Sin Makes You Sick

“There is no soundness in my flesh because of your anger, nor peace in my bones because of my sin.” Psalm 38:3

Soundness – We all want good health.  There’s nothing better than feeling great.  The American culture has made fitness and health a mega-billion dollar hysteria.  Since the culture serves the god of price, we believe that health can be purchased too.  Just exercise enough, eat right, stay away from free radicals, lower your stress and, just in case, get insurance.  We expect to be healthy.  We treat disease as an abnormality.  But the Bible has a different point of view.  And Biblical reality does not require medical premiums and co-pays.

Sin got in.  That’s the bottom line on health.  Way back in the past, Adam and Eve invited sin into this world and health became one of the principle issues of living.  No one thought a thing about staying healthy while they strolled in the Garden with God.  But after sin got in, the world changed.  The Bible’s viewpoint on health is not about right eating and right exercising.  It’s about right relating.  The fundamental issue with health is sin, not science.  Sin removes soundness from any system, including the body by God.  David chooses the word, me thom, to describe this catastrophe.  It comes from the root tamam, which means “completeness”.  What is tamam is healthy, pure, sound, without blemish and ethically upright.  When sin gets in my life, it attacks all of these things.  I get sick.  I am defiled.  I don’t have sound judgment or actions.  I am unwholesome.  And I no longer have right standing before God.  If there were ever a cancer with a capital “C”, sin is it.  There’s not much point in working away at good health without taking care of the fundamental problem, is there?  Sin is out to get you, one way or another.  It will destroy everything of value in life.  That’s all it will do because that’s all it can do, even if it advertises differently.

David says that he has lost all his good health because God is angry.  We could ask why, but we already know the answer.  God is angry because David believed sin’s 100% money-back guarantee.  When the culture believes that the only wrong is getting caught, you can expect to see a lot of unhealthy results.  Time to go to work on the basics.

How’s your me thom today?

Just a note.  Don’t make the Pharisees’ mistake.  Sin makes me sick, but all sickness is not the result of personal sin.  The equation does not go both ways.  If you don’t believe me, go ask Jesus in John chapter 9.