Objection: Sickness Can Be the Chastening of the Lord
This is actually a correct statement, as proved by 1 Corinthians 11:27-32, where unruly believers got sick because they did not reverence the Lord’s Supper. Sickness can be outright punishment for the blatantly ungodly and disobedient. See the discussion Sickness as Chastening and Judgment in the New Testament for vivid details.
The problem occurs when we apply this to everyday believers who are not in extreme sin. The usual “proof text” that God sends sickness as chastening on regular believers is the passage below, which we must examine critically to see if that is really what it says:
Hebrews 12:5-13:
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;
And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
The usual conclusion reached here is that chastening must refer to bodily affliction because the last two verses refer to physical problems. Also, the word scourging refers to physical punishment. If this is so, all of us should expect to get sick as part of God’s divine training. In that case, God is using something from which He says we are redeemed (Deuteronomy 28:61 with Galatians 3:13) to train us. He is putting something on us that Jesus already bore for us (Isaiah 53:4, Matthew 8:17). This is ridiculous, but we should answer this objection on its own territory, which is the passage quoted above. The critical issue is what chastening refers to here.
First, we are not to faint at His chastening or when we are rebuked. Rebuke is a verbal warning, not a physical punishment. God rebukes us through His Word. In fact, the same Greek word for chastening above is translated instruction in 2 Timothy 3:16 (“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for...instruction in righteousness”). Paul did not say that Scripture was profitable to make you sick. The same Greek word is translated nurture in Ephesians 6:4: “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Paul did not tell the Ephesians, “Fathers, make your children sick to teach them lessons.” Yes, chastening refers to training, which can include punishment (and the word is used that way in some Scriptures), but it does not imply sickness.
Looking again at what Paul told Timothy, the context is instructive:
2 Timothy 3:16-17:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
Sickness makes you imperfect and NOT thoroughly furnished unto all good works, so GOD’S way of correcting you is not the same as the devil’s way of oppressing you.
James gave instructions on what to do if (!) any (!) among you is sick! Thus, chastening cannot be sickness, because according to the passage in Hebrews, we are all partakers of God’s chastisement. If sickness is God’s normal method of chastisement for a believer, there would be no question about whether there would be sick people. James could well have asked, “Is any among you not sick?” It would also introduce a new wind of doctrine that you don’t have to repent of sins for God to stop correcting you; you just call for the church elders to pray the prayer of faith over you to stop God from correcting you with sickness. Can you see how ridiculous that is?
According to the passage in question, God chastens everyone that He loves. If He doesn’t chasten you, you aren’t really a believer. If chastening is sickness, we have yet another new wind of doctrine – if you don’t get sick, you aren’t really saved! In fact, you might be healthier serving the devil because some unbelievers live normal lives and do not get seriously ill. Should we persuade them to get saved by telling them that our wonderful God will make them sick because He loves them, and they can enjoy poorer health so that they can learn God’s ways? Yeah, right. Just see how many people want Jesus if you tell them that!
You know that you are supposed to discipline your children. Would you put cancer on your child to punish him for talking back to you? Would you kill your child with AIDS because he didn’t do his homework last night? That would be considered child abuse, not nurture, discipline or instruction. God is not a child abuser.
The fact that the last two verses of the passage in Hebrews refer to healing has led people to conclude that God refers to getting healed of the sickness with which He chastened you. This is clearly not the case when talking about hands hanging down and feeble knees being strengthened. This verse is quoted from Isaiah 35:3-6, which clearly refers to fear, not illness! The hanging hands and feeble knees are due to fear, not polio or anemia. This goes along with the exhortation at the beginning of this passage to not faint when God rebukes you. In other words, do not get into a fretful kind of fear of God just because He corrects you. Pick yourself up and run your race! Be glad that He loves you enough to correct you.
As for the verse about lame feet, there is no clear indication that this is literal. It would seem not to be, given that most of Hebrews 12 is exhortation to continue running the race (Hebrews 12:1). God is not exhorting you to literally run in the next 5K race in your town, although that would not be a sin. It would seem to me that the allegory has continued into the verse about the lame feet, and that God is still talking about running the race set before you, as He is elsewhere in the chapter. The immediate context is that you make straight paths for your feet, which would be an unusual way of getting literally healed. It that worked, every physical therapy center could have a “straight path” and tell patients to walk on it so that they will be healed.
It is sad that any sick person could use these verses as an excuse to go on a “witch hunt” for “secret sins” when he knows of none, thinking that sickness is God’s punishment on him. These verses say that God rebukes you and corrects you with His chastisement. When God chastises you, He tells you where you’re off and He tells you what to do! He doesn’t dump a disease on you for no apparent reason. Why should God use the devil’s trash when He has His Word to rebuke and correct you?
Besides, we all know that unbelievers catch the same diseases that are going around at church. There is nothing special or godly about unbelievers! If sickness is God’s method of training His children, what purpose do these sicknesses serve in unbelievers who aren’t His children? After all, it is clearly implied in the passage above that it is only His children that He corrects as described in the passage. That makes sense because Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of the sin of not knowing Him as opposed to other individual sins (John 16:8-9). (People’s own God-given consciences will still convict them of other sins if they aren’t believers unless they’ve gotten to the point where they’ve seared their consciences.) What good would it do for God to tell everyone they’re sinning (which He has already done through His Law, as opposed to His Spirit) and still leave them on their way to hell without power in their lives to overcome those sins? (Now God and Jesus WILL talk to BELIEVERS about individual sins, as Hebrews 12:5-13 and various passages in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 make clear. Some preachers have confused what God will convict the WORLD of and what He will convict BELIEVERS of.)
Diseases are not God’s method of training you. The only lessons I have learned from getting colds are that I don’t like colds and that I need to be more diligent in believing God’s healing covenant! Now I almost never get anything like that; a scratchy throat I had a couple weeks before writing this was gone in less than 20 minutes and I didn’t come down with whatever it was even though sickness was making the rounds in town. You can get proficient after a while in rebuking such nuisance ailments. You have as much right to be healed of nuisance ailments as you have to be healed of terminal cancer!
If you say that God uses sickness to chastise you, you should tell us exactly what sins you are being chastised for when you are sick. At the first sign of a sore throat, please explain to us exactly what God is speaking to you about through it. No decent earthly father would “scourge” his child without explaining what was being punished! God would not “punish” you without telling you why either. If you’re arrested, the officer has to cite the charges against you. So cite to us your sin and the lesson you learned, or quit saying that God uses sickness to chastise you.
Apparently, NO ONE in the crowds whom Jesus healed was under “chastisement” from the Lord for sin because Jesus never told anyone to keep his illness because he was under the chastisement of the Lord.
The explicitly stated results of God’s chastening are the peaceable fruit of righteousness and being a partaker of God’s holiness! Was that the result the last time you got a stuffy nose? Did having to breathe through your mouth and use up boxes of tissues and keep your spouse awake half the night make you holy and give you the peaceable fruit of righteousness? If what you’re going through doesn’t produce those results, it definitely isn’t the chastening of the Lord, because the chastening of the Lord produces those results!
God told us in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 above us how He really reproves us –He doesn’t use sickness to do it. God wants us to grow by feeding on His Word (1 Peter 2:2), not by getting sick! Are you totally furnished for every good work if you’re stuck making emergency bathroom runs all day? I don’t think so.
Before we leave this topic, I will say emphatically that some people think that it is “grace teaching” to contradict Hebrews 12:5-13 by saying things like, “God will never deal with you about your sins; only your conscience does that” or “God doesn’t even know if you’re sinning because all He sees is the blood” or “We don’t even have to care if we’re sinning under grace” or “We don’t need to repent because we already have right standing with God.” No one should be able to take Hebrews 12:5-13 seriously and agree with any of those statements. We DO have right standing with God even when we sin but we still need to repent to get sin out of our lives to stop its negative impact. God DOES see our sins – He couldn’t correct us if He didn’t! We SHOULD care about getting sin out of our lives, not only to better our lives but also to be credible witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection.