Sickness
THE wise man of our age, who is ever yet as over-bold and proud, as the “wise of the world” in the days of St. Paul, simply refuses to have any knowledge of a relation between “sin” and “death.”
Dying, he declares, is a necessity of nature. Death is the toll which each of us has to pay to Fate. Everything comes and goes, appears to disappear. Constant change of matter is the law, which governs all existence, and solely and alone because man is under this law, he must die.
And yet, however flippantly one may say this after the other, in the conscience of the nations a holier perception continues to protest against this lie.
No, death is not natural. Dying goes against the nature and the inclination of our being. And though he who fears God, in dying will humbly bow the head, yea, though one who loves his Savior, can even long to depart, yet the transition itself remains something appalling. The valley of the shadow of death is ever something somber and dark. He who is Christ’s may once heroically and jubilantly triumph over death, but even in that triumph death is his enemy, whom he holds down as he sings and offers praise.
Scripture declares it so definitely and strikingly: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
And this solemn word: “death is our enemy,” finds an echo in our heart for the reason that in most cases by far dying is introduced by sickness or illness, and that at least with a somewhat alarming sickness, it is so keenly felt by the patient, and by those who stand around his sickbed, that in this attack upon more than his body, it is not a natural process, but a disturbance of his natural existence that takes place, the entering into him of a power from without, which aims at his very life.
Especially the fact, that not all suffer sickness, excludes so positively from sickness every idea of necessity of nature.
In death we have to do with a suffering that early or late comes upon all, but sickness overtakes one to spare the other.
There are sick people, who almost all their lifelong must bear the trouble of illness, but over against these unfortunates stand those vigorous constitutions, who until death never lie on a sickbed. And it is this inequality of lot, which at the time of sickness at least puts the enthusiast of natural law to silence.
Sickness can never have been intended of God in His creation.
Illness must, outside of God’s original plan, find its cause in sin.
Hear what prophecy testifies of the holy city in which there shall be no more sin.
Because there shall be no sin there, therefore there shall no inhabitant any more say: I am sick, for, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, the people that dwell therein, shall be forgiven their iniquity (Is. 33, 24).
“SICKNESS” and “death,” however closely allied, are therefore clearly distinguished in this, that death is the portion of all, sickness only of some.
This is especially evident, when we take “sickness” in its widest range, and thus understand by it not alone tubercular cases, cancer patients, etc., but also blind and deaf.
Almost every one sees and hears, and only a very small minority are sorely afflicted, to be deprived of sight or hearing, the latter frequently aggravated by dumbness. Were our love strong enough, the thought of the deprivation and suffering of these bereft ones would embitter our own life. For no words can express what a deaf person misses and a blind person goes without. Misses and is deprived of not merely for a short time or for a few months, but year in and year out until death.
And though the more real sicknesses cover a far broader domain, yet you see, that real great sickness is no rule, but much rather the exception. Less so in our civilized lands, where health is impaired, but very positively among the more distant nations, among mountaineers, and in part even in the country. There small indispositions may occur, but for the rest serious sickness is seldom seen.
Unequal also in this respect is the division. The angel of sickness passes one by and prostrates the other. Something that is specially evident with diseases that are hereditary in families. Then two families live side by side, in one every rising generation has the glow of health in the face and in the other children are almost born with the mark of death upon the countenance.
What applies to the blind and deaf really applies to all sickness, even in epidemics: Sickness is not the lot of all. It prostrates one and leaves the other unharmed.
And He Who here makes dead and alive, or if you will, makes sick and conserves health, Who is He but the Lord, Who also in this respect doeth with the children of men according to His good pleasure?
NOT man by sin, but God’s sovereign good pleasure alone, determines what generations, families and persons are and are not visited with these diseases.
We would even remain true to Scripture, if we were to include plagues; for of Jehoram it is told in 2 Chron. 21, 18: “And after all this the Lord plagued him with a disease, that was incurable.”
It is not a few guilty ones in the midst of saints, who are smitten with disease, while saints are prospered with health and strength.
One rather sees, on the contrary, in many instances that sinners, who defy the Lord, are as the Psalmist says in Ps. 73, 5: “not in trouble as other men”; and who has not frequently found among blind and sick people gentle pious souls, who made no show of the mark of their election, but who unconsciously exhibited the same.
Also in this respect it ever was and will be: the suffering servant of God.
All sickness is because of sin. Without sin no sickness would be thinkable. But the guilt is from Adam, is the portion of all, belongs to our race as such. And where God can smite all, it is His grace, and nothing but His grace, that spares the thousands to chastise with His plagues merely the hundreds.
No one of us has for so much as one day of his life a claim to health.
To be sick and to languish away till death is the lot we have all deserved. And when in mercy God the Lord spares most of us this bitter suffering of sickness, to lay low but a few of us, should these few murmur that they do not go out free?
Do they ever bear anything else than what fully as much as others they have deserved? May not God the Lord bring upon them what is ever yet less than their righteous punishment? Yea, would not these few, if they feared God, in the midst of their suffering be refreshed by the love of God that spared others?
Does not this sparing of others waft toward them also the fragrance of God’s love? If all were laid low, where would be the ministering love, the heart that brings comfort? And if this sparing of others is a means in the hand of God, to mitigate their suffering and to refresh their soul by love, confess, should not then also amidst bitterest suffering praise and thanksgiving ascend from the heart of God’s sick child for this tender disposing love of God?
SO glistens high and glorious also here the appointment of God’s ways, provided they who are in health do not begin to say: Because God brought this affliction upon you, therefore you are the sinner.
The sufferer himself will confess this in quietness to his own soul and to his God. For every serious sickness is a call to give account. And he who in his sickness feels the aftermath of the guilt of Adam, the guilt of the sin of his whole race, recognizes on this very account not least the personal investigation wherewith the Lord comes to his soul.
What Jesus said to the impotent man (St. John 5, 14), “Go, sin no more,” finds its echo with every child of God that feels the waves of sickness and weakness go over his head.
Yet this is and ever will be the personal transaction between God and his heart. What concerns all is the grace of God, which in not smiting all, but only a few, where all are guilty, becomes evident.
For now there discloses itself in this wondrous sickness a mystery, whereby our Father, Who is in heaven, quickens from all sides the moral, holy powers of life to the honor of His Name.
It is true that in his sinful pursuits man can make even sickness end in spiritual evil, and that by no means all sickness works out blessing.
But this does not take away the fact, that from its nature sickness is disposed to make small what was too high, to turn self-confidence into confidence in God, to place our own work and God’s work in more accurate proportions before the eye of our faith, and no less to awaken the pity and compassion of others, the love and sympathy of many, to rouse into action what lay slumbering in the brother-heart, yea, above all, along these ways to make great and glorious the Name of that Knower and Operator of hearts, Who through the dark cloud of suffering makes to shine forth so sunnily and cherishingly the glow of His holy compassion.
To which is added, that when it pleases Him, God the Lord sends out the spirit of prayer. And not because of the prayer of many, but yet not outside of connection with what He Himself worked in the heart, sometimes takes away again the plague and heals the sick.
The faithful Shepherd, Who first Himself drove us into the valley of shadows, and now takes us by the hand again and leads us back, and brings us to the fields of light.
Glorious prophecy and blessed anticipation of what it shall once be in the resurrection of the dead.
From dejection reviving, and presently reborn to new strength.
When He, the Lord, multiplies strength to him who had no more strength, and in that renewal, as with an eagle’s youth, is felt what once it shall be, when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and everything shall bloom in eternal youth in the Jerusalem above, where no inhabitant shall any more say: I am sick.
← 52. The Sixth Isaianic Woe! · Contents · 54. Forsake Me Not When I Am Old →