By Dan Mielke

Grace Baptist Church

As concerns about the coronavirus grow, how would you respond if your worst enemy came down with the virus?  Would you seek out ways that you could be of assistance, would you embrace him?  What if you had the cure, would you give it to him?  What if you only had one cure left and your child was sick, who would receive the cure?  As you ponder these questions, I would like to share a story of someone who has a similar choice to make.

As reports of the seriousness of the coronavirus are shown and comparisons are made to outbreaks in recent and ancient history, I would like to direct your thinking to the worst virus in history.  The rate of transference is incredibly high, and the mortality rate is 100 percent.  In the history of the world, there has been one killer and that is sin.  The problem with being human is we are already infected with a virus, the virus of sin.

The Bible tells us that the infection rate is 100 percent, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) The Bible also tells us that this virus is 100 percent lethal, “For the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23)  No amount of social distancing, hand washing, or rolls of toilet paper will protect you from this virus.

So when the world is facing a pandemic, why bring up the facts of another virus?  Because there is a cure, and this cure also works against the end result of the coronavirus or any other virus.  There is a cure for the sin virus.  The cure for our sin virus came in a very unexpected way. This is where the Gospel intersects with humanities’ pain, God embraced sinners.

In the Biblical account of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, Jesus paints a vivid picture of a young man who had rejected his father and chosen to live life on his terms.  After squandering his inheritance, he came to a place of repentance and returned to his father.  In the narrative, when the son returned from the pig pen, his father saw him and ran to him and hugged him before he had a chance to bathe.  The son was not only welcomed but embraced, yet that embrace caused the father to smell like the son.

In the same way, God’s embrace of humanity transferred the sin virus.  Jesus Christ as God, now stood smelling like sin.  The apostle Paul ties in this analogy in II Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus became our sin, and in that embrace He became infected with sin so that humanity might be holy.

God was not only willing to embrace His enemy, He was willing to send a curethat cost Him the life of His Son. God sent His own beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to take your eternal death sentence upon Himself on the cross (John 3:16).  The virus of sin killed Him, so that He could give you the cure of eternal life.  An infinite God paid the price for the sin of the whole world on the cross, and He rose again in victory over the sin virus.  Christ became sin for you and offers you His righteousness, but you must receive it.  All of humanity has the choice of receiving God’s cure, or continuing to embrace the sin that kills us.  What might be keeping you from accepting the cure that God died to provide?