Objection: Sickness, While Unpleasant, Is Used by God to Build Character
God does not use sickness to make you a better Christian. Satan uses sickness to make you a sicker Christian.
What kind of character could God be building through sickness? Patience? Humility? Longsuffering? Consecration? Love? Let’s look at some of these and see if it is biblical for God to use sickness to produce these traits in your life. Then we’ll consider God’s plan for growth in the life of a Christian and see if sickness qualifies as part of that plan.
Patience?
Patience does not consist of just accepting whatever happens, throwing up your hands, and saying, “Oh well, the will of the Lord be done.” That is resignation, not patience. Patience is an active force, which along with faith, will cause you to inherit the promises of God. Patience consists of refusing to back down until you get your answer.
Hebrews 10:35-36 says that you need patience so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. Hebrews 6:12 tells us that through faith and patience we inherit the promises. Once you have received something by faith, it is time for patience to work.
Stop and think about this for a minute. Patience cannot be the grace to resign yourself to pain and suffering. If it were, it would not be a tool by which you could receive the promises of God. Instead, it would be a tool used while NOT receiving the promises of God!
In regard to healing, you only use patience when you are in faith. If you are not in faith, you are not in real patience. You are in resignation – to defeat.
Humility?
Do not confuse humility with humiliation. Being unable to care for yourself or work productively during the day because of illness is humiliating, not humbling. It does nothing to make you humbler.
It is not humble to accept illness, which Jesus Christ has redeemed you from. It is humble to accept His sacrifice for your healing without leaning on any of your own merits. You didn’t deserve it, but He gave it to you in His mercy. If you are truly humble, you will accept His healing on His terms – grace!
It is not God’s job to make you humble anyway. It is your job. You are commanded to humble yourself in the sight of the Lord (James 4:10) and to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God (1 Peter 5:6). Jesus said that he that shall humble himself shall be exalted (Matthew 23:12), Luke 14:11, Luke 18:14). You are nowhere commanded to ask God to humble you. God does not make you humble any more than He makes you walk in love. It is your job to choose to walk in love, and it is your job to choose to be humble.
Therefore, God could not possibly use sickness to “make you humble.” The devil will use sickness to try to humiliate you.
Longsuffering?
Longsuffering does not refer to suffering a long time from a disease. God is longsuffering toward us (2 Peter 3:9). If longsuffering refers to suffering from an illness, God could not be longsuffering or even shortsuffering. God is not suffering at all and He is not sick, either.
Longsuffering is listed as a fruit of the Spirit, not a fruit of sickness, in Galatians 5:22-23. God is able to develop longsuffering in you by His Spirit without the use of bodily affliction. As you can see elsewhere in this book, sickness is not the work of God anyway – it is the work of Satan.
God wants you to develop this fruit. But you are mistaken to think that He will develop it through something that is the work of the devil.
Consecration?
The idea is to be consecrated before you get sick. If you fail to live a consecrated life, you may open the door to the devil to make you sick. This is true even under the New Covenant. You may “learn” consecration in this way by suffering the penalty of being unconsecrated. But it is never the will of God for you to learn consecration that way. His way is for you to voluntarily present your body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). You choose to be consecrated. Although you can learn the valuable lesson that serving God pays better than not serving God, having the devil beat you up is never the will of God for your life.
The idea that you should “humbly” submit to the will of God (meaning sickness) because you are consecrated shows only ignorance of God’s healing covenant. If you are truly consecrated to God, you should desire the good health that God desires for you (3 John 2) at all times so that you can serve Him to the fullest.
Love?
It is important to maintain your love walk even when your body is in pain, and it is surely more difficult to do so then. But this does not mean that God wants you sick to give you “love practice,” any more than it is His will for others to be nasty to you just so that you can develop your love walk. Love is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), not a fruit of sickness. You develop your love walk by believing what the Bible says about the love of God within you, which is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). If you don’t develop your love walk the Bible way, it will probably deteriorate when you get sick, to the regret of everyone around you.
God’s Plan for Your Growth
What about other areas? What is God’s plan for your growth? Let’s see.
“As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Peter 2:2). It is God’s Word, not a trial, that produces growth. A trial simply shows you how much you have (or have not) grown! You, not God, are responsible for your growth as a Christian. You are commanded to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). This is a command, so it’s up to you to do it, not up to God. God will help you grow, but you must submit to Him and let Him correct you (Hebrews 12:5-13).
Mark 4:2-25 makes clear that a harvest in your life is the result of planting the seed of God’s Word and making sure that you are good ground for it. It is the Word, not your flesh or personality, that will produce the 30-, 60- or 100-fold return in your life.
According to Ephesians 4:11-16, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers are given so that, speaking the truth in love, we may grow up into Christ in all things. So another vehicle God uses for your growth is ministry gifts in the Body of Christ. That is why people who refuse to be pastored remain babies. They are refusing one of the means God uses to produce growth in our lives. And I am talking about having a REAL pastor who knows you personally, not a “TV pastor” who can’t counsel you in person or hold you accountable.
Here’s a Scripture that some might think applies to God taking things away from you, but it really means the opposite. John 15:2-3: “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” The word purgeth and the word clean in these verses come from the same Greek root word. You can verify this with a concordance. In other words, every branch that bears fruit, He cleans so that it can bear more fruit. (I first noticed this reading my RVR 1960 Spanish Bible, where the Spanish words for He will clean and clean are used in these verses.) How does God clean you? Through His Word! Therefore, this passage represents additional proof that God uses His Word, not sickness or troubles, to cause you to produce more fruit (love, patience, longsuffering, and so on).
In no Scripture does God ever say that He produces growth in the life of a believer through sickness. It is true that you will grow by learning to resist sickness and take authority over it, but the sickness is still the work of the devil, never God’s will.
What Does Sickness Really Teach You?
The only thing sickness will teach you is that it is a drag to be sick and better to be well. Be honest enough to admit that the last time you got sick and spent half the night throwing up in the toilet, you did not learn one single lesson about Christian character or anything else. You were inconvenienced and annoyed and maybe embarrassed, and you just wanted to be well. You learned nothing spiritual at all. You know that full well, so don’t try to tell us that God uses sickness to teach you lessons unless you can cite the lessons God supposedly taught you through your experience. You simply found out what God says – sickness is a curse!
One Final Thought About God Developing Character with Sickness
How many precious saints have been killed in the prime of life by disease? How many have died long before they were satisfied with long life? If their sickness was supposed to have the result of improved character, what opportunity was there for improved character on the earth after they died? Can you see how ridiculous it is to think that God gave you a disease that killed you so that you would have better character?