At the very beginning of human history, God placed Adam and Eve in Eden. It was a garden full of light. Everything God had made was good. There was no evil in the garden. The place was full of fruit-bearing trees. In the middle of the garden, God put two special trees—the tree of life and the tree that gives the knowledge of good and evil. God told the couple that they could eat the fruit of any of the trees in the garden, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:9, 16–17). They were not forbidden to eat from the tree of life.
One day when they were at the centre of the garden, instead of standing under the tree of life, they stood before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was when the Tempter could mess with their minds. He told them that eating from the tree they were in front of would expand their minds and their lives. They could become just like the Creator (3:4–5). That is how Adam and Eve were tempted to explore the dark side, leaving the light and the goodness of God. They had a choice. They could have eaten the fruit of the tree of life. But they wanted what God had kept from them to protect them as their Creator Father. “Secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those that are revealed belong to us and our descendants forever, so that we might obey” (Deut 29:29, NET).
The sickness of the world is the fallout of what transpired in Eden.
When Adam and Eve explored the dark side, they opened the door to evil. Their punishment was that they had to leave the safe place God had created for them. They went out into the world that was cursed because of them. God told Adam and Eve that there would be hard labour and pain in their lives from then on. We live in a fallen world, and that is why there is sickness. It comes with the curse on humanity (Gen 3:16–19). All creation groans and all wait for the redemption of our mortal bodies (Rom 8:20–23).
The hardship and pain never go away. The thorns keep on coming back. The sickness of the world is the fallout of what transpired in Eden. Theologically that event is called the Fall. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they had a fall and they took their world along, because they had been given the role of ruling the rest of creation. Think about it: today environmentalists blame all our problems of climate change, global warming and the extinction of species on humans doing wrong. What Adam and Eve started, their descendants did and keep on doing.
God’s Plan to Save
However, God is good—all the time. He is light and love personified (1 Jn 1:5; 4:8). He would not let fallen humans go. He put a plan of redemption in place (Gen 3:15) and instituted the way for Adam and Eve to experience redemption (v.21).
When the whole world was going against God, He chose a man and his family to be a channel of blessing to the world (12:1–3). God gave them laws for healthy living. God identified what foods would be good for them. All grains and fruit were permitted, but meats that would harm them were prohibited. Today we eat pork and rabbit meat, but we know that they have to be cooked well to prevent parasitic infections. Scavenger fish and scavenger birds were also not to be consumed. Apart from dietary laws, God also instituted sanitary practices. Excreta was not to be left uncovered (Deut 23:12–14), and isolation was to be practised to stop the spread of infectious skin diseases (Lev13:1–46).
God told His people, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you” (Ex 15:26).
If we are in covenant with God we can ask God for healing, but if we are not, we don’t have any right to appeal to God.
Note that conditions apply: “If you listen carefully to the Lord…if you pay attention to his commands and keep all His decrees…” Note also that the word “Lord” is in caps. That’s because in the Hebrew text instead of the word “Lord”, the covenant name Yahweh is used in the passage. If we are in covenant with God we can ask God for healing, but if we are not, we don’t have any right to appeal to God.
A covenant is not at all like a legal contract. It’s a two-way relationship of intimacy, involvement and interaction. If we get into relationship with God then we have the confidence that allows us to approach the throne of grace—not because we are worthy to approach, but because we are assured of grace. This is what Jesus meant when He said that we are to pray in His Name. We approach God because Jesus has entered us into a covenant with God and we tell God that we do not come to Him claiming rights, but are just begging for grace in the Name of Jesus. We cannot be like the boastful Pharisee who was full of himself, but we need to be like the tax collector, asking only for mercy (Lk 18:9–14). We can be sure of God’s mercy. We will not be denied.
While the Bible does not assert that infirmity and sickness come to people because they are individually guilty of some specific wrongdoing, sinful living does have physical consequences. The Bible talks of God smiting people in punishment (Ex 12:29; Num 11:33; 1 Sam 25:38; 2 Ki 15:5; 2 Chron 21:18; Acts 12:23). Jesus told one man whom He healed to “sin no more so that something worse doesn’t happen” (Jn 5:14).
On the other hand, we must not conclude that anyone who is sick is under the judgment of God. When the disciples asked Jesus whether a man’s blindness was caused by sin, His response was that no one had sinned, but that God would manifest His glory through the man’s healing (Jn 9:1–3).
