Big Healing Book - Sickness as Chastening and Judgment in the New Testament

Sickness as Chastening and Judgment in the New Testament

Can sickness or death be the judgment of God even in the New Covenant? Could even a believer who gets extremely out of line be judged by the Lord, or does the fact that His sins were already judged on the cross preclude this?

I will prove that the answer is yes to both questions. I am aware that this position, and in fact ANY position, on this matter, is sure to be controversial in the church world, as this has been debated for a long time.

Certainly, no believer qualifies for sickness as chastening or judgment under ordinary circumstances. If you are walking with the Lord and staying out of gross sin – particularly sin that harms other Christians and the church, you do not qualify to get sick or die prematurely as judgment. You can do things that will get you out from under God’s protection and open you up to sickness or worse, even under grace, as will be proved below. However, it’s very difficult to put yourself in such a spot, as God’s judgment on believers in this life is limited to rare and extraordinary circumstances specified by Scripture.

Some cases of judgment below only apply to unbelievers.

There are prevalent, but incorrect, views on this subject. One is, “Our God is a good God all the time, 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.” Another is, “Sickness is a tool of God to build character in us. We can learn patience and other valuable lessons through sickness.” A third one that tries to split the difference and explain some of the difficult verses below is, “Sickness CAN be judgment in the New Testament, but it will NEVER be applied to true believers, but only to people passing themselves off as believers who are actually unsaved.”

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 all the time. Yes, God is love, but the wrath of God is still a New Testament reality. (Read the book of Revelation if you don’t believe that!) However, 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. Of course, Bar-Jesus was not a believer.

Jesus Kills!

Revelation 2:20-23 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)! Jesus does not even say that He will “permit the devil to kill them.” Obviously, Jesus would have a direct role in the death of these children as well as in the adulteress’s sickness. Not only that, but Jesus promised to throw those who committed adultery with her into “great tribulation” as well – and it would be at His hand, not the devil’s.

This woman (called Jezebel) was messing around with the Lord’s Church. Judgment was not immediate. Jesus said that He “gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.” Even in her gross sin, God extended mercy 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-appointed 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.

It would simplify things for us as “faith preachers” and “grace preachers” if this passage were not in the Bible, in which case we could correctly claim that Jesus would never kill anyone or make anyone sick. But this passage is here, and we have to deal with it!

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. (See the notes on 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 for more on this.)

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. Do not lie to your pastor during premarital counseling by saying that you and the one you’re engaged to haven’t been in bed together if you have. (MANY couples lie under those circumstances, but it’s a dangerous practice.)

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 from embarrassment?

Note in passing that although some believers sold possessions to help others, that was never required; it was their choice. Proof that a kind of communism was not mandatory is found in Peter’s statements that it was their land and their money (verse 4) and they were free to do what they wanted with it – except lie about it!

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

However, this incident starts to take us into a murky area as far as judgment only falling on fake believers. To hold to that position, you must believe that Ananias and Sapphira were unsaved. The context does not give us anything that would settle that issue one way or another, so everyone is entitles to his opinion on the matter. The next issue is the one that makes the “fake believers only” position untenable.

Many Corinthians Get Sick and Many Die for Failure to “Judge Themselves”

1 Corinthians 11:27-32 says that many people at Corinth were made sick and many died because they would not “judge themselves” regarding their sin of 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 failed to appreciate that they were partaking of emblems of Christ’s death. They were playing games with the holy things of God, treating them with disrespect.

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 why 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 symbolized by the bread, 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 irreverently. 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 took the holy things of God lightly. Playing games with the holy things of God can still 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!

You could object that you could have unbelievers “among you,” but the statement, “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. However, Paul made it clear that the sicknesses and deaths associated with the Lord’s Supper were divine judgment and not simply due to ignorance of what Christ did for us.

Even this judgment shows the mercy of God. Some of these people could have completely fallen from grace if God had not intervened. Paul went on to say (1 Corinthians 11:32): “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 had repented, they could have been rid of their sicknesses instead of staying sick and even dying.

I understand that you may think this was a case where unbelievers were judged for receiving communion, as that is the only conclusion consistent with the idea that God never judges a Christian because his sins are already judged. However, the word “unworthily” is an adverb. Paul didn’t say that they partook while unworthy (an adjective) but rather that they partook in an unworthy manner. Still, one could argue that you would partake “in an unworthy manner” if you were not saved, but that is getting thin.

One thing that totally ruins the idea that Paul was warning unbelievers is the verse cited above that shows that the Lord was chastening the offenders so that “they should not be condemned with the world.” This is the verse that the unbelievers-only advocates miss. If Paul were addressing unbelievers, they WERE the world and they were thus already on their way to being condemned with the world that they were part of anyway (John 3:18)! The verse only makes sense as a warning to believers.

“Yes,” you may say, “but a believer can’t be condemned with the world because his sins are already forgiven!” I understand that logic, but I believe the warning is for believers who take the holy things of God flippantly – an attitude that if pursued could lead down the road to becoming a total apostate who WOULD be judged with the world. This verse makes sense that God in His mercy is firing a warning shot across the bow of anyone who is irreverent about communion so that he doesn’t go down that path to destruction.

People take communion in droves in many denominations where unsaved people abound, but you don’t hear stories about people getting sick and dropping dead by the thousands in such places because they are receiving communion while being unworthy because they aren’t saved! If Paul were really warning unbelievers, that would have to be the case. But these people are taking communion reverently although ignorantly, and the fact that they are not struck sick or dead fits the idea that the warning is against the unworthy manner in which some partook of the Lord’s Supper instead of partaking of it while in an unworthy condition.

Finally, the entire context of the passage proves that Paul was warning believers. He started by chiding the Corinthians for pigging out on the communion elements so that some were unable to obey the Lord’s command because there was no bread or fruit of the vine left. THAT had to be the issue that was leading to judgment. Paul’s rebuke did not include any statement about coming together and allowing unbelievers to partake along with believers. So that could not have been the issue that he addressed that resulted in the judgment of sickness and premature death at Corinth. This is totally clear from the last two verses in the chapter:

1 Corinthians 11:33-34:
Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another.
And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come.

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. Miracles aside, if you had cancer in your body, that cancer would have to be cut away before it destroyed your whole body, even if it meant losing a body part in the process. It can be like that with Christ’s Body if YOU become a cancer to it.

No believer who makes a normal effort to get sin out of his life has to fear being “chastened of the Lord” the way that some of the Corinthians were. The fact that God does use sickness and premature death to “chasten” and “judge” unruly believers whose actions openly mock the holy things of God 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. The vast majority of sickness is NOT judgment; it’s just part of the corruption that is on the earth because of sin. The case in Corinth was a special exception, not the rule.

I must emphasize that God’s actions against the Corinthians were not done out of wrath. Jesus had already borne all wrath for the sins they had committed. This judgment was discipline to keep the church at Corinth from continuing down a wrong path. If you spank a young child for trying to touch your wood stove when you told him not to do it, you are not doing it out of wrath (I hope!) but out of love, trying to keep the child from hurting himself. However, you are inflicting pain on the child as part of the process of discipline. I see God’s actions at Corinth as a spiritual spanking, not an outpouring of wrath.

“OK,” you may say, “but you don’t KILL your child for doing something wrong. Then he won’t live to do anything right or learn any lessons.” However, these actions were for the good of the church body as a whole, just as some people have had amputations of a body part to save the rest of the body from gangrene.

Homosexuals Receive a Just Reward in Themselves

Romans 1:26-27 talks about homosexuals receiving the just reward in themselves for their vile, unnatural, shameful error. I am not inventing any slurs here; I am simply quoting what this passage says about the matter. The Bible will never win you any awards for political correctness, but the fact is that disease (often AIDS or other venereal diseases) is considered by God to be just punishment for the abomination (Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 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 the verses will never go away. Some object that it is also an “abomination” under the Law to eat shellfish (true), but there is no shellfish ban in the New Testament (all foods are lawful), while homosexual acts are still condemned in the New Testament. God does not condone sodomy. He declares that no homosexual (or other sexual sinner) shall inherit the kingdom of God. If that’s too strong for you, take it up with God, who wrote 1 Corinthians 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.” The underlined words actually refer in the Greek to two types of homosexuals – active ones and passive ones. God also lists homosexuals in the same list as people who murder their parents and kidnappers, among others. (In 1 Timothy 1:9-10; “them that defile themselves with mankind” in the Greek is a clear reference to homosexuals.) There is no question where God stands on this sinful behavior.

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 his sins (not only sodomy) and that he will receive forgiveness for everything if he receives Jesus. 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. I’m a live witness to that fact.

Don’t assume that homosexuals hate God and want nothing to do with Him. Many of them have simply never heard the real gospel. Their “friends” may tell them to stay away from preachers because they claim that the preachers hate them. I know from experience that this goes on. Many of them have experienced some kind of sexual trauma or abuse. However, when I did street ministry in Maine, the biggest takers of tracts were high school students, followed by “LGBT” people! If they see signs and wonders, they may well repent of their sin – according to JESUS!

Matthew 11:23:
And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

Jesus indicated that even the hard-code homosexuals in Sodom would have repented if they had seen signs and wonders like the ones Jesus did. Since we are to do the works of Jesus, homosexuals SHOULD see signs and wonders like the ones Jesus did – and repent!

You can’t explain away Romans 1:26-27. You can only avoid doing what these verses talk about to avoid getting what these verses talk about. This is why finding a cure for AIDS would not be a permanent solution. Because Romans 1:26-27 will always be true, there would be another horrible disease to take the place of AIDS if a cure for AIDS were found. Partaking of God’s wrath for sexual and other sins is also mentioned in the next section 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 in their 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.

Being Avenged by God

Colossians 3:25 makes it clear that a believer can receive recompense for the wrong he does. In particular, 1 Thessalonians 4:4-6 and Hebrews 13:4 warn believers that God avenges adultery.

If You Defile God’s Temple, God Will Destroy You

1 Corinthians 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 at all what this passage is talking about. You is in the plural in the original Greek. God’s Church collectively is called the temple of God. God is saying that if any man tries to defile the Church, God will destroy him. (The word destroy Is actually the same Greek word as the one translated defile, so this does not speak of total destruction or death, but literally of corruption. The main translation of this word is corrupt; you can read more about this in the article Am I Sick Because I Touched God’s Anointed?.) 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 (especially against the pastor) to advance yourself, you are a candidate for bodily trouble. It is too tame to say, “God will allow the devil to corrupt you,” because this verse says that God will corrupt you. God is jealous for His Body. He will personally judge anyone who messes with it. If you can’t tolerate your local church, go find one you can tolerate. DO NOT run around your intolerable church trying to set people against the pastor. I have been in the position of finding the pastor intolerable, but when I left, I did not try to drag anyone else out the door with me, even friends. As far as the pubic was concerned, I never disillusioned anyone who thought the man walked on water. If there aren’t any churches you can tolerate within driving distance, either move so that you are near one that you can tolerate or get someone to plant a church you can tolerate near you. Perhaps a good Bible school could refer a reputable graduate to your area.

There are limited serious cases where you would be right to warn others about a pastor, for example, one who is a pedophile. In such a case, “covering the sin” would NOT be an act of love because it would just enable the wrongdoer to keep hurting others, and you would be responsible for not warning anyone. I once had someone ask for prayer for his minster friend who got into that. The request was for him to avoid jail. I responded that I would pray that he be put behind bars, the sooner, the better. But even in a serious case like that, you have to have two or three witnesses (actual witnesses, not gossip-repeaters). I had a pastor once who turned out to be a financial con man who exploited his own sheep (despite his excellent doctrine), but even then, the only time I’d mention it was if someone were considering “investing” with him. I didn’t go around trying to tear him down in front of people to whom it would make no difference. It all caught up with him without my intervention; in fact, he died a horrible protracted death that would be hard to wish on your worst enemy. This underscores the point that if you mess with God’s Church, you will pay a high price just as they did in Corinth. YOU are not the avenger of such things; GOD is. I heard of another pastor who brazenly stole a guest speaker’s offering and ended up dead soon thereafter. Don’t mess with God’s Church!

I’ve had a couple pastors with lying issues as well. In neither case did I “bust things open” and give the pastor and the church a black eye even though I had proof they were lying. I didn’t consider the issues big enough to have to take public, but of course I lost all respect for these men and left their churches. Yet another was dishonest when it came to using pirated computer software and was known for paying vendors extremely late. I didn’t “out” him either. If you’re going to err in such matters, it’s better to err on the side of silence. Otherwise, you can get on a slippery slope because no perfect pastor other than Jesus has ever walked the earth. I wouldn’t stay somewhere where the leadership was embezzling (one of the categories of people who don’t inherit the kingdom of God is “embezzlers” (the Greek word for thieves in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11), which should be a sobering thought given that at this writing over 10% of U.S. churches have had that issue). But I would stay somewhere where I disagreed with certain business decisions where the doctrine was good and people were treated well. You always have to consider (as Paul did in 1 Corinthians 6:1-7 cited below) what the impact to outsiders will be. Sometimes it’s better to just let yourself be defrauded, which is what I did with two “deadbeat” pastors who borrowed and didn’t pay back. Otherwise, some people eager to pick up anything negative about any minister will spread the report everywhere so that the Body of Christ can get a big black eye.

1 Corinthians 6:1-7:
Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?
But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?

Having opened that can of worms, what about a new church plant that starts getting members from one or more other established churches? We are assuming this is not an “involuntary church plant” (a church split) where the church is “planted” by a disgruntled former member of an established church. I’ve even seen cases where associate pastors run off with part of the church and start their own supposedly better churches even though the senior pastor has done nothing seriously sinful, but I have yet to see God bless such an arrangement. The “better” church usually doesn’t last long, not because it isn’t actually better, which in some ways it might be, but because the way things were handled was ungodly. There is a difference between starting a church because God commissioned you to start that kind of a church in the area and starting a church because you’re upset with your pastor and you feel like stealing half of the sheep! I’ve heard the argument from such men that they’re “God’s sheep” and thus fair game, but consider how you would like it as a pastor if your right-hand man did that to YOU.

Occasionally, a pastor may end up at loggerheads with his board and leave his church (or be kicked out of it) to start another one in the same town. Generally speaking, starting another church in the same town as the church you left is not a good idea.

I know of a case where God prospered a church started quite a while later by a minister from another church in the same town when the pastor of the first church proved himself untrustworthy. The pastor of the new church did NOT try to recruit people from the former church, which was honorable. I am convinced in his case that GOD led people away from the dishonest pastor, even though some of the people being led out weren’t even aware of the issues. (Why would God want a person to stay in a church with a dishonest pastor?)

I do marvel at how many Christians say things like “God hasn’t released me yet” even though they know their pastor is untrustworthy. You don’t need a word from God to leave a church where the pastor has moral issues. If you’re waiting for a word that it’s OK to leave, consider this your word!

The question for a truly God-commissioned church is how you handle things. It’s not wrong to accept people from other churches who are looking for a better church, for example, someone who wants a Spirit-filled, healing-preaching church instead of a traditional denominational church. It’s not wrong to accept people who learn of a moral failure in their pastor and don’t want to stay where they are. Some places feed the sheep so poorly that they’re scrawny and can squeeze through the fence posts. I wouldn’t turn away someone who is looking for more than he’s getting if that person makes the decision to switch. But there is a difference between accepting people and recruiting people. Some tactics are dirty. If you accept speaking engagements at local churches and then try to siphon off their members for your own church, they’ll have a legitimate beef with you. If you blow into town and do a crusade that rallies local churches together and then proceed to recruit their members to a new church you’re suddenly planting, I can see how other pastors wouldn’t want anything to do with you anymore. (A prominent traveling minister decimated his rally attendance doing that – learn from his mistake!) You have to be careful. My reflex used to be to try to reconcile a new person with his former pastor, but I found that most of the time the issue was doctrinal and there was no hope for reconciliation. For example, the person starts hearing and reading good material online or on TV or radio and realizes that attending the First Church of If-It-Be-Thy-Will is not helpful. The person seeks out a better church. There’s nothing wrong with that person leaving and there is nothing wrong a Full Gospel church receiving that person.

In some parts of the world that already embrace a Christian culture, almost ANYONE who joins a new church will be coming from another church. In that case, if you had an ironclad policy that you only want the people that you won to the Lord yourself, you might not have many people. However, you do need a kingdom mindset that you want to build the kingdom of God without making it always be at someone else’s expense. God can and does send qualified helpers from other places if what you’re doing is commissioned by Him. You’re not “stealing” a sheep that God sends to you.

Complainers Destroyed

1 Corinthians 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. While Satan does not have a LEGAL right to afflict you, he can and will operate illegally if you cooperate with him. (He will get his just punishment for his lawbreaking in the lake of fire.) 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. Sin still costs you something in the New Testament even though you are forgiven for it. That’s why God hates sin so much – He loves you and He doesn’t want to see you get hurt.

Even if you would never think of committing a sin like adultery, you have purchased a ticket to trouble when you use your tongue to complain about everything the pastor does and to criticize everyone else at church. 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 get away from them and find somewhere to go where you CAN support the leaders. If a leader is in blatant sin, you may have to take some kind of action to protect the flock, but you still want to limit airing dirty laundry publicly as much as possible lest the Church as a whole get a black eye. If you can’t find any church that you like anywhere, YOU are the problem and you are already in trouble.

In passing, I’ll mention that some unscrupulous pastors use a heavy-handed “touch not God’s anointed” message to discourage anyone from reporting their sins to anyone else or even disagreeing with them. It is NOT “touching God’s anointed” to disagree with doctrine. It IS “touching God’s anointed” to run around town telling people who aren’t even part of the church about the pastor’s shortcomings. It ISN’T “touching God’s anointed” to correct a pastor privately if he is in overt sin. It ISN’T “touching God’s anointed” to get confidential advice elsewhere about how to handle your pastor’s faults. There are certainly gray areas in the middle, and I would lean to the side of not reporting a pastor’s misdeeds to other people, especially if they would not be in danger themselves from those misdeeds. By the way, we’re ALL God’s anointed in the New Covenant, just to put that into perspective! More thoughts about this are found in the article Am I Sick Because I Touched God’s Anointed?.

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. If you fail to heed the warning, you will find that the correct statement that God is GOOD at the time does not mean that God is LOVEY-DOVEY all the time. You will encounter a different side of Him.

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 has come that judgment must begin at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). Believers who persist in deliberate sin even when they know better and refuse to repent will be judged. Grace is wonderful, but it does not grant you the right to continue to sin deliberately without consequences. If you were an unbeliever, judgment going on at the house of God would not affect you because you would not be part of the house of God. I understand that in order to avoid citing a situation where believers were judged, someone might assert that Peter was talking to unbelievers mixed with the believers in the house of God. But the verse itself clearly disproves that. Take a look for yourself:

1 Peter 4:17:
For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

Peter makes a distinction between “us” (where judgment begins) and those who “obey not the gospel of God.” An unbeliever would be a person who “obeys not the gospel of God” and is thus not part of “us.” That seals the matter for me.

Handed Over to Satan for the Destruction of the Flesh

1 Corinthians 5:1-5 orders a certain man who fornicated with his stepmother 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 someone who claims to be a brother but is an unrepentant fornicator. The church is to kick such people out and not let them back in until they repent. (The end of 1 Corinthians 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 the sexually immoral 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. They CANNOT be tolerated. It is a lame excuse for the pastor to say (as I actually heard one say), “Well, God forgives him and so do I.” If a church puts a shack-up on the worship team because he can play a mean guitar and make the worship sound really cool, the pastor is an idiot who needs to read his Bible more. And unfortunately, this statement refers to a lot of pastors these days, to say nothing of the ones who wink at sin in the congregation at large because they fear repercussions if they actually obey Hebrews 12:15-16 and look diligently lest there be any fornicator among them. (Like the writer of Hebrews, I am talking about the unrepentant ones who pose as believers and still willfully persist in their sin, not shack-ups walking in off the street who need to hear the good news and be saved. We had the privilege of marrying such a couple.)

Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery – but then He told her to go and sin no more (John 8:10-11). 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 1 Corinthians 5:11-13 for yourself. Paul also warned, “Evil communications [companions] corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).

Handing the man over to Satan implies that no prayer would be made for his protection and that no one would fellowship with him. He would be out 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 was that after his flesh started hurting, he would decide to repent and come back. Tough as this seems, this was the mercy of God in action. The goal, of course, was restoration, not judgment, and having the person avoid hell. In the case of this man, the goal was achieved! He repented, he came back, and Paul urged the Corinthians to forgive him (2 Corinthians 2:4-8).

It is clear that no one was doing “witch curses” to get the devil to beat someone up. If the devil already has an open door, he needs no congregation to give him one.

Another case of this is found in 1 Timothy 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.” Here Paul said that HE, not a congregation, handed the man over to Satan. The reasonable understanding of this was that Paul would not pray for mercy or protection for him, but would simply let the law of sowing and reaping take its course.

Woe for Disobedience

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:16, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” This does not explicitly include sickness as a woe, but it would not surprise me if it were included. Remember, Paul was a forgiven saint who was the righteousness of God in Christ, as all believers are. But even for him, if he were to deliberately choose to walk in disobedience to what he knew for sure was God’s will, he would be setting himself up for woe to come on him. Therefore, we can conclude that walking in deliberate disobedience to the known will of God also sets you up for woes to come upon yourself.

The idea that judgment or “woe” could never fall upon a believer under grace would have to prove that Paul was not a believer. I don’t know how anyone could take that position. This would not be understood to be a threat to Paul’s salvation, which was never based on works, but it would indicate that he would have troubles in this life that he brought on himself through disobedience. Satan, the originator of disobedience, will waste no time exploiting you for your poor choice.

Sowing and Reaping

Galatians 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. However, it is not “sent” to you by either God or the devil, any more than God or the devil makes you fall if you choose to jump off a high building. Spiritual laws are just as binding as physical laws. They can override physical laws. Just as electricity can either electrocute you or let you read a healing e-book, these laws can work either for you or against you, depending on what you do.

Note that this passage doesn’t say, “He who sows to the flesh will reap corruption from God.” It says, “He who sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” So this is not about God chastening or sickening anyone explicitly. If you sow to the flesh, God does not make you pay – you make yourself pay due to the law of sowing and reaping that God already established.

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. (This refers to an unbeliever receiving ministry; a believer’s sins would already have been forgiven.) 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. Satan is an opportunist, which is why you are commanded not to give him an opportunity (Ephesians 4:27). He’ll take it if you give him one, and sickness is his specialty.

Rich Oppressors Reap and Weep

James speaks of a special kind of judgment that will fall on those who oppress, condemn and kill the innocent.

James 5:1-7:
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shell eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

This appears to refer to a final judgment as opposed to something in this life, as we do not see cankering or rusting of gold and silver now. The last verse above alludes to the coming of the Lord, which would underscore that interpretation.

“Vial” Sores and Pains

Revelation 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, and the sickness in the vials is not in manifestation in heaven.) Food for thought, isn’t it? Vengeance is God’s (Romans 12:19), not the devil’s. Everything the devil does is illegal and contrary to the will of God; he is not God’s delegated punisher of sin.

We tend to downplay the wrath of God today because few people want to hear about it and we want everyone to come hear our messages about how nice God is all the time. But the wrath of God is real today. Sinners will find this out during the Great Tribulation period. Most of the Book of Revelation is about the wrath of God on sinners on the earth! God is good, but that means that He is morally good, not that He will always be nicey-nice to those who reject His Son. God will still be “good all the time” when He sends all those whose names are not written in the Book of Life to the lake of fire forever. If they were allowed into heaven, they’d ruin it for the righteous! Being good and being merciful is NOT the same as having a mamby-pamby attitude toward sin. If God let sin go unpunished, He would be unjust and unfit to rule the universe. Thank God for sending Jesus to accept the punishment for our sins, so that those of us who HAVE received Him will be spared the agony that will justly come upon sinners.

Revelation 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.

Note that these pains and sicknesses are exclusively for unbelievers.

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. Regardless of whether you believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, it is certain that believers will not be the object of these horrible judgments. You see, God reserves wrath for His enemies (Nahum 1:2), not for His children. God has not appointed us to wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9) but rather delivers us from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10). (The King James Version says that He delivered us from the wrath to come, but the Greek word for delivered is actually in the present tense, as is reflected correctly in most translations.)

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 they really studied out the wrath of God in Scripture. 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 asteroids.” It will clearly be 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 punishment for unrepented sin on the earth. God is merciful, but He is also just. God provided a way out of this judgment and wrath, but people must receive Jesus to escape them.

God is not simply “lovey-dovey.” 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 delivers us from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 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!

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 just preaching 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)

“For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:5-6)

“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 engages in gross sin against the church – it is GOD’s chastening in 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 and 1 Corinthians 3:16-17. However, the “chastening” in Hebrews 12 is another matter that 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.)

Just Damnation?

Likewise, Romans 3:8 is not about chastening or judgement for a particular sin, even though it has been taken that way:

Romans 3:8:
And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.

While these people are condemned, they were not condemned because they slandered Paul. They slandered Paul because they were already-condemned sinners. Paul was simply saying that they deserve the condemnation that was theirs already as sinners. So this passage does not speak of any kind of fresh judgment falling on people who slander others. That’s not to say that it could not happen – see 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, but Romans 3:8 isn’t the verse to prove it.

Conclusion

Even in the New Testament, God does use sickness as chastening and judgment, even to the point where He actively sends it. This never applies to a believer unless he is deliberately resisting God and clinging to sin, and even then, it seems mostly to apply to cases where someone is hurting other people in Christ’s Body. He loves you but He has to protect His Body from you if you intend to harm it. Sickness as judgment falls only on seriously 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.