Did God Cause The Corona Virus?
This question haunts many of us. If there’s an all-powerful God, couldn’t He have prevented this? If there’s a sovereign God, why would He allow this by His sovereign will? And maybe even more pointedly, did God CAUSE this?
I want to offer three reflections from Scripture.
01. GOD IS SOVEREIGN OVER SUFFERING.
When bad things happen our temptation is to disbelieve that God is in control. Maybe there is no God after all, or if there is a God He's finite like us. However, the Bible teaches that God is completely sovereign. We could generate a list of literally hundreds, even thousands of verses that reinforce this idea. For the sake of time I’ve cited five below.
- Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
- Job 42:2 I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
- Matthew 10:29–31 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
- Isaiah 45:7–9 I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.
- Lamentations 3:37–39 Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?
The definition we often use at Rise is this:
- Sovereignty God’s sovereignty means his utter and total dominion over every atom of the universe. He exercises authority in all circumstances, decreeing and allowing events both beautiful and terrible.
The question is not, is God sovereign? It's instead, since God is sovereign, does He DESIRE disease and death?
02. GOD DOES NOT DESIRE DISEASE OR DEATH.
Matthew 4:23 And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
John 11:34-35, 43–44 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept… When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
God isn’t evil or capricious. God’s heart is a heart of love. The clearest way to see the nature of God is by looking at Jesus Christ (see Hebrews 1:1).
Jesus healed leapers, lifted up the lame, drove out demons, and un-did death. We see Him sitting at one little girls death bed, when it’s far too late, and He says, “Little girl, arise!”
Though in His sovereignty, God allows suffering to exist in our world, it isn’t true that He desires those things. Far from it, He drives all of it out. We often think that either God is sovereign or He is good. But in the biblical framework, God’s sovereignty and goodness aren’t mutually exclusive. Instead, Scripture holds them in tension. God sovereignly allows evil, but He does not desire it.
So the next question is WHY would God allow evil?
03. DISEASE AND DEATH AREN'T GOD'S DESIRE BUT HE USES THEM TO ACCOMPLISH HIS DESIRE.
Genesis 3:17–19
[17] And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
[18] thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
[19] By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
God’s will is sovereign. But His will isn’t the only will at play. Death and disease started somewhere.
The first humans were created to reflect God's benevolent reign over creation by obeying Him and thus bringing Eden-like order out of the chaos of creation. But instead of obeying God's word and advancing His will, they seized autonomy for themselves. This brought chaos into the order of creation. They plunged the universe itself into ruin. Theologians call this the Fall of Man.
There are cosmic implications of human rejection of God. (Consider Romans 8:20–22). What broke at a cosmic level also broke a microscopic one. Because of sin, the whole creation fell. Stars implode, the earth quakes and crumbles, and viruses grow and multiply.
Therefore, although God is sovereign, we must not say corruption is His fault. Instead we understand it is a part of the curse. God’s sovereign rule allows ruin to persist, not because He desires or endorses it, but because it is a byproduct, generally, of the fall of man into sin and the curse.
Furthermore, God uses death to defeat our sin. God uses the very death that was set forth by the curse to reverse the curse. Jesus stepped off of His eternal throne to live in a world of disease and darkness like one of us. He was the man of suffering. Then the Author of life died on a cross. He wore our sin and absorbed the wrath of God on that cross. By dying for sin, and rising from the dead, He defeated death eternally. Though sin and suffering aren't His desire, he weilds them to accomplish His ultimate desire: Redemption.
God is sovereign over suffering but He does not desire it. He allowed it, He redeems, and ultimately, He defeats it.
When we can hold these difficult realities in tension, we begin to see many things that transform us inwardly.
Here’s a few things we can take away.
1. There’s meaning in our suffering.
If God is not in control in the midst of our world spiraling out of control we have no better hope than the atheist.
Bertrand Russell argued that all man's "hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms…” And we must build our souls on "the firm foundation of unyielding despair".
What?! Unyielding despair? He’s right. In a world without God we have life without hope. Without a sovereign and intentional God we’d have to throw up our hands and assume it’s all meaningless. But this is not the posture of the believer. The Christian has a God who rules before, during, and after suffering. Suffering isn’t meaningless. God is up to something in and through it.
2. We can pray with confidence.
If God isn’t sovereign over your suffering, then we pray impotent prayers to an equally helpless God. RC Sproul said it well. “If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God's sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.”
A God who lacks sovereignty over our suffering is incapable of unraveling it. That’s not true of the God of the Bible. The fact that God is sovereign means God is capable of conquering it. He can deliver us from it. When we pray, we do not pray to a God who is bound by the constraints the have, but to a God who can make a difference. So, pray in faith to the sovereign God.
3. We have a future hope.
God in His sovereign reign is moving all things toward His intended end where he will demolish all death and disease. Disease reminds us this is not our ultimate home or hope. But eternity with Jesus in a renewed earth is!
This truth is important in this season. It can start to feel like this season won’t end. But it will. The promise of Scripture is sure. Let’s conclude with this most beautiful hope in Scripture.
Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Revelation 21:1 ,4, 5a Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more...He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
