DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY ...

THAT PERSONAL SIN RESULTS IN PHYSICAL SUFFERING?

Often the question is raised: what have I done to deserve this? Why is this happening to me?

Sickness. Accident. Financial difficulty. Suffering of any kind. Popular theology either teaches or assumes that all of these are God’s punishment on personal sin, and sends some Christians into rapid self-assessment mode. An agony of guilt and self-negation grips them, an agony which is intensified if they can’t identify any sin significant enough to have attracted such a punishment.

In such instances several important truths have been ignored:

[1] Sin is always present in us (1John 1:8,10).

[2] The Christian continues to suffer with the suffering of the whole world, waiting eagerly for release from physical suffering when Christ returns (Romans 8:18-25).

[3] Just as the Old Testament physical symbols point to New Testament spiritual realities, so the Old Testament promises of physical blessings are symbolic of New Testament spiritual blessings. This is a point which many teachers overlook.

[4] Job experienced every kind of human suffering, not because of his sin, but because of his faith (Job 1 & 2); but his accusers were locked into a tit-for-tat understanding of God’s relationship with man. Their understanding of how God governed the world - that he sent long life and prosperity to those who did good and suffering to those who did evil – allowed them no choice but to conclude that Job was suffering so terribly because of some gross hidden sin. Their assumptions and conclusions about what God was doing with Job completely missed the mark, incurring God’s anger and rebuke (Job 42:7).

[5] That God sends his rain and his sunshine on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).

[6] That God has clearly told us that it is not until the ‘new heavens and new earth' that suffering will be no more – Revelation 21:4.

[7] Importantly, Jesus Christ bore all the punishment due to our sins – there is no condemnation left for us to bear – John 5:24; Romans 8:1-4; 1Peter 2:24. Those who are united to Christ by faith have been justified, that is, acquitted, declared ‘not guilty’ – Romans 3:19 – 24; 5:1, even though they are still sinners – Romans 4:5.

Even the disciples assumed that sin caused the removal or absence of physical ‘blessings’. Confronted by a man born blind they asked Jesus: ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ (John 9:2) and, in Luke 13:1-5, Jesus found it necessary to point out that those who suffered and died in a couple of current disasters were no more sinful than everybody else.

The Christian who says of his sickness, accident or poverty, ‘God is punishing me for my sin’ has failed to remember that God no longer sees him/her as an isolated individual. God sees the Christian believer as someone who is united to Christ, someone who is in Christ.

I was told some years ago of a pastor’s mother who for twenty years had been suffering an incurable illness. For those same twenty years she has been pleaded with God to reveal to her the hidden sin that she assumed, because of what her church had taught her, was the cause of this illness.

How incredibly sad!

What a torturous corruption of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! What a denial of the completeness of the salvation he gives us! What a failure to understand the gospel that promises us in Christ a ‘righteousness’ – a declaration of innocence – that is from God and apart from works.

Sadly this idea that our suffering is because of our personal sin is devastatingly common. We cannot delude ourselves into apathy and see this as confined to Pentecostal and Charismatic sections of the church; it is far broader than that, affecting the lives of Christians across a broad spectrum of denominations, including conservative evangelical churches.

Let us each repent of such a denial of the grand and glorious salvation we have because of Christ and his death.