Matthew 14:35-36 “And when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region, brought to Him all who were sick, (36) and begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well.”
When Jesus ministered on the earth He ministered as a man anointed by the Holy Spirit to do the works of God (Acts 10:38). You will recall that when our Lord was baptized in water by John the Baptist that God the Father then filled Him with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:10). Prior to our Lord being filled with the Holy Spirit He performed no miracles on the earth and no demons recognised Him for who He was. It was only after our Lord was filled with the Spirit and anointed with power that He began to minister healing and deliverance to the people. And it was only from that time onwards that the demons recognised Him for the first time and began to cry out whenever they came into His presence. So just why did our Lord Jesus lay His hands on people to heal them and to cast out demons? The reason Jesus would lay His hands on people was because primarily, the healing anointing was in His hands. I said that primarily the anointing was in our Lord’s hands but we can clearly see in the above account in scripture, when our Lord came into the region of Gennesaret, that all that the sick needed to do in order to be healed was to touch His garments. The reason for this was because our Lord was so anointed that even His clothes carried that anointing. Our Lord Jesus is the perfect example, because there was nothing in His life that hindered God’s power from flowing through Him. And so God’s power rested on Him to such a degree that even His clothes were anointed with that power. The apostles, for a brief period when the church began, walked in that degree of anointing to the point that even Peter’s shadow falling on a sick person would get them healed (Acts 5:15). But then sadly divisions arose in the church and that degree of anointing was lifted from the church (Acts 6:1). And so we can learn a very important lesson from this example, which is that God the Father does not limit His power flowing through us, we do. Jesus never limited God’s power however, and so He carried God’s full anointing on Him to the point that anyone that just touched His clothes in faith could receive God’s healing power. And so in following our Lord’s example we need to keep sin out of our lives so that when we lay hands on others there is nothing in us that can hinder the flow of God’s power through us. The power that went out from our Lord Jesus was tangible, which is why people sought to just touch Him. The moment they touched Him in faith, they could feel that healing power flow into their bodies and they were healed (Luke 6:19).
Michael E.B. Maher
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