Summary:

Humanity is infected with sin, a fatal spiritual disease that has devastated our race since Adam.  We can’t cure this disease ourselves, but God has responded to our need and offers complete healing if we look to Jesus with faith.  This view meshes with Isaiah 53 and the living parable of the Deadly Snakes in the Desert.

The Healing View of Atonement begins with identifying sin as a spiritual cancer, a fatal disease that has infected us all.  So sinners in need of a Savior are seen to be wounded and broken people in need of a Healer.  In this view, what Jesus accomplished is reframed as an organic solution to our separation from God, not an accounting solution that balanced the books on our debt to God, or a legal solution that satisfied the demands of justice.  Jesus’ goal was to return mankind to the wholeness of our original relationship with God.

The Healing View of Atonement echoes large portions in Isaiah (essentially all of chapter 53), as well as other portions of Scripture:

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:5-6 NIV

“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”  For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

1 Peter 2:24-25 NIV

Objections to Healing View

There is a danger in viewing sin as primarily a disease and ignoring the pride, egotism, selfishness, and rebellion that has corrupted us.  We didn’t arrive at our current broken state innocently.