The deadliest disease

This morning I was listening to a very moving piece on the radio. It featured an extract from the diary of an English nurse out in Sierra Leone caring for Ebola victims. In it she related the practical difficulties of suiting up every time she entered the ward; the way that crying made the goggles she had to wear mist up dreadfully; the laborious but essential steps taken when removing the protective suit. She told of watching a grieving mother wave her goodbye as her son’s small body was carried out to be buried, unable to touch him; she told, too, of dancing for joy with some patients wonderfully declared free of the disease.

The Bible tells us that we are all affected by a far worse sickness which has a 100% mortality rate: the Bible calls it sin. This sickness claimed the life of God’s only Son too and we should not think that God was any less affected by the death of his Son than that grieving mother watching her son’s body carried out. And yet, the Bible insists that Jesus had no sin of his own (Hebrews 4:15); rather God the Father and God the Son together planned that Jesus would enter our world with no special suit to protect him; he would take our sickness on himself and die on the cross in our place. The Bible says that “by his wounds we have been healed.” We can be declared free of sin, our sickness, when we come to trust that Jesus died for us.