The Cold that Almost Killed Me ... or Sick with Sin
James Mcmanus
One of my children recently brought home some sort of bug/virus that made its way through various members of our family. We don’t know if it was cold, flu, COVID, the Bubonic Plague or some sort of combination, but it got a hold of us quickly! It particularly hit me strong with chills, congestion, cough, sick-sleep, etc. At one point, I thought I could angels singing my name, beckoning me to the pearly gates to my eternal home!
In all seriousness, I think it was just a cold that ran it’s way through us … and I lived up to the memes that men are pitiful patients - that even the regular cold can make us shrivel up and make us pitiful. My poor family had to deal with my pitifulness in spades!
For me, one of the worst things about being sick with the cold or flu is that there is only so much I can do to make myself better. Get rest, hydrate, eat soup, drink warm liquids, take Tylenol or Advil … all things to treat symptoms. But, there is nothing I can do to treat the virus, because there is no cure to the common cold or flu. Once you get it, you’ve got it and there is nothing you can do. You can treat the symptoms as best as you can but can do nothing about the actual virus. That can make you feel helpless that can lead to hopelessness. “I am sick, I feel awful, and, ultimately, there is nothing I can to make this all go away” - that’s a helpless feeling that, in the throes of being sick, can easily lead to hopelessness that you’ll ever feel better again.
There is good reason why sin is illustrated as being like a sickness. We can do our best to treat the symptoms, but we can’t do anything on our own about the cause. We can take steps to mitigate the symptoms of sin, but the virus of sin is still running rampant in our spiritual body. And, we find as Christians, the more we treat the symptoms, the more other symptoms pop up … it’s like playing an never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole!
David, in the midst of dealing with the symptoms of his sin of being a poor king, adultery with Bathsheba, a child out of wedlock, and premeditated murder of her husband, Uriah, is called out by the prophet Nathan … and his response is Psalm 51. Pretty quickly in this Psalm, David gets to the root of his problem, “5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” David’s greatest problem is that he was born a sinner, and the virus of sin was at work in his spiritual body. Paul would later expound the problem in places such as Galatians 2 and Romans 5 that all of us have been born dead in our sins and trespasses, naturally at odds with the Holy God of the Universe. Each of us have been born with the sin virus that will be at work in our spiritual bodies until we die.
There is nothing we can do. None of us can eradicate this virus. There is nothing you or I can humanly do to kill the sin virus in our bodies. We can try and deal with the symptoms. The problem is when we try to treat the symptoms on our own. Sometimes that looks like legalism. Sometimes that makes us look like Pharisees. Sometimes it makes us look like hypocrites. And, it never works.
Paul points us to that in Romans 7, where he laments that when he tries to deal with his sin symptoms, either he is unsuccessful or other symptoms pop up in its place! What a helpless feeling - I want to do better, yet I struggle. I want to be better, yet I seem to fail more than I succeed. I want this to end, yet it never ends. How helpless this can make us feel. How hopeless this can make us.
Thankfully, our faithful God doesn’t leave us in a helpless and hopeless state. In His faithful grace and mercy, He points us to the Gospel, to the good news of the Great Physician who has come to deal with our sin sickness. But, instead of Jesus, the Son of God, putting on the white coat and stethoscope and clinically treating us, we get a far more personal healing. The perfect, spiritually healthy 2nd Person of the Trinity, takes our virus so He can become our cure. The one who had no sin is the one who became our sin. The one who did not have the virus is the one who takes your virus so you can be cured of it. The Great Physician who cares for all our body and all our soul is the one who doesn’t just treat the symptoms but gives you the cure. The cure is Himself - to receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He has been offered in the Gospel. The cure to sin is Christ Himself.
What great love it is for God to offer Himself as the cure for our sins! He doesn’t tell us that we get what we deserve… there are consequences to our actions … to suck it up and deal with it. Rather, in His perfect love for you and me, He takes the very thing that causes us to be His enemies and children of His wrath, and He gives us Himself in place of it. He takes upon the virus as the perfect sacrifice. He gives Himself so that we can be given to Him.
Once we get that, then we can start to deal with the symptoms, because we will be dealing with them from the foundation of Christ and His work, and not ourselves and our work. Now, we can say no to sin and put to death that which leads to death. Now, we can say yes to grace and follow the perfect paths of righteousness that leads us closer and closer to Christ and being more and more like Him. We can start to die to our sins and their effects and live more unto the righteousness of Christ. We are brought from a state of helplessness and hopelessness to a state of grace and hopefulness in the Good Shepherd and Great Physician.
Praise God that He deals with our sinful nature and sins in His most perfect way! How wonderful it is to think upon Christ and His work to deal with our virus and its complications. Because of this, we can glorify Him more and more and enjoy Him more and more as the sin virus has been dealt with and we have been given grace to deal with its symptoms. Praise be to our great, good and holy God for this work!