Why does God allow disease?

The trial is sometimes very severe. For instance a fatal disease, throwing the patient into paroxysms of pain night and day, and making death a sure thing in the immediate future, is fairly testing to both the afflicted one, and to the relatives, who watch with breaking hearts the long-drawn-out agony, and in anticipation endure the bereavement. Often the cry is wrung from hearts, Why does God allow all this?

The Bible alone accounts for the presence of evil, and its resultant misery and death. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It is a righteous thing that misery and death, with all their concomitant evils, should be the lot of man — the righteous dealings of a just and holy God with rebels; and, while sin remains, righteousness demands that all these evils — the fruit of sin — should also remain. Even God's saints, while here in the body, are exposed to the sorrows to which humanity is heir. The Lord Jesus Himself submitted, in grace truly, to all the consequences — sin excepted — of taking a place among men and specially the remnant of Israel, a thing wholly distinct from being made sin on the cross. To remove the sufferings while sin is present would be a denial of God's righteous government.

Since the fall, disease, the universal leveler and the precursor of death, has necessarily opened up the entire and growing field of nosology and pathology. If the governing truth that the introduction of sin into the world has brought in disease in its various forms is seen, how suggestively do the different diseases remind us of the various forms in which sin is expressed in the human family. Doubtless the specific diseases which are mentioned in the New Testament miracles suggest that there is a special significance underlying all disease. Thus, too, the application of various remedies, as opened up in the department of therapeutics, will be found to have fresh light thrown upon it by the application of the gospel of Christ to the various forms of sin; and just as death, the consummation of all diseases, is a type of that spiritual death which is the consummation of all sin, so, too, the atoning death of our Lord and His resurrection will sum up, doubtless, in ever-increasing detail, the divine remedy for all the human woe that has come in through sin.

147 Verse 14. The thought of affliction and joy leads James to another condition of the Christian, namely, sickness, which is often, though not always, the effect of the Lord's chastening. Sickness, as well as death, came in by sin; and we find it now throughout the whole course of man's history. But a sparrow falls not to the ground without God our Father, as the Lord says, and although these ills now belong to the natural condition of man, yet God uses them for the correction of His children. "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous," Job 36:7. In either case, whether as ills natural to humanity, or the direct chastisement of God, God now makes use of sickness, when the heart, instead of considering all that happens to it with indifference, draws near to God, who thinks upon the sufferings of His own, and has respect to the submission and to the cry of those whom He chastens.

The prayer of faith heals the sick, and if the sickness is the consequence of sin, the sin which occasioned it shall be forgiven; the sufferer has owned the hand of God in his sickness, and God answers to the faith of him who prays. There are two kinds of forgiveness in the ways of God. Eternal justification - according to Romans 4 and Hebrews 10 - is the blessed portion of those who believe in the efficacy of the blood of Christ; that is to say, their sins are imputed to them no more. "Whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified." God took up the question of their sins at the cross, and He has made an end of them for ever; He will never remember them again. But there is also the government of God - the government of a Father, but of a holy Father who loves His children too well to allow them to walk badly.

It may be asserted that the disease of this man's body was an infliction upon him in consequence of some particular sins of which he had been guilty. God sent such temporal judgments in His government of the people of Israel, as the scripture testifies in many parts. For instance, at the repeated murmuring of the nation in the wilderness Jehovah smote them with a plague (Num. 11:32-33; Ps. 78:31). In New Testament times it was so also in the assembly at Corinth, where many were in sickness and some even slept, because of their transgression (1 Cor. 11:30; see also James 5:14-16). The Lord recognised afflictions of this judicial character in the case of the impotent man of Bethesda, to whom He said after His cure, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" (John 5:14).

Now these three Scriptures (1 John 5; 1 Cor.11; James 5) distinctly teach that sickness amongst Christians may be an infliction because of sin. If this were more recognized there would be more soul - exercise as to the purpose of God's dealings with us, and increased blessing would result.

It ought not to be supposed, however, that illness, or indeed, other afflictions, are always chastisements. The branch that bears fruit is purged that it may bring forth more fruit (John 15). And in the case of Job, the grand mistake of Job's friends was to suppose that because of his terrible affliction, he must have committed some grievous sins. God allowed Job to be afflicted with painful and humiliating ills for his ultimate blessing, and so he does with many a saint today. He may send sickness, bereavements, setbacks, to break down the flesh, to wean us from the world, to produce brokenness of our wills, and spirituality, or to give warning to the believer where there is lack of carefulness in walk, or incipient departure from the Lord.

Psalm 103 brings before us the effect of the Lord's presence on the earth, "Who heals all thy diseases" as well as "forgives all thine iniquities." This is not so now, as it will be in the coming day, when healing and forgiveness will go together. True He does heal now at times, but still He allows sickness to affect His people. Then the healing will not only be wholly, but connected also with forgiveness. Some people think the grand thing is to have faith in God's power. He has only to speak, and the worst disease can be healed easily; but He is training us. Sometimes sickness is sent as a preventive, sometimes as a corrective; we ought to have faith in His love as well as in His power, and in His wisdom too. Have faith in God, not simply in His power. Here Job shines. Perhaps we have not thought adequately of his sufferings — "though he slay me yet will I trust in him."

Such confidence the Lord delights to own. At once it gives Him the occasion to say that this sickness is for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. The devil would seek to use our trials to raise murmuring and dishonouring thoughts of God: the Lord would use them to draw out our confidence in Himself, and as an occasion for manifesting His love in such tender fashion that He is glorified, while we are blessed.

John 9 opens with the case of a man that gives rise to a question from the disciples, in relation to the government of God in Israel. Was it his parents' sin that brought this visitation on their child, according to the principles God had given them in Exodus? Or was it his own sin, known to God though not manifested to men, that had procured him this judgment? The Lord replies, that the man's condition did not depend on the government of God with respect to the sin either of himself or of his parents. His case was but the misery which gave room for the mighty operation of God in grace. It is the contrast that we have continually seen; but here it is in order to set forth the works of God.