THE ORIGIN OF SICKNESS AND DISEASE
God is love. He always wants freedom for His people and blessings instead of curses. He wants us to prosper, to succeed. After all He has empowered us to prosper and be in health, even as our soul prospers (3 John 2). He has paid the price for us to prosper and be health. He took all our diseases and sicknesses upon Himself. What He left us is healing and health. They are ours. It is our privilege to keep these blessings of health. It is our responsibility to be aware of our freedom of health and to learn how to keep it. We learn that from God’s Word.
Let’s go on a journey back to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to the Garden of Eden, on this earth, with Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, created by God.
God gave Adam dominion or rulership over this earth. Adam was a free man. By an act of his will, Adam made satan his lord and thus gave the rulership of the earth to satan. As a result, the nature of spiritual death which is in satan replaced the nature of spiritual life which is in God (zoe). Divine health comes from spiritual life. Sickness and disease (dis—ease) comes from spiritual death.
When man sinned or listened to satan and disobeyed God’s instructions, he died spiritually. Spiritual death does not mean you no longer exist; it simply means that you are separated from God and thus open to everything satan has —- lack, want, death, sickness and disease, poverty, defeat, failure. Sickness came as a result of spiritual death. Man was not sick before. There is no sickness in God, and God had breathed Himself into man. Sickness comes from satan. It is a perversion of health, the opposite to health. Everything opposite to God comes with satan.
To this day satan hates the man God created and does everything he can do to destroy man. Jesus told us that the thief (satan) comes only in order to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came that we may have and enjoy life, have it in abundance, to the full, until it overflows. That is divine health—-fullness, overflow of life.
It was not God’s will for Adam to sin. Neither were the results of that sin God’s will. God never intended for man to be sick or have to contend with sickness. Sin is manifested in the spirit of man. Sickness is manifested in the body of man. All of it is a curse and not a blessing. Both sin and sickness are a result of man’s forfeiture of rulership of the earth to satan and his demons and his works. Both are works of evil and not of good. But certainly neither is from God.
The curse is a powerful force on this earth, but God had a plan even before man fell. The curse has overtaken the entire world, but God and His Word have the power to stop it. Until Jesus came to permanently take care of that curse, God instituted statutes and ordinances (His Word, in essence) which Israel was to diligently keep. Their keeping of these statutes and ordinances was their only way of deliverance. God was not being harsh or demanding or trying to put a burden on people with these statutes. He was showing them that this is what was necessary for their freedom. However, they discovered they could not keep these laws. God had already provided the solution. Blood was shed from animal sacrifices to cover the people’s sins. He always has a plan for His beloved people.
Then Jesus, the Living Word, came and shed His blood to redeem man from the curse of the law. That was the ultimate plan God had all along for His beloved ones. Aren’t you glad you as His Beloved One have been redeemed from both sin and sickness and disease?