1 Pet. 2:24; 1 Cor. 11:30
Various parts of the Christian Church have focused on various aspects of salvation over the centuries. Various metaphors have been used to describe sin and its effects, and what God has done to save us from it. Last time, we looked at the most typical Western view, that sin is a crime against God, and we are all like criminals facing judgment. What we need desperately is to be saved in a forensic sense, to be freed from our guilt, forgiven of a crime we’ve committed. That’s important, but it’s not enough. Because if we just look at salvation as a forensic thing, then once our record is expunged, we think that’s all there is to it. But being a forgiven criminal doesn’t tend to make us feel we’re in a personal relationship with the Judge, does it? And it doesn’t do much in terms of changing our behavior, our attitudes, feelings, our relationships with others. No, forensic salvation is good, but it’s only one aspect, one phase of what God has for us. There’s more to it, more that we need to understand.
For example, sin is a crime, but it’s not only like a crime. It’s also like a deadly disease with which all mankind is afflicted. We might easily compare it with leprosy or the Bubonic Plague. In the ancient world, leprosy was a highly contagious disease which caused victim’s nerve endings to no longer transmit signals of pain or bodily damage to the brain. A person could burn themselves on hot coals or cut themselves walking on broken glass and not feel it. Their flesh would practically rot away, right on their bodies. This disease was so horrifying and contagious that lepers were driven out of communities and forced to live outside of town in caves or abandoned properties, forests, etc. Whenever healthy people came around, lepers were required to shout “unclean, unclean” to keep them away from the contagion. Getting near or touching a leper could easily convey the disease from one person to another, so the only answer was to isolate the diseased people and keep them from the healthy.
The Bubonic Plague was a disease carried by the fleas who lived on shipborne rats. It was brought from the Middle East into Europe on ships and sailors, many of whom didn’t even know they had the disease when they first disembarked from their ships. Plague spread across all of Europe, wiping out to of the entire population! It was a terrifying thing people feared and tried to flee, but couldn’t cure or eliminate.
There are so many parallels between sin and disease. Both attack the body and indirectly, the family, relationships, the mind, the emotions, every part of a human person. Disease brings suffering, weakness, and death. It limits what a person can do, because a sick person generally cannot enjoy life, cannot work or be active, or interact with others. A sick person misses out on the joy of life, and can get to a place where they even despair of life. Disease destroys the parts of the body it afflicts. It limits function or stops it altogether. Disease also spreads, usually very quickly. Did you ever consider the fact that health doesn’t spread, but sickness does? A healthy person can’t walk into a hospital and just pass by sick people and make them well. But a very sick person could simply walk among healthy people and contaminate them all without anyone even realizing it till later.
Human sin is like disease in many ways, though it’s different too. It is something which easily afflicts us, which is easily transmitted and contagious. A few people who practice sin among us can quickly and easily contaminate others and get them to practice it as well. Witness how drug use spread so quickly among us in the 60s and 70s and continues to this day. Witness how sexual sins have become more and more accepted and commonplace. Only a small percentage of people lived together in the 50s. But that changed drastically, beginning in the 60s, and has now become the norm, not the exception. Homosexuality and transgenderism were hardly thought of or mentioned decades ago, but today, it’s amazing how many celebrities and politicians, not to mention people of every other walk of life are openly gay, transgender, etc. It has spread and become accepted. Notice how quickly racism and racial anger can be stirred up. It can appear to be rather dormant for decades, but certain circumstances can cause it to suddenly it flare up like a contagious disease. It’s very easy to get humans to lust or to get angry, or to indulge in too much alcohol or to experiment with drugs. Pornography used to be something only a few on the fringes of society would consume, but today, it’s a billion dollar enterprise, prevalent in every hotel and on the internet. Violence can easily be stirred up and spread too.
What does the “disease” of sin do to people? Look at alcoholism. It destroys the liver, the brain, and many other parts of the body. What does lust do? It drives people to do things they’re ashamed of, things they get into trouble for, things that harm their marriages and other relationships. (How many politicians have been disgraced by it? Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner? What about the film mogul Harvey Weinstein?) Look at all the addictive behaviors in the world, gambling, for example. It comes over a person and causes them to do things that are destructive. It weakens their resolve, breaks down their commitments and relationships, destroys their financial prosperity, just as a chronic sickness would. We could say the same about greed, hatred, selfishness, laziness, or any other sin.
Our bodies, because they were designed by a wise and loving God, have their own immune systems, to fight against infections and to restore us when we’re sick. But even when we have a healthy immune system, some diseases still get through our natural defenses, and we can’t overcome them without help from outside. We sometimes need antibiotics to attack and destroy an infection in a way our natural immune system simply cannot do. Some of the worst diseases of all, such as AIDS, actually destroy our immune systems, so that we are defenseless against other diseases that can kill us.
Sin is a disease we all have, that is just too powerful for us. It’s completely incurable by human efforts or methods. We need outside help. We need healing that can overpower and drive out the infection of sin. We need our immune systems to be strengthened. In the Gospel, we find that Jesus is the Healer we need. Scripture tells us “by His stripes we are healed” (Is. 53:5; 1 Pet. 2:24), and in context, that verse is primarily talking about healing from sin. The original verse, in Isaiah, says that Jesus, God’s Suffering Servant, took up our infirmities or sicknesses. In a very real sense, He took them upon Himself on the cross.
Have you ever thought about how much physical healing Jesus brought about during His earthly ministry? He became famous because of all the miraculous cures He performed. In those days, the practice of medicine was far less advanced than in our day. Almost everybody was either sick themselves or had a loved one or a friend who was suffering some affliction. Life expectancy was only 20-30 years, and about half of babies born died and many mothers died in childbirth. Think of what a huge percentage of our lives and finances today are still taken up with health, healing, hospitals, assisted living centers, clinics, doctors, nurses, medicines, pharmacies, insurance, etc. Even in our modern times, in the 21st century, we still need healing constantly. How much more so in the first century!
Jesus demonstrated that He had the power to heal the physical body of any sort of affliction or disease. It didn’t matter what – leprosy, fevers, deformity, blindness, deafness, paralysis, being hunched over, epilepsy, even mental disorders, every sort of infirmity or disease could be healed by the Son of God! And it’s interesting how often sin and sickness were seen as connected in some way. His disciples asked who sinned to cause a man to be born blind (Jn. 9:1), and in that case, Jesus said no one. But such thinking was very common. In one case, Jesus told a man directly to go and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon him (Jn. 5:14). God struck Miriam, Moses’ sister, and Uzziah, king of Judah with leprosy immediately for their sins, and brought venomous snakes to bite the Israelites when they complained against Him (Nu. 12:10; 2 Ki. 15:5; Nu. 21:6). Snakebite is similar to sickness, being the injection of a venom into the body. There was a very clear case in which Jesus told a man brought to Him for healing that his sins were forgiven before pronouncing him healed (Matt. 9). Jesus used that particular case to very specifically teach that He was the One who could both forgive sins and heal disease. James tells us that we should pray for one another, that our sins might be forgiven, and that if we are sick, we should call for the elders of the church to pray for our healing, and adds, if we have committed sins, they will be forgiven (Ja. 5:14-16). So it’s obvious that sin is often intimately connected with sickness and is likened to a sickness. But the wonderful news is that Jesus cures both sin and sickness!
Related to this is the issue of what the Medieval saints called “disordered loves.” Sin is a sickness, but it’s also something which throws our affections and loves into disorder or disarray. When we sin, it distorts our affections so that we end up loving our sin, and overcome with the “fever” of disordered love. We were meant to love God and others, but sin causes us to love the wrong things. We love what we should hate! We love things that destroy us! Our love becomes out of order and we became inflamed with this disordered love. We love the wrong things and we cling to and pursue them instead of what is best for us. We are sick and unable to overcome our disease. There’s an infection in us that’s just too strong for us. We may have battled it for years, but we’ve never been able to change and overcome it. That’s why we need to cry out for Jesus to come to us and heal our disease of sin. Only He can drive out the infection, restore our self to divine order, and empower our spiritual “immune system.” Only His Spirit reorders or reorients our lives and our loves.
Think about this. When we’re born again, our inner self is so transformed that we often no longer even want to do the sinful things we used to delight in. We’re also given what’s called the armor of righteousness, so that we can defend our minds and hearts from the disease of sin. A healthy body can resist contagion, but a sick body is just bowled over by it. That’s why salvation is like health. It’s the power of God within us to resist and drive out evil desires and their evil effects upon our conscience, our emotions, and our lives in general. So sin is a crime that brings guilt, and salvation is deliverance from that guilt and pardon of that crime. But sin is also a disease that weakens and kills us. And it is something that wreaks havoc on our affections, so that we end up loving what we should hate, and we sort of know that, but can’t do anything about it! In the Gospel we find that Jesus brings healing from the disease of sin, and a reordering of our affections, so that we begin to love what is good and right, instead of what is destructive and sick.
But what must we do to receive this healing? We always have a response, a part to play. The first thing is to recognize and admit that we’re sick, and that it’s serious. That’s not always easy to do. Some people won’t go to a doctor for anything. They’re so stubborn! They say, I’ll get over it, or it’s not that bad, or everybody’s sick like this, or you just have to accept sickness as a part of life. As long as we make excuses and refuse to seek treatment, we won’t find healing. We have to admit we’re sick, and it’s really bad, it’s really harming us.
The next step is to go to Jesus as the Great Physician. By His stripes, we are healed. Often, sick people came to Jesus for healing or restoration and He would ask them, Do you believe I can do this? Faith is always so important! Do we believe Jesus can heal what’s wrong with us? There are plenty of testimonies in the Bible and in modern times of people “healed” from every sort of manifestation of the disease of sin. Gamblers, druggies, alcoholics, porn addicts, prostitutes or homosexuals, people filled with hate or bitterness or lust or jealousy or greed can tell you Jesus has changed them. Now, none of them were so healed they became perfect in this life, or could never backslide. Some will tell you about people who claimed to be “healed” but later fell back. That’s okay. It’s true. We don’t deny it. But most of us have had sicknesses we got over, that later came on us again too. Does that mean we weren’t healed of them? We have to come to Jesus, believing He can heal our sickness of sin. He can forgive us, cleanse us, and change our inner motivations so we don’t want what we used to so desperately want.
Sometimes (usually) a doctor also prescribes medicine for healing. He/she tells us to rest, not eat this, do eat that, take this three times a day, etc. Jesus heals us of the disease of sin, but He also prescribes “medicine.” For example, if your disease is alcoholism or drugs or pornography, or a sexual addiction or perversion, you might need to receive Jesus, but also go to AA or Celebrate Recovery. Why? Because that’s the kind of medicine those kinds of sicknesses require. You won’t be healed completely without ongoing “treatment” of interaction with other believers, accountability, and ongoing discipleship. If you think you don’t need those things, you’re refusing God’s medicine for healing! Ongoing discipleship is the prescription for ongoing healing or salvation!
Someday, all vestiges of sickness and sin will be forever erased. That will be our inheritance, our new life in Christ. But thank God, we don’t have to just wait for “someday.” We can receive healing now and begin to walk in that new healthiness Jesus can work within us. I want to urge you to recognize the disease of sin and come to the only One who can heal it, the Lord Jesus. And I also want to remind you that to continue in divine health, we need to continue in a life of discipleship, a relationship of faith with our God.