Weekly Devotional 7-23-12 The Blessing of Sickness and Death
“The Blessing of Sickness and Death” is an odd text for a devotional some might say. How could sickness be a blessing? How could death be a blessing? Most assuredly, suffering some sickness or other is not pleasant. Most assuredly, the process of death is not pleasant. Every fiber of one’s body fights against sickness and death. How then can they be a blessing? The answer is found in understanding their cause and their result.
Sickness and death is a result of sin. Not necessarily one’s own sin, but the transferrable (the inherent) sin of Adam. According to the Book of Beginnings (Genesis), sickness and death were the result of Adam’s disobedience, Genesis 2:8-17, 3:14-19. From the book of Romans, a book about man’s regeneration and redemption, we learn that Adam’s sin nature became the nature of all mankind, Romans 5:12-14. Sin, according to the Genesis passage, resulted in God cursing His own creation. A curse rendered not because of anger, but because of His holiness. God could not allow sin to be in His presence nor could sin be allowed to exist forever. Thus, the sentence of death was given. This death was both spiritual and physical. Adam died spiritually toward God the moment he disobeyed God’s only prohibition, and he began to die physically at that same moment. Not only Adam and Eve, but all that had life became subject to sickness and death.
But, some might ask, “Where is the blessing in all this?” The blessing is that God has not abandoned His creation. Sickness and death are His means to an end of the old and the beginning of the new. Sickness causes the unregenerate to wonder why, but it should be a reminder to the called of God (the regenerate) of their frailty and mortality. Therein lays the blessing. The approach of death many times causes the unregenerate to turn to God seeking an escape. In that seeking, God is able to penetrate through the darkness that holds their souls captive. Sickness and death gives the redeemed an opportunity to speak to others (the unredeemed) about their mortality and their need of God’s forgiveness and restoration.
Death is an open door for the redeemed to enter into heaven’s glory and a life that shall never pass away. This transference is immediate. The Apostle Paul assures us of this in his second letter to the Christians in and around Corinth. We read, “1For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, 3if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. 4For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. 7For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:1-8).
Oh what wonder, what glory, awaits the Christian and all the called of God, but to gain this we must be changed, a change of both our spirits and of our bodies. In respect to our bodies that change starts with death. From that death we are resurrected to newness of life. We read of this in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, “35But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?’ 36Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. 37And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. 38But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body. 39All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. 40There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 41There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
42So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 43It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 45And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam (Jesus Christ) became a life-giving spirit. 46However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. 47The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. 48As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. 49And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.
50Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. 51Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep (die), but we shall all be changed— 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘55 O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’” (1 Corinthians 15:35-55).
So yes, for those called of God, the redeemed, sickness and death is a blessing.
stevelampman@comcast.net stevelampman.com