Cancer and the gospel

Here is a little illustration I've used hundreds of times as I have sought to explain to people the good news of Christ: If on a visit to your doctor he begins, with no explanation, telling you about the newest and best treatments for cancer you will be confused and might say to her, "What are you telling me about cancer for?  I don't have cancer.  I could care less about cancer treatments."  However, if the doctor, after performing some tests says you to, "I have bad news.  You have cancer.  However, it is very treatable.  Let me tell you how we are going to beat this cancer."  When she then goes on to describe the treatment regimen, how interested will you be?  You will be very interested and you will view all that she now says as good news.  It is only when you know you have cancer that cancer treatment is good news to you.

I've given further reflection to this little illustration in light of my having been told on January 18, following a colonoscopy that I had a soft tissue tumor in my colon that was probably cancer.  I have not had any symptons of cancer.  I felt and I feel completely healthy.  I do not feel as though I am in any danger of this dread disease.

Yet, I  submitted to the surgeon taking out a foot of my colon.  This next Tuesday I am willingly submitting to another doctor who will begin pumping strong anti-cancer chemicals into my body which can have significant, negative side effects.  I am going to submit to this procedure 12 times during the next 6 months.  Why am I doing this?  It is because I trust the doctors.  I am taking the doctor's word for what my problem is and what treatments will cure me of the disease.  I am doing nothing to cure my cancer.  I am trusting the doctor's to cure it by surgery and medicine.  Because of my faith in the doctor's I obey their commands.

Every human being is afflicted with a far more dread disease than cancer.  All of us are sinners by nature and thus by practice.  We all, because of sin, justly deserve the eternal wrath of God against us.  Most people in the world do not feel that they are in any real danger.  They do not see themselves as particularly sinful and most certainly do not fear God's anger against them.  The good news about Jesus is only good news to those who know that they are afflicted with the disease, sin and God's just wrath against us for our sins, which Jesus came to heal.

I did not think of myself as a sinner or think that God was opposed to me for the first 20 years of my life.  Then in the spring of 1975, by the grace of God I believed what God says in his word.  His command to me and to every human being is that we love him with our whole being 24/7 and that we love our neighbor as ourselves 24/7.  He says that if we do not obey him that he will justly punish us in hell forever.  Again, by God's grace, I saw that I did not love God, nor did I love others as I ought.  Thus I believed God's diagnosis of my problem.  I am a sinner who deserves hell.  Then by the work of God's Holy Spirit I saw that God had provided a solution for the disease of sin with which I am afflicted.  The eternal Son of God took on human flesh, being born of a virgin.  He did what I never did.  He obeyed God's law perfectly throughout his whole life.  He willingly suffered the death I deserve when he died on that cross, bearing the full weight of God's just wrath against me.  Then he rose from the dead and ascended to God's right hand where he now intercedes on my behalf.  This is all true for me because I have believed God's word concerning my disease and concerning the cure he has provided in Christ.  I did nothing and I do nothing to cure me of sin.  Christ has done everything for me.  I simply trust him to do for me what he has said that he has done and will do.

I live now by faith in the Son of God who loved and gave himself up for me.  I seek to obey his commands because I believe he is the cure and has the cure for what ails me.  I aim to submit to whatever he sends to me because he is out to do me good, to enable me to share God's holiness.