Coronavirus and Christ by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: REL012000/REL012110/REL019000
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Picturing Moral Horror

ANSWER 1.

God is giving the world in the coronavirus outbreak, as in all other calamities, a physical picture of the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of God-belittling sin.

SIN, IN FACT, IS WHY all physical misery exists. The third chapter of the Bible describes the entrance of sin into the world. It shows sin to be the origin of global devastation and misery (Gen. 3:1–19). Paul summed it up in Romans 5:12: “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”

The world has been broken ever since. All its beauty is interwoven with evil and disasters and diseases and frustrations. God had created it perfect. “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). But from humanity’s fall into sin to this very day, history, for all its wonders, is a conveyor belt of corpses.

The Fall Is Judgment

The Bible does not see this brokenness as merely natural, but as the judgment of God on a world permeated with sin. Here’s how Paul described the effects of God’s judgment on the world because of sin:

The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Rom. 8:20–22)

Futility. Bondage to corruption. Groaning. These are images of global devastation and misery since sin entered the world. And Paul says this devastation is owing to the judgment of God: “The creation was subjected to futility . . . because of him who subjected it in hope” (8:20). Satan did not subject it in hope. Adam did not subject it in hope. God did. As Paul said in Romans 5:16, “The judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.”

Even His Children under Judgment

To be sure, this passage is full of hope—“the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). God has a stunning plan for a new creation, where “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 21:4). But for now, we are all under his judgment. He has subjected the world to death, disaster, and misery.

Yes, even his own children—those whom he “predestined . . . for adoption” (Eph. 1:5), redeemed by the blood of his Son (Eph. 1:7), and appointed for eternal life (Eph. 1:18)—even we suffer and die because of God’s judgment in the fall. “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23). Christians get swept away in tsunamis. Christians are killed in terrorist attacks. Christians get the coronavirus.

Purification, Not Punishment

The difference for Christians—those who embrace Christ as their supreme treasure—is that our experience of this corruption is not condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ” (Rom.

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