Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Does Hidden Sin Bring Physical Suffering?

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Does Hidden Sin Bring Physical Suffering? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back to the podcast if you're reading the Navigator's Bible Reading Plan with us.
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  In twenty twenty four, we read Psalm twenty two together a couple of
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  weeks ago, and then we talked about the challenges that that text poses to
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  understanding the Cross of Christ. That was in ABJA episode number twenty fifteen.
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  Check that out. And today we're back in the Psalms, reading Psalm thirty
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  one together and then Psalm thirty two tomorrow. Both of those Psalms, Psalms
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  thirty one and thirty two carry the same internal dynamic that Sarah, a listener
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  to the podcast, points out and is trying to figure out. And here's
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  what she wrote us specially, hello to you, and thank you and Tony
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  both for this podcast. You're most welcome, Sarah. As I read through
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  the Psalms, I get an amazing picture of the emotional life of faith.
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  I am thankful for such a vivid picture of what it means to be a
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  believer and the spectrum of emotions that we feel, and how the Psalmist shows
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  us how to process those emotions. But then I come to places in the
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  Psalms that are more jarring and foreign to me, namely about the physical pain
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  and physical release of sin and forgiveness. Obviously, we must be careful not
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  to equate all physical suffering with the direct guilt for one specific sin. But
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  perhaps we need to be careful not to write off specific sins in our physical
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  pain. This comes up specifically in Psalm thirty one, verses nine to ten
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  in Psalm thirty two, verses one to five. Can you explain these texts
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  and talk about the physical consequences of our guilt and the physical health and release
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  that can come with forgiveness. I never hear solid Bible teachers, preachers,
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  or theologians, or even Christian health gurus connect hidden sin, the torment of
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  guilt, and the release of forgiveness to our physical well being. To what
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  extent can we make this connection? And how have you seen this spiritual physical
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  link in your own ministry? I don't have any doubt that Sarah is right
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  that we should take the Psalm seriously when they picture physical ailments as sometimes owing
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  to unconfessed sin. Now, one of the reasons I say sometimes is because
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  in John chapter nine, Jesus disciples saw a blind man and ask Rabbi who
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  sinned? This man? Or his parents who sinned this man or his parents
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  that he was born blind. And Jesus answered, it was not that this
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  man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed
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  in him. So I infer from that we must be really careful not to
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  assume that any given sickness or disability is owing to a particular sin. And
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  Sarah said that, and I just wanted to underline it, even though we
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  know that all sickness and all disability is owing to the existence of sin.
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  In general, God subjected to the world to futility, the whole world,
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  all of our bodies, in all the world Romans eight twenty. We all
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  live in a fallen and disordered world, and all of us, no exceptions,
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  all of us suffer and die because of that fallen, disordered, condemned
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  world, even when we have not done a specific sin to bring down on
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  us a specific sickness. Nor I think here's something she didn't mention that I
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  think we need to put in as a careful qualification. Nor does the fact
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  that Christ bore all our sins, absorbed all the wrath of God against us,
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  and purchased our perfect eternal healing forever no disease, no tears, no
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  no pain. Nor does any of that mean that God does not send sickness
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  and hardship into our lives to discipline us as his children and to sanctify us.
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  That's not wrath. That's not wrath. Jesus bore wrath, condemnation,
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  judgment that's behind us. We don't have that anymore. This is a fatherly
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  discipline, a physician like therapy. Remember Paul's thorn in the flesh, given
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  what to keep him from being conceited Second Corinthians twelve, and remember the painful
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  discipline of Hebrews twelve. Now, with all of that in mind, nevertheless,
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  we should not hesitate with Sarah to find true Christian experience in the psalms
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  that tell us physical miseries are sometimes owing to unconfessed sin. I see this
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  in the Psalms, and I've seen it with my own eyes, in my
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  own experience, and I'll mention that at the end. But let me stay
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  with the word for a minute. Psalm thirty one to nine, which you
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  referred to Tony. Be gracious to me, o Lord, for I am
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  in distress. My eye is wasted from grief, my soul and my body
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  also, for my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing.
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  My strength fails because of my iniquity. My strength fails because of my
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  iniquity, and my bones waste away. So he traces his failing strength and
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  his wasting bones back to his iniquity. Now here's a little catch in making
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  the point that I want to make. He might be thinking of the totality
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  of his life's hardships and the general fallenness of his nature, because he says,
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  my years are spent with sighing, not just a week, not just
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  a day or a month. So I'm gonna be careful and not base my
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  case on this particular example, though it might be So it might be that
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  he's referring to a specific limited sickness owing to specific sin, And there's clues
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  to that in the context because of the parallel between bone'es wasting away, which
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  turns up again over in chapter thirty two. So I just want to be
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  careful. There's no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with a specific,
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  unconfessed sin and its physical consequences in Psalm thirty two. So looking back
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  over his change of heart as he writes and his forgiveness. Here's what he
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  says, Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
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  Blessed. He's just super happy at what has happened in his life.
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  Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and whose spirit
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  there's no deceit. And now comes in the Psalm his memory of that season
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  when he had not confessed his sin. So he goes on, for when
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  I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long,
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  for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was
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  dried up as by the heat of summer. And then he recalls his confession,
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  his forgiveness, and his healing. He says, I acknowledged my sin
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  to you. I did not cover my iniquity. I said I will confess
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  my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
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  And we see a similar situation. Sarah didn't refer to this one, but
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  this one has been as useful to me in pastoral counseling as any other text.
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  In this regard of people who feel like they've sent themselves out of God's
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  possible blessing. So Psalm one oh seven, verse seventeen following it says,
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  some were fools through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities suffered affliction.
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  They loathe any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates
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  of death. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he
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  delivered them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them and
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  delivered them from their destruction. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
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  for his wondrous works to the children of man. And here's one more
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  text that I call gutsy guilt, or the text that I have based this
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  term gutsy guilt on. A truly godly person has sinned. They are sitting
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  under the disciplinary darkness and misery that God has sent. But this godly person
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  will not let go of the mercy of God, or we would say today
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  on this side of the cross, he will not let go of the blood
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  bought justification that we have in Christ. And I'm thinking of Micah seven verses
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  eight and nine. Rejoice not over me, oh my enemy. When I
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  fall, I will rise. When I sit in darkness. That's where he
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  is right now. The Lord will be a light to me. I will
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  bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him until he pleads
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  my cause and execute judgment for me, not against me. For me,
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  he will bring me out to the light. I shall look upon his vindication.
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  So, in view of those texts, very practically, I would say,
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  let none of us continue in sin, hiding it from others and refusing
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  to confess it to God and forsake it. If we are truly the children
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  of God, and we do that, that is, we fail to confess
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  our sins, we should expect that such a season of falsehood and hypocrisy will
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  bring down God's disciplinary rod upon us. If he loves us, we should
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  expect that discipline. Now, I had a very good friend whom I caught
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  in grievous sin. I was the one who saw it, and when I
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  urged him, I mean, this was a serious marriage, destroying ministry,
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  destroying life, destroying sin. And when I urged him to confess to those
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  he sinned against, he denied it was true. He did this for about
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  six weeks, and I watched his deceit and growing misery and physical deterioration.
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  And then one night he called me quite late and said we have to meet.
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  I called a few others and we met, and we sat there.
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  And as we sat there, he quoted Psal, I'm thirty two. When
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  I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long,
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  for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was
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  dried up, as by the heat of summer. So the misery, his
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  misery of those six weeks were a gift. The misery and the physical pain
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  was a gift. It saved his marriage. So as Hebrews twelve eleven says,
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  for the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later
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  it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
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  Sobering story to make this point, very vividly thinking Pastor John, and
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  you've heard Pastor John briefly mentioned gutsy gilt, a point made in this episode
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  which is an absolutely key paradigm for him. He's used over and over again
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  on this podcast about a dozen times, applying it to all sorts of ethical
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  situations that come up. Gutsy guilt, And to show you just how pervasive
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  and useful this paradigm is. I wrote a new book. It's titled Ask
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  Pastor John seven hundred and fifty Bible answers to Life's Most Important Questions. And
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  one of the things I do in that book is I pull together a bunch
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  of those gutsy guilt mentions from the podcast history, and I create a little
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  digest to show you how he uses that paradigm in ethical situations. It's in
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  a section I wrote on spiritual deadness, depression, and desertion, and it's
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  there on about page four hundred or so. It's a two page little section
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  where I break down this paradigm of gutsy guilt and how he uses it in
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  context where we're faced with the guilt of our own sin and we own it
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  and we bring it to God for forgiveness. Powerful, powerful paradigm, useful
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  all over this podcast, useful for all sorts of pastoral situations, as you
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  will see in that new book, Asked Pastor John seven hundred and fifty Bible
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  answers to Life's Most Important Questions. Check it out. I'm your host,
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  Tony Ranky. We will see you Monday. Have a wonderful weekend, and
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  we'll see you then.