Is sickness a punishment for sin?

What the Bible says

What did I do wrong? Sick people often hear this, or ask it of themselves, and people in the Bible asked it too. If you are ill now, or caring for someone who is, this essay says plainly first: Scripture does not allow anyone to brand the sick as sinners.

The clearest passage is John 9. The disciples see a man blind from birth and ask the question people always asked.

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him.

John 9:2-3

Jesus rules out both. Instead of debating the cause, he heals the man and later seeks him out again (John 9:35-38). Christians read "the works of God" in more than one way, but the sick cannot be charged with sin.

In Luke 13, too, Jesus denies that those killed by Pilate or by the tower in Siloam were worse sinners than others (Luke 13:2-5).

Job digs deepest. Eliphaz asks, "Who, being innocent, has ever perished?" (Job 4:7). It echoes Deuteronomy, which warned Israel that breaking the covenant would bring plague and fever (Deut 28:21-22). But Job's friends took a warning given to a nation and applied it to one man's sickbed. At the end God says to Eliphaz:

My wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken about Me accurately, as My servant Job has.

Job 42:7

That friends who searched for a sufferer's sin were rebuked is a warning to everyone who deals with the sick. Isaiah's servant, who carries our sicknesses, was misread in just this way:

Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

Isa 53:4

Matthew sees Jesus' healing of the sick as its fulfilment (Matt 8:16-17). The one we assumed was struck down by God was carrying our sicknesses.

Does Scripture never connect sickness to sin, then? It does. Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for taking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy way:

For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

1 Cor 11:29-30

And James, urging prayer for the sick, mentions sin:

And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.

Jas 5:15

Note how these passages speak. Paul addresses a particular fault of one church and tells that community to examine itself. James says "if" he has sinned; he does not say every sick person has. Some sickness may be linked to sin, but that is for the sick person and those praying with them to weigh before God, not for someone diagnosing from outside.

Finally, Jesus deals with both sickness and sin. When four friends lowered a paralysed man through a roof, Jesus' first words were not about the paralysis.

When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Mark 2:5

This does not mean the paralysis was caused by his sin. When the scribes doubted his authority to forgive, Jesus raised the man up (Mark 2:10-11), showing that he heals body and soul. Forgiveness may have come first because that was his deepest need.

The church's witness

The church has tried not to read sickness as a personal scale of guilt. On John 9, Chrysostom says: "one man cannot be punished for the sin of another" Chrysostom. Augustine is subtler: "Both this man and his parents had sinned, but that sin was not the reason why he was born blind" Augustine.

Matthew Henry writes: "Christ says of uncommon calamities, that they are not always to be looked on as special punishments of sin" Matthew Henry. And of those who carried the paralysed man, he says their act "teaches the compassion that should be in men, toward their fellow-creatures in distress" Matthew Henry. Henry also wrote, "Sin is the cause of all our pains and sicknesses" Matthew Henry, and he urged the sick to seek pardon above all. But he held this together with his warning against treating uncommon suffering as special punishment, and with compassion for the sufferer.

In the original languages

The "infirmities" of Isaiah 53:4 are choli (חֳלִי), the ordinary Hebrew word for sickness. It appears in Deuteronomy's list of calamities (Deut 28:61), and here it is what the servant carries in our place. One word stands both for punishment and for bearing on behalf of others.

The usual Greek word for illness is astheneia (ἀσθένεια). Literally "lack of strength," it names illness and weakness alike. Sickness is a name for frailty, not a measure of sin. And the "restore" of James 5:15 is sozo (σῴζω), which can mean save, heal or restore: prayer for the sick asks for wholeness of body and soul together.

Common objections

"The Bible says sin entered the world and brought death. Isn't sickness a result of sin after all?" There is truth here. Paul writes that sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin (Rom 5:12), and Christians broadly agree that sickness and death belong to a fallen world. But there is a long distance between the state of the whole world and one person's illness. To say the world is broken by sin is not to say that this illness is because of this person's sin. What Jesus forbade was joining the two with a straight line. That illness belongs to the world's brokenness is a reason to groan with the sick and help them, not to condemn them.

"Doesn't faith heal? If someone is not healed, isn't it lack of faith or sin?" This idea wounds the sick most deeply. Scripture tells us to pray for the sick, but never says that those who are not healed lack faith. Paul's co-worker Epaphroditus was sick nearly unto death (Phil 2:25-27); Paul left Trophimus sick in Miletus (2 Tim 4:20); Timothy had frequent ailments (1 Tim 5:23). Paul himself pleaded three times for the thorn in his flesh to be removed, and heard: "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Cor 12:8-9). Why some are healed and others are not is taken up in Why doesn't God heal?, and illness of the mind in Is depression a lack of faith?.

"I feel my illness is my own fault. My choices may really have caused it." That is honest, and sometimes it may be true; choices do affect the body. The Bible has a psalmist who grieves his sin before God: "there is no rest in my bones because of my sin" (Psalm 38:3). He did not hear it from others; he brought it to God himself and asked for help. Confession is God's invitation, not a demand that a patient put himself on trial. Scripture says there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). Even if choices played a part, the need for a doctor and a companion remains, and help should come without blame.

Going further

The most honest answer is this. Sickness belongs to this broken world; it is not a measure of the sick person's sin. Whether a given illness is tied to sin is something the sufferer may quietly ask before God, not something others may rule on.

You might ask yourself: Beside a sick person, do I look for a reason or sit down by them? Is what I say to myself what God says to me, or closer to Job's friends? Whom would I tear open a roof to bring to Jesus?

To read further, see Why doesn't God heal? and Does suffering have meaning?, then John 9 and Job 42 together.