So the title above was the question I received from a friend a while back. The full question with some extra comments was posted yesterday. And I want to thank those of you who shared some of your responses with me.
It’s a serious questions, and one that many people wonder about. Here was my Response:
There is not much theological support for us having God continually punish us for past sins. Paul was a persecutor of the church, but when he repented, God used him greatly. He did end up having a “thorn in his flesh” to contend with, but God did not tell him it was because of punishment for past sins.
Yes, God does discipline His wayward children, but it is used to bring us to repentance and restoration. As you pointed out in the opening of your question, much of what we contend with in the areas of pain are simply consequences of our own making, which God allows us to experience.
A person who chooses to get drunk habitually may lose his family. This would be a consequence of his poor choice of behavior. But we also often are dealing with the consequences of someone else’s sinful behavior. For example, the person who loses his family to an accident caused by a drunk driver is suffering the consequences of someone else’s bad behavior. We live in a depraved, fallen world that makes life tough. That does not mean it is God’s punishment, but rather just the consequences of our inviting sin into this world which has caused continuous and growing damage.
In the same way, when Adam rebelled against God, he invited disorder into God’s perfect world. Sickness and disease have come to us due to this continued disorder and decay. And so we don’t typically look at the cancer that someone gets as being a direct punishment from God for a specific sin, but rather as a consequence of the decaying world that we (humanity) caused by our sin as a human race. So we find that our sin has even affected life on the cellular level.
Therefore, I wouldn’t look at an injury that is causing pain as punishment from God today for sins from your past. Rather I would look at the physical pain that you are experiencing as a consequence of living in a world that should have been pain-free, but is not due to our sin. Now we must live with pain while we long for the day when we can enter the eternal Kingdom where God will wipe every tear from our eyes.
Could God supernaturally heal us of the pain we are suffering in the here and now? Yes. And sometimes He does. But usually we are allowed to continue walking through the pain with our hand in His. Enduring the consequences of our own bad behaviors, the consequences of others’ bad behaviors that affect us, and the consequences of those “thorns in the flesh” – all of these help us learn as Paul did – that when we are weak in and of ourselves, we are able to find our strength in our relationship with Jesus.
And so to all who are struggling through pain or illness, may you place your hands in His, may you find your strength in Him, and may you continually look forward to celebrating together in eternity at having healed bodies and no more tears!
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I now hope to wade back into the waters. I think I will set my new goal to fall somewhere in-between my number of postings from 2015 and 2016 (So I just need to fall somewhere between the narrow range of 7 and 340 posts!). Don’t get excited about me coming back just yet. Let’s see if it actually holds up!