The laying on of hands (Part 2)

Editorial Comment: Campbell McAlpine was a good Bible teacher from solid Brethren stock. He wrote the little booklet First Principles, which we are serialising today, back in the 1960s. At that time of its publication by PWM Ministries (1992), none of the charismatic phenomena that we saw later in the 1990s had yet been experienced. Today we have a very different view on the laying on of hands. We have therefore carefully revised Campbell’s teaching in line with current biblical scholarship, so that the teaching given below represents that of Prophecy Today UK and Issachar Ministries.

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We have already seen that the laying on of hands is a practice with significance running right through the whole of Scripture. It was not only used to set people apart for certain ministries, but often as human authority was given to them to fulfil their calling or role within an institution. In this second study, we turn to how the laying on of hands can be important (or misused) in blessing, healing, and receiving the Holy Spirit.

Laying on Hands to Bless

It is important to understand that the act of laying on hands is not a magical formula or ritual to obtain automatic blessing – indeed, it can have rather undesirable results, as we will see. It is, however, a public statement: an act of faith to which God responds when done in line with his word. It is God alone who can bless, heal and fill with the Holy Spirit – and yet, in his grace and mercy, he chooses to allow us, his children, to take part in the process of blessing others with our personal faith.

In the Old Testament we read of fathers laying hands on their sons and blessing them. In ancient times, the practice of fathers blessing sons was part of the procedure through which inheritance was formally transferred. This does not mean that they imparted God’s blessing to them – no-one can give God’s blessing to someone! It is only God who can give his blessing.

Isaac blessed his son Jacob, and he was blessed, but this was Isaac’s own personal blessing upon his son, which God then honoured. Jacob in turn blessed each of his sons, and they were blessed, but again, it was not God’s blessing: it was the personal-yet-prophetic blessing of a father to his sons, which the Lord accepted.

What we learn from these examples is that laying on hands to bless is a practice that must be done with God-given authority and in line with God’s will – but that any resultant blessing comes from God. In the same way, the Apostle Paul talks about spiritual gifts and ministries in his letters but makes it clear that it is God who gives these, not people (see Eph 4:11; 1 Cor 12:28).

Laying on hands to bless is a practice that must be done with God-given authority and in line with God’s will - and any resultant blessing comes from God.

A Word of Caution

But passing on evil spirits is another matter. Although we cannot pass on pure things like the Holy Spirit to others by laying on hands, we can pass on evil spirits. The Prophet Haggai spoke to the Temple priests about passing on things from one body to another by touch. He stated emphatically that we cannot pass on holiness to someone else but we can certainly infect them with defilement (Hag 2:10-14).

This is why we should always be careful about who we allow to lay their hands on us – and this is the sad story of the charismatic movement of the 1990s, which was marked by all sorts of spirits being passed on from one to another, with people barking, laughing uncontrollably and falling around like drunkards. This was wrongly attributed to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ Ministry of Blessing

When we read in Matthew 19 of Jesus taking little children and laying his hands on them and blessing them, we are dealing with a different dimension. One thing is sure, these children would have been truly blessed – not least because of Jesus’ direct relationship with the Father.

Jesus said “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”, but he also acknowledged that he could do nothing on his own initiative: he could only do what he saw the Father doing and what he heard from the Father (John 5:19, 8:28) and he always obeyed the Father’s commands (John 15:10). So a blessing from Jesus was a direct blessing from God the Father.

There is also the wonderful story in Revelation 1 where John, on the island of Patmos, had a sight of the glorified Lord Jesus. So overwhelming was that sight, that he “fell at His feet, as though dead.” Then Jesus laid his right hand on him and said, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev 1:17-18). Immediately John was strengthened and enabled to be Jesus’ messenger to the churches in Asia.

A blessing from Jesus was a direct blessing from God the Father.

Healing and the Laying on of Hands

The scriptures give several accounts of people being healed when hands were laid on them. This was evidenced in the ministry of Jesus:

• In Nazareth: “He laid His hands on a few sick people, and healed them” (Mark 6:5).
  
• A blind man: “Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:25).
  
• A disabled woman: “When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity’. Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God” (Luke 13:12-13).
  
• A paralytic man: Jesus said “Friend, your sins are forgiven”. In dealing with this man’s sins before his healing, Jesus demonstrated that he was not just a faith healer. His mission set him apart from the rest of humanity. He was “the word made flesh…who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
  
• After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to the 11 disciples and commissioned them to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”, giving them this promise, “These signs will accompany those who believe. In my name they will drive out demons, they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well” (Mark 16:17-18).
  
• When the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta, he laid hands on the father of the chief citizen of the island who was ill with a fever, and he was healed (Acts 28:8).

The question we have to ask is whether ordinary human beings were given the power to heal by laying on their hands. There is no evidence of this in the New Testament. There are instances of the apostles laying hands upon the sick and praying for them and they were healed. But there is no evidence of healing being transmitted from the well person to the sick person through the laying on of hands. The healing was received in answer to prayer.

So again, we have the laying on of hands being an act of faith, done by those with God-given authority and in line with his word; an act to which God responds with power.

The scriptures give several accounts of people being healed when hands were laid on them.

The Holy Spirit and the Laying on of Hands

When Peter and John went down to Samaria, after hearing of the many who were being saved through the ministry of Philip, they ministered to the new converts and, “they placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:17). When Paul was in Ephesus, it is recorded that after baptising some believers, he “placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (Acts 19:6).

These verses are often misunderstood as meaning that the Holy Spirit was somehow imparted or transferred to the believers through the laying on of hands. But the Greek does not say that. It simply records that ‘this happened, then that happened’ – without any causative interpretation.

In the teaching of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father. Jesus said “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth” (John 14:15). It is essential to understand that we cannot impart or pass on the Holy Spirit to anyone. He is entirely in God’s hands to give or to withhold as he chooses. In the Old Testament, Elisha had to learn this. He asked the dying Elijah for a double portion of his spirit - but Elijah made it clear that it was not his to give (2 Kings 2).

A particular passage that needs careful interpretation is Paul’s advice to Timothy: “Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you” (1 Tim 4:14). It is evident that one day while Timothy and the elders were waiting on the Lord, someone prophesied indicating the ministry the Lord desired Timothy to have. In response to this, the elders laid hands on him.

We can be certain that the elders prayed for him; but what is even more significant in the context of Paul’s words was that the elders recognised the ministry Timothy was to exercise in the ‘ekklesia’ – the scattered congregations around the Empire that made up the Church at that time. The laying on of hands was a sign of this recognition. It was not giving the Holy Spirit or any ministry gifts – Timothy had already received these. The laying on of hands was a sign of their blessing - giving Timothy the authority to go and exercise his ministry gifts amongst the various congregations.

This is what happens today in a service of ordination: the elders (or bishops) of the church lay hands on the ordinands and pray for them. Through this act they are not imparting any spiritual blessing upon him or her, but from their position of authority, they recognise the ministry to which the ordinand has been called by God. This recognition gives authority to the ordinand to exercise ministry within the organisation of the church in accordance with its rules. It does not confer blessing or spiritual gifts – it confers institutional authority.

The laying on of hands is an act of faith, to which God responds with power.

Impartation

The whole subject of ‘impartation’ has caused much division and confusion in churches in recent history. In the 1990s there were men who went around laying hands on people and causing them to behave strangely. One man even called himself a ‘Holy Spirit Bartender’ because when he touched people they behaved like drunkards. Clearly, the spirit he was passing on to others was not the Holy Spirit!

We believe that a true interpretation of biblical teaching on this subject is that we human beings can pass on evil spirits, but we cannot pass on the Holy Spirit or any of the spiritual gifts of God by laying hands on people. These gifts are entirely God’s to give.

This does not mean, however, that we shouldn’t lay on hands! It is undoubtedly a practice that God has ordained and to which he responds, when done in accordance with his word and will. As we have seen, laying on hands is an outward act of faith which can be used in certain circumstances to give a personal blessing, or as part of praying for healing or petitioning the Lord to pour out his Holy Spirit.

It is a lack of sound biblical teaching and interpretation of Scripture that has caused so much confusion about this issue in recent years. Further teaching can be found in the book ‘Blessing the Church?’ which we serialised on Prophecy Today earlier this year. The book, written in 1995, is currently out of print but may be digitalised by Issachar Ministries in the near future.