St Paul put it. Sin and physical disintegration and corruption are inseparable. The being and existence of man is under the sway of evil, and therefore even when Jesus heals people of physical distress he does so only through a struggle with evil will, with living and masterful evil power. Nowhere does Jesus heal as a human doctor, but always he heals as one who wrestles personally with evil and overcomes it through the conflict of his own holy will with the unholy powers of evil spirit.—T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 241