 |
| Getty images. |
The family of
viruses known as coronaviruses infects mostly bats, pigs and small
mammals, but they mutate easily and can jump from animals to humans, and from
one human to another, as The Wall Street Journal explained
recently, adding that the mortality rate has ranged between 2 percent and about
3.4 percent as of now.
More than 50 countries
have reported cases of coronavirus and the World Health Organization has
upgraded the global risk of the outbreak to “very high.” Amid the
outbreak, Piper said in his “Ask Pastor John” podcast that the
coronavirus, which originated in China last year, is not stronger than Jesus.
“Jesus has all
knowledge and all authority over the natural and supernatural forces of this
world. He knows exactly where the virus started, and where it’s going next. He
has complete power to restrain it or not,” he said.
He shared four biblical
realities that could be used as building blocks in developing an understanding
and making sense of it.
1. Sin subjected the world to futility
Quoting Romans
8:20–23, Piper pointed out that when sin entered the world through Adam and
Eve, “God ordained that the created order, including our physical bodies, as
persons created in His image, would experience corruption and futility, and
that all living things would die.”
However, Christians,
who trust Christ, do not experience this corruption as condemnation, as their
“pain for us is purifying, not punitive.”
“We die of disease
like all men, not necessarily because of any particular sin … We die of disease
like all people because of the fall,” he explained.
2. Sometimes sickness is God’s mercy
Some
Christians can die of illnesses “so that we may not be condemned along with the
world,” Piper said.
The
pastor said his view is based on 1 Corinthians 11:29–32, which deals with
misusing the Lord’s Supper. “But the principle is broader,” he underlined.
“The
Lord Jesus takes the life of His loved ones through weakness and illness — the
very same words, by the way, used to describe the weaknesses and illnesses that
Jesus heals in His earthly life (Matthew 4:23; 8:17; 14:14) — and
brings them to Heaven. He brings them to Heaven because of the trajectory of
their sin that he was cutting off and saving them from — not to punish them,
but to save them,” he explained.
3. Sickness could come as judgment
“God
sometimes uses disease to bring particular judgments upon those who reject him
and give themselves over to sin,” Piper said.
Referring
to Acts 12, the pastor cited the example of King Herod who exalted himself in
being called a god. “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because
he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his
last.”
He
said God can and does use illnesses to bring judgment sometimes upon those who
reject Him and His way.
4. God’s thunderclap
Quoting Luke
13:1–5, Piper said all natural disasters are a “thunderclap of divine mercy in
the midst of judgment, calling all people everywhere to repent and realign
their lives, by grace, with the infinite worth of the glory of God.”
He
concluded that “that’s the message of Jesus to the world at this moment in
history, under the coronavirus — a message to every single human being, …
saying, “Repent.”
No comments:
Post a Comment