“… that nothing worse may happen to you.” – Brad Jersak

Question:

I’m curious how you would interpret John 5:14. When Jesus says to the healed paralytic, “Go and sin no more; that nothing worse may happen to you,” is he implying that his disease was caused by his own sin? Wouldn’t that contradict John 9? Or is there something else going on?

Response:

An excellent question! And yes, you would be right to note that if Jesus’ statements to the paralytic and to the man born blind (and concerning the deaths in the first paragraph of Luke 13) were general statements about how sin relates to illness, they would be in direct self-contradiction.

That leads us to conclude that Jesus didn’t operate on assumptions of causation around illness and sin. Human psychology and biology and sociology are far too complex for that. With any given person, he is dealing with the individual in front of him. We don’t know the backstory of the paralytic, but Jesus saw a vulnerability that required a warning about how misusing his newfound health could cause worse problems than his paralysis.

But with the man born blind, Jesus rejects the assumption that sin (whether generational or personal) was behind the blindness. That’s not what happened in this case. And if we are going to generalize, we might put it this way: sins can cause mental, physical, or emotional harm in ourselves and others. That’s what makes it sin. But we cannot always reverse engineer an accident, illness, or disease to wrongdoing. That reversal is far too great a leap.

I used to read headlines from a journal for psychosomatic medicine. It was fascinating that certain symptoms could sometimes be traced to specific patterns of thought or action. E.g., lupus-like symptoms connected to repressed anger in the workplace. And sometimes, dealing with the root withers up the fruit. I’ve seen it. But that is NOT a rule for all. The key word is sometimes. Lupus is caused by a complex interplay of genes, hormones, and environmental factors. So in any given case, we don’t say, “This is always that.”

Jesus knew that. But by the Spirit, he did seem to know exactly what was needed when including post-healing instructions.

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