Bible Verses About Healing: Comfort, Hope and Prayer
Bible verses about healing show that God cares for sick, hurting and weary people, and that healing in Scripture reaches the body, the mind and the heart. Psalm 147:3 says, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (NIV). Christians pray for healing with real hope, and they also thank God for doctors and nurses.
If you are searching for Bible verses about healing, you may be ill yourself, sitting beside someone who is, or carrying a sorrow that no scan can show. This guide gathers verses from the NIV, explains them in plain English and stays honest about the hard questions, including why not everyone is healed.
A word first. Prayer and medicine are not rivals, and nothing on this page replaces medical care. If you are unwell, please speak to your GP or use NHS 111, and call 999 in an emergency. If the pain is emotional, Samaritans are free to call on 116 123, day or night.
Last reviewed on 23 October 2026. Each Bible quotation below was checked word for word against the NIV text, and the sources named at the end were opened and read that day.
Contents
What does the Bible mean by healing?
What are the best Bible verses about healing?
What do the Gospels say about Jesus healing the sick?
What does “by his wounds we are healed” mean?
What does James 5 say about praying for the sick?
Does God heal everyone who prays?
Should Christians see a doctor as well as pray?
Where do Christians differ on healing?
Which Bible verses help with emotional healing?
How can I pray for healing?
Free Bible verses on healing PDF
Frequently asked questions
Key takeaways
References and further reading
What does the Bible mean by healing?
In everyday speech, healing means getting better. In the Bible the word is wider. The Church of England's theological introduction to its healing services notes that the Gospels use “healing” both for physical healing and for the broader salvation Jesus brings. It adds that the New Testament often calls sickness “weakness”, a word that carries the sense of powerlessness and vulnerability.
So when you read the verses below, it helps to keep four layers in view, because the Bible moves between them without warning.
Physical healing: recovery from illness, injury or pain.
Healing of the heart: comfort for grief, fear, loneliness and shame.
Healing of our relationship with God: forgiveness, and being made whole again.
Final healing: the hope that God will one day end sickness and sorrow altogether.
What are the best Bible verses about healing?
These are the verses people reach for most often, grouped by what they tell us about God. Each has a short comment in plain English. All quotations are from the NIV.
God is the one who heals
Exodus 15:26 (NIV): “I am the Lord, who heals you.”
God speaks these words to Israel at Marah, soon after the Red Sea, when the people were thirsty and afraid. The promise sits inside a covenant between God and Israel at that time, so it is best read as God telling his people who he is. It is not a formula that says careful obedience will keep every illness away.
That matters if you are unwell today. Before the Bible gives any instruction about healing, it tells you what God is like: someone who cares about bodies as well as souls.
Psalm 103:2-3 (NIV): David tells his own soul to remember God's benefits, including that he “forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases”.
Forgiveness and healing are named in the same breath, as parts of one life lived in trust. The psalm is a reminder to be spoken aloud on good days so that it is ready on bad ones. If you are struggling with guilt as well as illness, our guide to Bible verses about forgiveness may help.
Psalm 147:3 (NIV): “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
This is probably the most loved healing verse in the Bible, and it speaks first to the heart. The picture is of someone kneeling to bandage a wound with care and without hurry. The psalm praises a God who looks after the broken and the scattered, which fits the hope gathered in our Bible verses about hope.
Jeremiah 30:17 (NIV): “I will restore you to health and heal your wounds.”
God says this to a people who felt like outcasts, described in the same verse as “Zion for whom no one cares”. The wound here is partly national and spiritual, yet the words are warm enough that many readers take them as a promise of personal comfort. The deeper point is that God notices people others overlook.
Honest prayers from the sickbed
Psalm 6:2 (NIV): “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.”
The Bible does not ask the sick to pretend. David says he is faint and in agony, and the prayer is still treated as Scripture. You are allowed to pray plainly about how bad it feels.
Psalm 30:2 (NIV): “Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.”
This is a thanksgiving written after recovery. In a hospital waiting room it may feel far away, but it shows the shape of a healing story: first the cry, then the help, then the thanks. Recovery for many people is slow, and the psalm does not give a timetable.
Psalm 41:3 (NIV): “The Lord sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.”
Notice the first verb. Before restoring comes sustaining, which is a promise for the long middle of an illness when nothing seems to change. It is a good verse to read aloud to a friend who is stuck in bed.
Jeremiah 17:14 (NIV): “Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.”
Jeremiah prays this in a hard season of opposition, so it works for any kind of rescue, not only for the body. It is short enough to whisper when you cannot find other words. The prayer rests on God, not on the strength of the person praying it.
Psalm 107:19-20 (NIV): “He sent out his word and healed them.”
The people in this psalm had cried to the Lord in their trouble, and his word reached them. Many Christians find that a verse read slowly at the right moment does exactly that. If the weight on you is fear, our collection of Bible verses about peace sits well beside this one.
What do the Gospels say about Jesus healing the sick?
Matthew 4:23 (NIV) sums up the early ministry of Jesus: he went through Galilee “healing every disease and sickness among the people”. Healing was not a side activity. The Gospels present it as a sign that God's kingdom had come close, which is why so many accounts are told in such detail. Our full list of the miracles of Jesus sets them out Gospel by Gospel.
The woman who touched his cloak (Mark 5:25-34)
Mark tells us she had been bleeding for twelve years and “had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors”. She approached Jesus quietly from behind, hoping to go unnoticed.
Jesus stopped and looked for her. When she came forward trembling, he said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” The word “daughter” is the heart of it. She had expected to take a cure and slip away, and instead she was named, welcomed and sent off with peace.
Notice what he did not say. He did not blame her for the long illness, and he did not tell her the doctors had wasted her money. The story shows that Jesus cares about the person as well as the symptom.
The ten men with leprosy (Luke 17:11-19)
Ten men cried out from a distance, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” All ten were healed as they went to show themselves to the priests. Only one, a Samaritan, came back to give thanks, and Jesus said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
It is a quiet detail that Luke says all ten were “cleansed” but only the one who returned is told he has been made well. Many readers see a difference between receiving a cure and receiving wholeness, which begins with gratitude and a relationship with the giver.
Jesus as physician
In Mark 2:17 Jesus answers his critics with a line from everyday life: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” He was speaking of people who knew they needed forgiveness, but he chose the image of a doctor's waiting room, and he did not use it as an insult to doctors. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes him as “the physician the sick have need of”, and notes that he came to heal “the whole man, soul and body”.
Matthew 8:16-17 adds that when evening came and many sick people were brought to him, Jesus “healed all the sick”, and the writer connects this with Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.” That leads to one of the most debated phrases in the whole subject.
What does “by his wounds we are healed” mean?
Isaiah 53:5 (NIV): “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.”
1 Peter 2:24 (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.’”
Read the whole sentence in each case and the topic is sin and its punishment. Peter, quoting Isaiah, says Jesus bore our sins “so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness”. For that reason, most Christian traditions read “healed” here first as being forgiven and restored to God. Our guides to why Jesus died and what salvation means follow that thread.
Some Christians go further and teach that physical healing is also included in what Jesus achieved on the cross, pointing to Matthew 8:17, where the same Isaiah passage is applied to bodily illness. Others agree that Jesus cares about our bodies but hold that complete bodily healing is promised for the age to come, not guaranteed in this one. Both groups quote the same verses, which is a good reminder to hold your view with humility, especially when speaking to someone who is sick.
What does James 5 say about praying for the sick?
James 5:14-16 (NIV): “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
This is the best-known New Testament instruction about praying for the sick, and three things stand out.
The sick person asks. They “call” the elders. Prayer for healing is offered with the person, not done to them.
It is a shared act. Elders pray, and everyone is urged to “pray for each other”. Nobody is meant to be ill alone.
Oil. In Mark 6:13 the disciples “anointed many sick people with oil and healed them”, and in Luke 10:34 the Good Samaritan pours oil and wine on a wounded man's injuries. Traditions differ on whether the oil in James is a sign of the Spirit, a sacrament, or also a plain remedy of the time.
Reading “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well” as a guarantee causes real pain, because it can leave a sick person feeling that they failed if they were not healed. James himself places the promise inside the Lord's care, and elsewhere the Bible shows faithful people who prayed and did not recover. That is the question we turn to next.
Does God heal everyone who prays?
The honest Christian answer is that God can heal, that he often does so through doctors and time, and that sometimes a faithful person is not healed in this life. The Bible shows all of these.
Hezekiah (Isaiah 38): he prayed, and God said, “I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.” Verse 21 adds that Isaiah told them to “prepare a poultice of figs and apply it to the boil, and he will recover”. Prayer and treatment sit side by side.
Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25-27): Paul writes that “he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him”. He is described as healed through God's mercy, with no miracle claim and no blame.
Timothy (1 Timothy 5:23): Paul advises him, “Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.” An apostle gives practical medical advice to a man who is often ill.
Paul himself (2 Corinthians 12:7-10): he writes of a thorn in his flesh: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” The prayer was heard, and the answer was strength rather than removal.
Two warnings follow from these stories. First, illness is not proof of sin. When the disciples asked Jesus about a man born blind in John 9:1-3, he answered that the man's condition was not a punishment, but that “this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him”. Second, a lack of healing is not a lack of faith. Nobody who is ill should be told that they have not prayed hard enough.
The Catechism puts the same tension plainly: Jesus healed many, “but he did not heal all the sick”, because his healings were signs pointing to a deeper victory over sin and death. If you are carrying the question of why God allows pain, our article on why God allows suffering takes it on directly.
The Bible also holds out a final hope. Romans 8:18 says, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” And Revelation 21:4 promises, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” Christians believe a day is coming when healing will be complete, a hope explored in what the Bible says happens when you die.
Should Christians see a doctor as well as pray?
Yes. Nothing in the Bible sets prayer against medicine, and plenty points the other way. Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts, is called “our dear friend Luke, the doctor” in Colossians 4:14. The Good Samaritan bandaged the wounded man's injuries and took him to an inn to be cared for. Jesus himself said, “I was sick and you looked after me,” and counted care for the sick as service to him (Matthew 25:36).
So the sensible pattern for a Christian is to pray and to get proper treatment. Pray for the doctor's wisdom, thank God for the nurses, and ask your church to pray with you. Please do not stop medication or skip an appointment because of a prayer service or a message online. If you are not sure what to do, call your GP or use NHS 111, and in an emergency call 999.
Proverbs 17:22 says, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” This describes how deeply mind and body are linked. It is a proverb about wellbeing, and it does not mean that a sick person only needs to cheer up.
Where do Christians differ on healing?
Christians agree that God cares about the sick and that Jesus healed. They differ on what to expect today. Here are the three main emphases, described as their own churches describe them.
Catholic: the Anointing of the Sick is a sacrament administered by a priest. The Catechism says it is “not a sacrament for those only who are at the point of death” and may be received before a serious operation or when frailty increases. Its first effect is “strengthening, peace and courage”, leading to “healing of the soul, but also of the body if such is God's will” (Catechism 1514 and 1520).
Orthodox: Holy Unction is “the sacrament of the spiritual, physical, and mental healing of a sick person whatever the nature or the gravity of the illness may be”. The Orthodox Church in America stresses that it is not the “last rites”, and that “it is not always the will of God that there should be physical healing”.
Church of England and many Protestants: healing services with prayer, laying on of hands and sometimes anointing sit alongside the NHS and hospital chaplaincy. The Church of England's liturgy asks, “Lord, grant your healing grace to all who are sick, injured or disabled, that they may be made whole.” Its theological introduction says that Christians receive God's grace “sometimes in an experience of healing and sometimes through the strength that comes in the bearing of weakness”.
Pentecostal and charismatic churches: these traditions place the strongest emphasis on healing in worship services. In a 2006 Pew Research Center survey of ten countries, large majorities of pentecostals, from 56% in South Korea to 87% in Kenya, said they had personally experienced or witnessed the divine healing of an illness or injury. This is what people reported, and we cannot verify the individual cases.
Pew also found that large majorities of all Christians, renewalist or not, believe miracles still occur today as in ancient times. The survey is from 2006, so read it as a snapshot of belief, not a current count.
If you are visiting a church for healing prayer, you can ask what they do before you go. A good community will welcome your questions, will pray without pressure, and will never ask you to stop treatment.
Which Bible verses help with emotional healing?
Not every wound shows on a scan. Grief, anxiety, burnout and low mood are real illnesses of the heart and mind, and Scripture speaks to them with tenderness.
Psalm 34:18 (NIV): “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” The verse does not say God hurries the sorrow away. It says he comes close. For many people in grief, nearness is the first form healing takes.
Luke 4:18 (NIV): Jesus reads Isaiah in the synagogue and says the Spirit has anointed him to proclaim “recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free”. His mission included lifting what weighs people down as well as curing what is broken.
If you are living with low mood, a long season of worry or thoughts of harming yourself, please talk to your GP, and you can call Samaritans free on 116 123 at any hour. Seeking help is not a lack of faith. You will find a fuller discussion in our posts on the Bible and depression and Bible verses about anxiety.
How can I pray for healing?
There is no magic wording. The psalms show honest, short prayers, and James invites us to pray together. Here is a simple pattern, followed by a prayer you can use as it is or adapt.
Say it plainly. Tell God where it hurts, as David did in Psalm 6.
Ask. Ask for healing, for wisdom for the doctors, and for strength for the day.
Ask others to pray. Tell one trusted friend or your minister, as James 5 suggests.
Give thanks. Name one thing that is good today, even if it is small.
Leave the outcome with God. Pray, as Jesus did, “not my will”, and keep taking your treatment.
A short prayer: Lord, you know my body and you know my heart. I bring you this illness, and the tiredness and fear that come with it. Please heal where you will heal, and strengthen me where I must wait. Guide the doctors and nurses who care for me, and keep me from losing hope. Hold the people who love me. Help me to trust that you are close, and that you will not leave me. Amen.
If you are praying for someone else, a visit, a meal or an hour of practical help is often an answer to prayer in itself. Our guide on how to pray has more help for those who are not sure where to begin.
Free Bible verses on healing PDF
We have made a printable page of ten passages of comfort for anyone facing illness or caring for someone who is. It includes a gentle reminder that prayer sits alongside medical care. It is free, and there is no sign-up. You can also browse the full Free Downloads page.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Bible verse about healing?
Psalm 147:3 is the most loved: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (NIV). For physical illness, many people turn to James 5:14-16, Jeremiah 17:14 and Psalm 103:2-3.
Does the Bible promise that God will heal everyone?
No. The Bible shows God healing many people, but it also shows faithful people who were not healed in this life, such as Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. Christians hold on to the promise of complete healing in the age to come (Revelation 21:4).
Is it wrong for a Christian to take medicine?
No. Luke was a doctor (Colossians 4:14), Paul advised Timothy to take a remedy for his stomach (1 Timothy 5:23), and Jesus said “I was sick and you looked after me” (Matthew 25:36). Christians pray and use medical care together.
What does “by his wounds we are healed” mean?
In Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24 the main meaning is forgiveness and restoration to God through Christ's death. Some Christians also see bodily healing in it, while others believe full bodily healing awaits the resurrection.
Is sickness a punishment for sin?
Not necessarily. In John 9:1-3 Jesus said a man's blindness was not caused by his own or his parents' sin. Sin and suffering are linked in the Bible in a general way, but you should never assume a person's illness is their fault.
What should I say to a sick friend?
Listen first, offer practical help, and pray with them if they want you to. Avoid saying they lack faith or that everything happens for a reason. A short, honest verse such as Psalm 41:3 can comfort when you have few words.
Can I pray for healing if I am not sure I have enough faith?
Yes. The ten men with leprosy simply cried, “Have pity on us!” (Luke 17:13). God invites honest prayers, not perfect ones, and your recovery does not depend on how strong your faith feels.
Key takeaways
The Bible speaks of healing for the body, the heart and our relationship with God, and it points to a final healing still to come.
Psalm 147:3, Exodus 15:26 and Psalm 103:3 describe God as the one who heals.
Jesus healed many but not all, and the Gospels never blame the sick for being ill.
Prayer and medicine belong together. Please keep seeing your GP and following treatment.
Christians differ on how to expect healing today: sacraments, healing services or charismatic prayer.
If you are struggling emotionally, Samaritans are free on 116 123 and your GP can help.
References and further reading
All Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV). Copyright by Biblica, Inc. Used with permission. Explore more Christian guides on jesuslightstudio.com.
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