Sickness 685
delivering this man’s flesh (not his life) to Satan; he was to be sick
but was not to die.
Paul further wrote that those in the church at Corinth who ate and
drank of the bread and the cup of the Lord without discerning the
Lord’s body had become weak and ill and some even had died (1
Cor. 11.29-30). This reveals that disobedience to the Lord was the
provocation for their sickness.
The Scriptures have served sufficient notice that many (but not
all) are ill because of sin. Hence the first action we must take when
sick is to examine ourselves to determine whether or not we have
sinned against God. By searching, many find that their illness is in
fact due to sin: on a particular occasion they had rebelled against
God or had disobeyed His Word. They had gone astray. Just as soon
as that particular sin is found out and confessed, however, the
sickness will be over. Countless brothers and sisters in the Lord have
encountered such experiences. Shortly after the cause is discovered
before God the illness is gone. This is a phenomenon beyond the
explanation of medical science.
Sickness does not necessarily issue from sin, yet much of it
actually does. We acknowledge that many diseases have their natural
causes, but we equally maintain that we cannot attribute all sickness
to natural reasons.
I am reminded of one brother, a professor in a medical school,
who once lectured his students as follows. We have isolated many
natural explanations for illnesses. For instance, a certain type of
coccus causes a particular kind of disease. As medical doctors, he
continued, we can determine which type of organism produces what
kind of disease, but we have no way to explain why among certain
equally exposed people some are infected while others remain
immune. Suppose, for example, ten persons enter the same room
simultaneously and are exposed to the same type of coccus. We