Franklin Graham drew the ire of the press when in a recent interview he tied the coronavirus to the sin of mankind. We have to be careful that we don’t put words in his mouth. He did not point to a specific sin as causing the disease, but he highlighted that sickness and death, and yea, even COVID-19, are in the world because of sin generally, because of man’s rebellion against God (Romans 3:623a). That's what he said.
Which then begs the question: what can I know specifically about God and such plagues from the Bible? Is COVID-19 a judgment upon the world?
In the past, a few pastors have grabbed the limelight by linking natural disasters to God’s specific judgment of the sin of particular groups of people or of specific individuals. The problem with such positions and such assertions is that they cannot be supported from God’s word to mankind, the Bible.
In wanting to distance ourselves from such heartless heresies, we’ve gone to the other extreme and often said nothing about God’s certain judgment against sin. The media carries on about the worst pandemic in a century as though God has no part of it and has nothing to say about it.
Both positions miss the clear teaching of the Bible.
WHAT I CAN’T SAY
Dirty Harry famously declared, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Nowhere is that more important than when we look to see what God has declared to us in the Bible. I must discern not only what does it say but what doesn’t it say.
WE CAN’T KNOW IF THE PANDEMIC WAS CAUSED BY SIN
In John 9, the disciples are with Jesus, and as they pass a blind beggar, the disciples are curious about whose sin brought about the man’s blindness: his own or his parents’. Two things to note about the disciples question. First, the disciples recognize the sin of the man from his birth. God’s word makes plain that there is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10b) and that inherent sin nature within each person begins at conception (Psalm 51:5). None is born righteous. Each of us is born in sin. Second, the disciples understand that without even knowing them that the parents are sinners, too. Little within sociology can begin to refute the sinfulness of each person, that each one does not uphold God’s perfect standard of holiness.
Notice, too, that in John 9, Jesus doesn’t correct the disciples implications about the sinfulness of the three people in question. In John 8:11 he didn’t deny the sin of the woman caught in adultery either. Almighty God alone understands the magnitude of each one’s sin which is why a sacrifice of the magnitude of the death of the Son of God was required to pay such a penalty for all humanity. We are all steeped in and saturated with our sin.
A brief rabbit trail. While it wasn’t the specific sin of the man or his parents that brought about his blindness, we do recognize that such a condition is traceable to the brokenness of the world that was brought about by the sin of Adam and Eve. What we call natural evil (i.e. blindness, deafness, earthquakes, tsunamis, famine, and pestilence)—all have their root in the original sin of mankind. Death (Genesis 2:17, 3:19) entered the cosmos not as a natural mechanism but as a result of man’s treason against God. With that sentence of death came the decay that accompanies it, both within man himself and within the world created for him (Romans 8:19-22). As such, all sin, all disease, all natural evil within the cosmos can be traced back to the rebellion of man against his Creator. That was Franklin Graham’s point.
I CAN’T KNOW SPECIFICALLY WHY DISASTERS COME
This passage in John 9 isn’t the only time in the Bible that Jesus highlights that we cannot know God’s intention behind a terrible situation. In Luke 13:1-6, Jesus is confronted by some about Pilate’s atrocity of mixing the blood of some Galileans with his sacrifices. When Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?” he highlighted their implication within the question, that is that they suffered this fate because they were worse sinners.
It’s natural, gut-level response. We think that because something terrible has happened to someone, it is because they have done something terrible. We have let the idea of karma within eastern religions infect our thinking. One need only look to the cross of Christ to understand that the only holy Man to walk the planet, the One in which no sin dwelt, Jesus of Nazareth, received not what he deserved but what all of humanity deserved in total.
He dispels their faulty thinking in four words: “No, I tell you…”
As we look to bad things happening in the world, as we look to the wildfire spread of COVID-19 across the globe, no one can point an indicting finger and declare that anyone’s particular sin is the ultimate cause. Prophets of old with God’s divine authority brought such declarations and the coming judgments against specific nations were born out in the days that followed. Or by God’s authority upon his special revelation to them, they (alone) could declare the reason of a cataclysm as God’s specific judgment upon specific sin.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had such a prophet.
WHAT GOD’S WORD DOES SAY
Jesus Christ absolved the man born blind, the Galilean martyrs, and the eighteen who died when Siloam’s tower collapsed of being causal behind the particular evil, but as we already noted, he did not absolve them of sin. That is what Jesus wanted to drive home in the current events lesson of Luke 13. When he said, “No, I tell you” in answer to whether or not it was the Galileans sin, he continued, “but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). He might just as well have slapped each one in the face. In case they missed it, he repeated the lesson when he brought to their mind the eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam collapsed, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5)
Jesus Christ, God the Son, was (then) and is (now) issuing a wakeup call. And he suggests that it is the darkness and disaster in the world that should snap us out of our complacency.
We, each one, stands in rebellion against God. None righteous. No, not one (Romans 3:10). The Romans 3 passage continues with more troubling detail than an MRI, “no one understands. No one seeks after God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless…there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10-18). No sin-stained soul can make a case for themselves against the blistering holiness, goodness, and righteousness of God. And God is warning us.
To think that we can make a case for ourselves before God only seals our condemnation (Luke 18:10-14).
This condemnation is not merely a physical death but an eternal spiritual death separated from God and in eternal punishment (Matthew 10:28, 25:41).
Well, then what hope do we have? Heed what Jesus said in Luke 13. Man must repent before God. It was the sermon of John the Baptist as he prepared the way for the Lord (Matthew 3:3ff). It was the first message of Jesus Christ to the masses when he started his earthly ministry at age 30 (Matthew 4:17). If we cannot fathom that our relationship with God is amiss and a mess in the first place, our relationship with God can never be made right.
When disasters strike, the news feeds will be filled with the question, “Why?” Why did this happen? Who is at fault? Who is to blame? Is it greenhouse emissions? Or is it greenback greed? Jesus shakes his head. Sin has brought these things into the world. Yes, they are a result of sin, but whether it is a particular man’s sin, we cannot know. That is the purview of God.
What we can know is that the obvious consequence of a broken world must slap us with the realization that the world and everyone in it stand condemned before God’s righteous judgment. And we must turn to God. Repentance is serious business. I must recognize God alone is holy. I must recognize I am not, and that I have been a rebel from the womb. In truth, I come to God with nothing to offer. Like the tax collector in Luke 18, I can only beat my chest and beg that God have mercy upon me, a sinner.
This is not an act whereupon receiving God’s mercy and forgiveness, the man then returns to the place of his debauchery and deceits. Repeating the Shammah five times didn’t release him to go back to adulteries and assaults. Like Zacchaeus the tax collector, he goes and makes things right, never to return to his treacherous practices. Half his wealth to the poor. He returned four times that which he stole. This is a man who was truly changed.
But how does this change come?
THE GLORY OF GOD AMID DISASTER
In John 9:3, Jesus gave an amazing reason behind the nightmare of the man’s blindness. No, it wasn’t the sin of the man or his parents, “but,” Jesus said, “that the works of God might be displayed in him.” The entire chapter is an extraordinary story of blindness. The disciples. The people. The parents. The Pharisees. None seeing the reality. And at the end of the story, the only one who “sees” clearly apart from Jesus is the one blind who was physically blind at the start.
The amazing work of God is not physical sight—though that is not to be dismissed as a small thing—but the spiritual sight. Throughout the story, the man testifies to this one who healed him. He recognized the truth of this man, that he must be from God. A prophet?
At the end of the chapter, Jesus asks him if he believes in “the Son of Man,” a phrase that Jews of that day would understand to be the Messiah, the Savior of the world. The man asks Jesus in utter sincerity, “Who is he?” When Jesus reveals himself as the Son of Man, the man-once-blind said, “Lord, I believe,” and John tells us that the man worshipped Jesus (9:38).
Here is God glorified. When he is worshipped for who he is. When man understands his wretchedness through the miraculous touch of God, and upon hearing what God has done for him, he explodes in love and worship for God, God is glorified. Man finds his delight and his satisfaction in the One who created him.
COVID-19
None of this dismisses nor diminishes the darkness of disaster and death. Again, the price paid on the cross by Jesus Christ only magnifies the gravity and grotesque severity of the problem.
But God’s word does point us to the truth that even in the middle of suffering, God calls his creature, each one, to consider where they stand before him. And he does it not that we be overwhelmed in a guilt trip, but that we would reach out to the priceless provision he made on our behalf. “Jesus paid it all,” the song declares, and more than that, the Bible declares it (John 3:16, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Colossians 2:13-14).
Why is COVID-19 ravaging the world? I don’t know specifically; the Bible does not say. But God does make plain to us that such situations are wake-up calls for us even today. Now is not the time for us to hit snooze but to respond to his call.
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