If you want a hot-potato issue in the church world, this is probably it. You get people mad on both sides when you start digging into the Scriptures to answer questions like these: "Can sickness be the chastening of the Lord in the New Covenant? Can sickness or death be the judgment of God in the New Covenant?"

The answer is clearly yes.

But no believer walking in the light qualifies for chastening or judgment. If you are walking with the Lord and staying out of gross sin, you do not qualify to get sick or die prematurely as judgment. However, there are things you can do that will get you out from under God's protection and open you up to sickness or worse, even under grace.

There are two prevalent, equally incorrect, views on this subject. One is, "Our God is a good God, so he can't ever put sickness on anyone because there is no sickness in heaven. So God could never chasten or punish anyone with sickness." The other is, "Sickness is a tool of God to build character in us. We can learn patience and other valuable lessons through sickness."


The facts are these: You are redeemed from sickness by Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice. As long as you walk in the light, you can walk free from sickness. However, if you willfully choose to sin, even as a Christian, God will permit you to be ill or even actively see to it that you get ill or even die! That's a strong statement that I will back up with Scripture.


Herod killed for trying to steal God's glory

Acts 12:21-23 tells how God killed Herod because he attempted to take God's glory for himself. An angel of the Lord struck Herod with a fatal illness. This surely makes us squirm if we are used to the idea that God could never harm anyone because he is good. Yes, God is love, but the wrath of God is just as much a New Testament reality. Of course, if you are not stealing God's glory, you don't have to worry about being another Herod. Herod was not a believer.



Bar-Jesus struck blind by the hand of the Lord

It is explicitly stated that the hand of the Lord, not the hand of Satan, struck Bar-Jesus the sorcerer blind in Acts 13:6-12. This was a supernatural blindness, not necessarily any kind of eye disease. No regular eye disease would instantly strike you blind and then let you see again later. This was a sign and a wonder to the people Paul was attempting to minister to. It was also a visible judgment on the sorcerer, who was trying to hinder the spreading of the gospel.


Jesus kills!

Revelation 2:22-23 contains an even more shocking statement from Jesus himself, where he says he will kill an adulteress's children and throw her into a bed (implying a sickbed)! This is disturbing to us because he does not say that he will "permit the devil to kill them," although in practice that may be how it worked out. Obviously, Jesus would have a direct role in the death of these children as well as in the adulteress's apparent sickness.


This woman (called Jezebel) was messing around with the Lord's Church. Judgment was not immediate. Jesus said in the verse just before the ones above that he "gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not." Even in her gross sin, mercy was extended to her for a season. But when she would not repent, Jesus pronounced judgment against her. This was necessary to protect his church at Thyatira. If he allowed this self-named prophetess to continue seducing and misleading his people, the church at Thyatira would be in danger. Jesus had to take her out of the way.

Let this be a warning to anyone who would try to lead the people of God into immorality. Jesus will give you space to repent, but eventually judgment will fall, and it will hurt. It's one thing to be immoral yourself, but when you start corrupting the Church, you are in a lot of trouble with God.


If you are not seducing or misleading the people of God, this passage does not apply to you. Even if you were to get into gross sin, we see that the mercy of God would give you time to repent. If you didn't, it would be your own fault and you would bear the consequences. Jesus will never do anything like this to a believer who is living a normal Christian life.


Ananias and Sapphira lie and die

Acts 5:1-11 shows that lying can lead to dying even under the New Covenant. Ananias and Sapphira fell dead as judgment for lying to Peter about the money that they gave. If you think this is too harsh a punishment, perhaps you do not share the Lord's intense hatred of lying. Lying may be socially acceptable in our day, but it is unacceptable with God. One incident of lying to God's anointed was all it took to end both of their lives. Do not play games with God's servants.


It has been suggested that Ananias and Sapphira simply died of embarrassment when their sins were publicly exposed and that God did not have a direct hand in it. I find that difficult to accept because Peter knew beforehand that Sapphira was going to die. In the context of verse 9, he seems to link it directly to her sin. He basically said to her, "How could you agree to lie like that? You're history, just like your husband!" Besides, do you know anyone who has actually died of embarrassment?

If you aren't doing what they did, you have nothing to fear. God will not strike you dead arbitrarily.


Many Corinthians get sick and many die for failure to "judge themselves"

1 Cor 11:27-32 says that many Christians at Corinth were made sick and many died because they would not "judge themselves" regarding their sin. In this case, they were eating the Lord's supper in an unworthy manner, walking out of love toward each other while doing it, and seeing it as an opportunity to pig out rather than reverence God. They were failing to appreciate that they were partaking of emblems of Christ's death. They were playing games with the holy things of God.


One side effect of this would be to fail to see that Christ's body was broken for our healing. By regarding the communion bread as mere food, they missed an opportunity to reflect on the fact that healing belonged to them. This is sometimes stated as the reason the Corinthians died, but it is not the main reason in context. Many Christians do die because they do not recognize that Jesus' broken body provided healing. That is a fact, but this passage is not primarily talking about that.

It is clear from the context that the sickness and death that befell them were not from ignorance of their covenant healing rights, but were direct judgment from God for their misconduct. The main point is that they were eating and drinking damnation (judgment) on themselves by treating holy things lightly. They were "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." This kind of mistake cost Nadab, Abihu and Uzzah their lives, cost King Uzziah his health, and cost King Saul his throne in the Old Testament. All these people attempted to perform a priestly function that was not theirs to perform. They were taking the holy things of God lightly. Playing with the holy things of God will cost you.


This passage is widely misunderstood to be a warning not to let an unbeliever take communion because he is "unworthy." That is not stated. Needless to say, there is no point in an unbeliever taking communion, since communion is an ordinance for believers. However, the warning is not about unworthy people taking communion. It is about believers taking communion in an unworthy manner. The people getting weak and sickly and dying were the Corinthian believers, not unbelievers! Paul said that those judged were "among you." Paul wasn't warning unbelievers; he was warning believers.

"For if we should judge ourselves, we should not be judged" makes it clear that the context is believers who will not take the things of God seriously or who willfully persist in sin. It is perfectly clear from this statement that no believer walking in the light will suffer this kind of judgment.


Even this judgment shows the mercy of God. Some of these people could have completely fallen from grace if God had not intervened. "But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." At least the ones who died will not be condemned because they were still Christians when they died. They just left the earth a lot sooner than they had to. That is better than going to hell. As for the ones who were sick, the Lord was chastening them to bring them to their senses. If they repented, they could have been rid of their sicknesses instead of staying sick and even dying.

Unfortunately, God does have to remove people from his Body who are causing trouble within it. The idea is not to be one of these people.

No believer who makes a normal effort to get sin out of his life has to fear being "chastened of the Lord." The fact that God does use sickness and premature death to "chasten" and "judge" unruly believers does not mean that all sickness and premature death are God's judgment! Do not assume that God is judging you just because you get the flu, and do not assume that other people who get sick are being judged for secret sins in their lives. Sickness can be used as judgment, but not all sickness is judgment. Most of it isn't; it's just part of the corruption that is on the earth because of sin.



Homosexuals receive a just reward in themselves

Romans 1:26-27 talks about homosexuals receiving the just reward for their error (not alternative lifestyle) in themselves. This will never win any awards for political correctness, but the fact is the AIDS and other venereal diseases are considered by God to be just punishment for the abomination (Lev 18:22, Lev 20:13) of homosexuality. (If you received such an illness through a blood transfusion or inherited it from a parent, obviously this does not apply to you.) Some homosexuals do not like to hear this and try to explain away these verses, but they will not go away. God does not condone sodomy. He declares that no homosexual (or other sex pervert) shall inherit the kingdom of God. If that's too strong for you, take it up with God, who wrote 1 Cor 6:9-10: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."


You still walk in love toward homosexuals, just not in their kind of love (lust). For purposes of sharing the gospel, the homosexual does not need you to inform him that his HIV-positive condition is judgment for his sin. He needs to know how to get out of his sin. He needs to know that Jesus bled and died for all of this sins (not only sodomy) and that God will forgive him. He needs to know that the power of God can straighten him out. He needs to know that God loves him so much that he was willing to send Jesus to be tortured and killed in his place. The name of Jesus can drive out AIDS just as it can drive out cancer.

But you can't explain away these verses. You can only avoid doing what they talk about to avoid getting what they talk about. This is why finding a cure for AIDS would not be a permanent solution. Since Romans 1:26-27 will always be true, there will always be another horrible disease to take its place. Partaking of God's wrath for sexual and other sins is also mentioned in the next verse below.


Notice that this passage does not come out and say "God puts sickness on homosexuals." That is actually not the case; they are receiving the results of a spiritual law in the earth. They are sowing to the flesh and reaping corruption of the flesh. God established this law, but anyone engaging in sodomy is really bringing corruption on himself. God does not need to do anything explicit to put it on him. Although the context of this section is the wrath of God, the use of the phrase "receiving in themselves" (as opposed to "receiving from God") would indicate that God is not directly responsible for their sickness.


Partaking of the wrath of God on the disobedient

Eph 5:5-7 shows that even a believer can be a partaker of the wrath of God if he gets into serious sin. Ephesians was written to believers! Paul warned them not to be a partaker of the wrath of God that comes on the disobedient because of their sin.


Col 3:25 also makes it clear that a believer can receive recompense for the wrong he does. 1 Thess 4:6 warns believers that God avenges adultery.


Destroying God's temple destroys you

1 Cor 3:16-17 is widely misinterpreted to mean, "If you smoke and drink, you're destroying God's temple, so God will destroy you." That's not what this passage is talking about. You is in the plural. God's Church collectively is called the temple of God. God is saying that if any man tries to destroy the Church, God will destroy him. This is a sober warning to anyone who tries to split a local church or tries to break the "unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" in a local body. If you play stupid little churchy political games, setting one person against another to advance yourself, you are a candidate for sickness and destruction. It is too tame to say, "God will allow the devil to destroy you," because this verse says that God will destroy you. God is jealous for his Body, and he will personally judge anyone who messes with it. If you can't tolerate your local church, go find one you can tolerate.



Complainers destroyed

1 Cor 10:5-11 warns us of judgment under the New Covenant for some of the same sins that led to judgment under the Old Covenant. In particular, we are warned about lusting after evil things, idolatry, fornication, tempting Christ, and murmuring. If we do these things, we can still incur the same penalties under the New Covenant: dying and being destroyed by the destroyer.

Sin opens you up to the devil's works and gives him the right to move in your life. There is no warning here about calamities for a child of God who stays out of these sins. They only come on you if you choose to sin in these ways.

Even if you would never think of committing adultery, you have purchased the ticket to trouble when you use your tongue to complain about everything the pastor does and criticize everyone else. Touching God's anointed is bad news in either covenant. Even if a leader makes a mistake, you will not secure a blessing for yourself by publicizing it and complaining about it. Lift the leaders up in prayer and get behind them, or find somewhere to go where you can do so. If you can't find anywhere, you are the problem and you are already in trouble.


In churches where sexual sins and complaining are rampant, we should expect destruction to also be rampant among those individuals involved. Sin is not a light thing under any covenant. Willful persistence in sin is the door to destruction. Stay out. You have been warned.


Judgment begins at the house of God

When God judged Israel in the book of Ezekiel, he said, "Begin at my sanctuary." The same principle holds true today. The time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). Those who persist in deliberate sin even when they know better will be judged.


Handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh

1 Cor 5:1-5 orders a certain man committing incest to be "handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." This was to be formal church discipline. The man was to be kicked out of the church until he repented. The idea was to prevent others in the church from being corrupted in a similar way. If others saw him get away with it, they would be tempted to follow suit.


This is so important that God warns you not even to eat with a so-called brother who is fornicating. The church is to kick such people out and not let them back in until they repent. (The remainder of 1 Cor 5 discusses this; other sins are included in this category along with fornication.) Today we coddle such people and reassure them about God's wonderful boundless mercy and grace, and some of them just keep sinning and sinning like the man in Corinth before Paul rebuked the Corinthians. If we really obeyed the Bible and kicked sex offenders out of the church until they repented, we would not have so many embarrassing incidents among Christians in the Church. These people are a great danger to the flock and cannot be tolerated.

Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery but then told her to go and sin no more. We should do the same. We forgive others for their sins, but we expect them to "Go and sin no more." If they keep sinning in this kind of way, we should refuse to fellowship with them. If you think this is too harsh, talk to God about it after reading the whole chapter yourself. Beware: "Evil communications [companions] corrupt good manners" (1 Cor 15:33).


Handing the man over to Satan implies that no prayer would be made for his protection; he would be on his own. Without the prayers of the church, the man would soon reap what he sowed and get beaten up by the devil (not God). The idea is that after his flesh started hurting, he would decide to repent and come back. If he did not repent, the devil could kill him before he managed to fall from grace completely. Thus, his spirit would be saved even though his flesh was destroyed. This beats going to hell. Tough as this seems, this is the mercy of God in action, although the relatives at the funeral may have a hard time believing that.

This is a case where God authorizes the devil to afflict someone who is in sin. God is not doing the afflicting himself, but he is explicitly sanctioning it.


Another case of this is found in 1 Tim 1:19-20: "Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." The purpose of handing them over to Satan was not to vengefully curse them and get even with them. It was to cause them to come to their senses and quit sinning -- "that they may learn not to blaspheme" as opposed to "that they may get what's coming to them for blaspheming."


Sowing and reaping

Gal 6:7-9 discusses a spiritual law in the earth concerning sowing and reaping. According to this law, you reap whatever you sow, and neither God nor the devil is directly involved. You reap your own punishment if you choose to walk in the flesh instead of the Spirit, and you reap your own reward by choosing to sow to the Spirit. In this sense, bodily affliction can be a punishment for walking in the flesh. But it is not necessarily "sent" to you by either God or the devil, any more than God or the devil makes your computer mouse (or compatible pointing device) fall if you pick it up and let go of it. There are spiritual laws that are just as binding as physical laws. They can override physical laws. Just as electricity can either kill you or let you run hypertext healing programs on computers, these laws can work either for you or against you, depending on what you do.



Sin

James 5:14-16 says to confess your sins one to another and to pray for one another, that you may be healed. James said that when the elders anoint the sick in the name of the Lord, he will be forgiven of any sins. The implication seems to be clear from this passage that sin can bring on disease. Jesus definitely believed that. He told the man who had been infirm for 38 years to "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you" (John 5:2-19). Therefore, it is a New Testament teaching that sin can bring on disease. God does not put it on you; you put it on yourself. Your disobedience to God opens the door to the devil.

This doesn't mean that everyone who is sick is in sin. It just means that sin can bring disease on you, and some people are sick because they are in sin.



"Vial" sores and pains

Rev 16:1-2 talks about a vial of the wrath of God being poured out on the earth, and horrible sores coming on those who worship the beast. Is the common teaching that "God doesn't have any sickness in heaven to give" really true? God does not steal this vial from the devil; it comes from heaven, and it makes men sick! (Yes, I know that there will be no sickness in our eternal home on the renewed earth.) Food for thought, isn't it? We tend to downplay the wrath of God today because no one wants to hear about it and we want everyone to like our nice messages about how good God is. The wrath of God is real today. Sinners will find this out after we leave the earth when Jesus appears in the clouds.


Rev 16:10-11 talks about another vial of the wrath of God that produces pain so bad that men gnaw their tongues. God will send this plague; he will not "permit the devil" to do it.


The wrath of God

Soon, the wrath of God will bring hail, scorching, poisoning, earthquakes, fire, meteorite impacts, and the destruction of a third of mankind. See the book of Revelation. You can miss all this fun by being born again and being snatched away with Jesus before it happens. You see, God reserves wrath for his enemies, not for his children.

Preaching about the wrath of God doesn't tickle people's ears. People want to hear how good he is, and how blessed he wants us. Perhaps it would upset many of them if we really studied out the wrath of God in Scripture. When is the last time anyone preached Nahum 1:2? "God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies." Just as God's love carries over from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, so does his wrath. The book of Revelation is in the New Testament!


You can't blame the devil for the woes in Revelation. In fact, some of the judgments in Revelation are on the devil and his associates. It is too thin to say, "God will permit the devil to pelt the earth with killer comets." It is clearly God's doing. God will kill people. God will torment people. God will make people sick. Does this make you uncomfortable? Perhaps there is a side of God you have not learned about because these verses are not the ones we post on our refrigerators or buy books about. These plagues are the final punishment for unrepented sin on the earth. God is merciful, but he is also just.

God is not simply "lovey-dovey," and we have oversimplified our theology when we say that if anything is bad, it must be the devil. "God is love" is a complete statement as far as a blood-washed saint is concerned. Jesus "delivered us from the wrath to come" (1 Thess 1:10). This wrath is still real, you are just delivered from it. But the sinners in the earth will discover that there is another side of God, too -- his holiness! He cannot tolerate sin. If any man does not accept Christ's substitution for him, that man will personally endure the wrath of God. He will be sent to burn in the lake of fire that is the second death, and be in conscious, everlasting torment.


God created everlasting fire for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41), but everyone who is not saved in this life will go there and suffer forever. Talk about pain! At least a saint who unnecessarily dies of cancer endures no more pain from that point on. In the lake of fire, the sinner suffers forever and ever, with no hope of ever escaping his agony. What a horrible punishment! Can you see how foolish it is to say that God is simply a mushy heavenly teddy bear? The lake of fire is a New Covenant concept, too!

I am not saying that you should go around telling sinners about the lake of fire and the vials of God's wrath on the earth. The reality of eternal judgment should motivate you to share your faith to spare others a literal eternity of agony. However, it is the goodness of God, not the wrath of God, that draws men to repentance (Romans 2:4). The apostles preached Jesus, the solution to damnation, rather than harping on damnation. But the wrath of God is real!


"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." (John 3:36)
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." (Romans 1:18)
"But [thou] after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God" (Romans 2:5)
"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry; for which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience" (Colossians 3:5-6)

"And out of his [Jesus'] mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." (Revelation 19:15)

There are many more verses on this topic, but these should be enough to give you the idea.

If we took this side of God seriously, there would be much more fear of God in the Church, and much less sin.


"Chastening" in Hebrews 12?

I can accept sickness as chastening for the Christian who deliberately lives in sin, as explicitly stated in 1 Corinthians 11:32 (quoted above). However, the "chastening" in Hebrews 12 is another matter, and does not fall into this category. This kind of chastening refers to fatherly correction and rebuke. It definitely does not refer to God correcting us with sickness. (For proof, see Objection: Sickness can be the chastening of the Lord.)



Conclusion

Even in the New Testament, God can use sickness as chastening and judgment, even to the point where he actively sends it. This never applies to a believer with an up-to-date walk with God. Sickness as judgment falls only on wayward Christians and unbelievers. If you are neither, there is no reason to believe that God has anything to do with your sickness, and you should exercise your authority in Christ over it and get rid of it.