Really a ‘Personal' Thing?

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s website reports dramatic changes in cancer survival rates. For instance, in 1962 only four percent of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cancer of the blood) survived; today, the survival rate is 94 percent. In 1962, only seven percent of children with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (cancer of infection-fighting cells) survived; today, 85 percent overcome that disease.

Many adult maladies boast similar statistics, including breast cancer and heart disease. In one way or another, we’re all beneficiaries of medical science’s incredible advances.

What if researchers, upon making their discoveries, had determined, “We’re not going to tell anyone about this. It’s personal. Who are we to impose our cure on someone else?”

Ludicrous? Of course. If someone found the cure to AIDS, or diabetes or Alzheimer’s and withheld that information, they might be viewed as murderers.

Yet everywhere we confront an equally devastating disease, yet many are chastised for offering what they believe to be the cure. This disease is not physical but spiritual: Sin. It takes many forms – lust, greed, selfishness, dishonesty, murder, abuse, etc. And we’re all afflicted. The Bible states, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

The cure, according to the Scriptures, is freely available: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

But there’s just one cure, Jesus Christ. It’s not multiple-choice. Perhaps that seems narrow, but if physicians tell me there is one vaccine for the flu, or one cure for a disease, I won’t accuse them of being rigid and narrow-minded. I’ll take the cure.

Understanding Jesus provides the cure to the depravity infecting all of humanity, I’ll communicate this cure to anyone willing to consider it. Anyone can reject the cure, but I won’t be a murderer for failing to tell them about it