BY GREG CRUM
“And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Genesis 2:15-17
We read in Genesis that because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, sin opened the door for death to have a place in this world. From that day until now, death and his associates—sickness, disease, lack—have flexed their muscles in every human life at one time or another. Adam and Eve’s sin did much more than just get them kicked out of Eden. It opened the door for sickness and disease to enter the world God had made perfect.
You see, sickness and disease should have never been on this planet. They’re invaders in that sense, foreign agents if you will. They are not a part of God’s original plan or design for mankind. Sickness isn’t an act of God, but rather the repercussions of the actions of man. John Alexander Dowie put it this way, “Sickness and disease are the foul offspring of their father Satan and their mother sin.” Seems about right to me. Sickness, disease, and injury are henchmen of death. These aren’t just a part of God’s scientific world, works of Creation or “gifts” and “lessons” given by God’s hand. Sickness is a curse of the Fall of man, and as such, a sin issue, not a biological issue, at its root. The good news for us, if we will believe it, is that all the Fall caused has been resolved by the Cross!
Now, let’s think for a few moments about the original source of sickness, and begin to look at this issue from God’s perspective. Do you realize that not every generation or group of people has looked at sickness and disease in the same light? Some people of the past have looked at it from a much more enlightened perspective—particularly the Jews of the Old Covenant. In the ancient Jewish mind, sickness was directly and in every case a result of sin. To those people living in that time, if you were sick, it was because you had sinned before God. Sickness wasn’t a germ problem or an issue with the mixture of chemicals in your body. It was a sin problem. The only way you could be sick was if you failed to follow God’s law.
Where did they get this idea from? Their Scriptures! In Exodus 15:23-26 and Deuteronomy 7:12-15 the people of Israel were told that if they would listen to the Lord and follow His commandments that He would keep them from the ill effects of sickness and disease. To the Jewish mind, if you followed God’s commandments closely, you couldn’t get sick. If you were in covenant with God and your sins were atoned for, you were also free from the harm of sickness and disease.
Fast forward to the Gospels and you can see this same mindset alive in the early followers of Jesus. Remember in John 9:1-7 how they questioned Jesus about the “man which was blind from his birth”? They didn’t ask Jesus what kind of accident he was in, or what kind of germ or virus caused his condition, rather they asked who sinned, he or his parents. Jesus did correct their thinking in this instance, but in John 5:6-16 Jesus himself recognized sin as a source of sickness when he told a man he had recently healed to “sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”
The point? People of old, who were in direct connection to the Creator of the Universe and the maker of our bodies, understood sickness to be a sin problem. Don’t you think it would benefit us to share this enlightened perspective as well? Perhaps if we did, we would recognize the cure for our symptoms more clearly and receive from God more readily in this area of our lives.
Greg Crum is the pastor of Calvary Temple in Lovely.