John 9:3-5 - Does sin cause sickness?

9:3

Jesus tells them they are wrong. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned”. Now these words should be a stark warning against over literal interpretation of passages. Words are to be interpreted within their context. Every Bible believing Christian would say that Jesus is the only man never to have sinned, yet if we interpret these words in a crudely literal sense then clearly there are at least three more people who did not sin. This is quite clearly nonsense, what Jesus is saying is that the man’s blindness is not a result of his or his parents’ sin. So we need to exercise a bit of common sense in interpreting the Bible, and that includes Genesis 1-3.

Now we can make one of two mistakes with regard to sin and sickness. One is to say that all sin is a direct result of sin. Jesus is saying that that is not true. All sickness is a result of sin in a general sense, but not all sickness is a direct result of one’s own sin. The other mistake is to say that sickness is never a direct result of sin. That is equally unbiblical nonsense. Sometimes sickness is a direct result of sin. These verses should also be a warning of going overboard on “generational curses”. Some things are passed on in families, but not everything is a result of that.

“But this happened ...” The Greek actually doesn't actually say that, the words “this happened” do not appear in the Greek, but are an interpretation. We should also remember that early Greek had no punctuation. Verses 3 and 4 could equally well be translated  “Jesus replied neither this man sinned nor his parents, but so that the works of God may be revealed in him it is necessary for us to work the works of him who sent me while it is day, night is coming when no one can work” (Kruse).

9:4,5

We live in darkness. Dark things happen in the world, they happen in general, and they happen in individual lives. Sometimes dark things happen in our own lives. But Jesus came to do good. “While I am in the world I am the light of the world”. Jesus is not in the world any longer, so now we are to be light in the darkness.

There is a time to do good, but there also comes a time when it is impossible to do so, so we need to seize every opportunity. Soon the world would crucify Jesus so that He could no longer heal people, but even this happened for a purpose, a much deeper and greater purpose as we know. We need to understand that for reasons beyond our comprehension there are times when evil seems to triumph, but everything is in God’s hands and the ultimate defeat of evil is assured. In the meantime we should seek to do all the good that we can.