Charismatic Prophetess, wife of Kenneth Copeland, claims that the Holy Spirit will provide you with flu immunity. Gloria Copeland, who previously claimed her husband could control the weather, said that Christians don’t have a flu season.
Copeland, misapplying Isaiah 53, claims that Jesus bore the flu for us on the cross. This is a common claim of charismatics, and this passage is used to claim that healing is provided for in the atonement. She says, “Jesus bore our sicknesses and diseases.”
Isaiah 53:4-5 reads…
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
Of this, the commentator, John Gill (predecessor to Spurgeon at the London Metropolitan Tabernacle) writes:
Though it is a certain and undoubted truth, that Christ not only assumed a true human nature, capable of sorrow and grief, but he took all the natural sinless infirmities of it; or his human nature was subject to such, as hunger, thirst, weariness; and to all the sorrow and pain arising from them; the same sorrows and griefs he was liable to as we are, and therefore called ours and hence he had a sympathy with men under affliction and trouble; and, to show his sympathizing spirit, he healed all sorts of bodily diseases; and also, to show his power, he healed the diseases of the soul, by bearing the sins of his people, and making satisfaction for them; since he that could do the one could do the other; wherefore the evangelist applies this passage to the healing of bodily diseases, (Matthew 8:17 ) , though the principal meaning of the words may be, that all the sorrows and griefs which Christ bore were not for any sins of his own, but for the sins of his people; wherefore these griefs and sorrows signify the punishment of sin, and are put for sins, the cause of them and so the apostle interprets them of Christ’s bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, ( 1 Peter 2:24 ), and the Septuagint and Arabic versions render the words here, “he bears our sins;” and the Targum is,
“wherefore he will entreat for our sins;”these being laid upon him, as is afterwards said, were bore by him as the surety of his people; and satisfaction being made for them by his sufferings and death, they are carried and taken away, never to be seen any more.
Copeland might also have intended to cite Matthew 8:17, which says, “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and bore our diseases’.” This is a citation from Matthew that paraphrases the aforementioned verse from Isaiah.
Again, Gill explains that this is a reference to Christ bearing our sins upon the cross, which is the source of all disease – not that Christ literally took upon himself the disease itself, or that the atonement provides physical healing in and of itself.
While the flu vaccine may or may not be effective, we would highly recommend you not use the Holy Spirit for influenza immunity.
