Alzheimer’s and Sin

By Rick Blumenberg / @RickBlumenberg

I hate Alzheimer’s disease with a passion. I have seen its destruction in my own family—people I love. But Alzheimer’s has no feeling or compassion for these very special people. It destroys their lives and those of us who love them can only watch. We show love and compassion. We try to help, but the destruction continues and we can only suffer with those who personally endure it.

This may be how God feels about sin. Please go back and read the above paragraph again, but substitute sin in place of “Alzheimer’s” or “Alzheimer’s disease”. Don’t proceed through this article until you do.

God hates sin because it destroys the sinning person and sometimes the innocent suffer even more. Examples include rape, child and spousal abuse, robbery, murder and an unlimited number of other sins.

The biggest difference between sin and Alzheimer’s is that one has no cure. Hopefully there will someday be a cure for Alzheimer’s, but presently nothing really helps. Sin is different. God has a remedy available to everyone by Jesus Christ in his death on the cross.

Some believe God killed Jesus with the cross. Others think it was the Jews and others blame the Romans, but the real culprit is sin. In II Corinthians 5:21 Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Since we know that God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are one, this could actually read “God made himself who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

We can’t blame God for Jesus’ death on the cross because Jesus, who is God, died intentionally to cure sin’s malady. But we can thank God for coming to earth as Jesus, who was fully man, but was also fully God.

So it was sin that killed Jesus’ on the cross and that’s why God hates sin. It destroys everything it touches. It destroyed the human body of Jesus when he took responsibility for our sin even though he had never sinned. Our sin destroyed him, rather than his own because he was sinless. When God sees sin destroy Jesus or us he hates it because it destroys a person God loves—you, me, Jesus, and everyone else.

If you read the first verse of John’s Gospel, but instead of reading “the Word” (meaning Jesus) actually read "Jesus" and it is more clear. Read it like this: “In the beginning was Jesus and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God.” So in other words, when Jesus went to the cross it was not God sending him to the cross for execution. It was God going to the cross in the person of Jesus to die for us and for our salvation. If Jesus had been a mere human—even a sinless one—he could have given his life for one other person who had sinned, but only one. Since he was God, his death is sufficient to cure sin for the whole world. No one needs to die because of sin if we accept the remedy God provides.

When by faith in Christ, we accept his death on the cross for our own sin we are cured of sin’s malady, restored to spiritual health and given eternal life—not physically of course—we will all die a physical death, but we can live forever with God because of what he did on the cross through Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

And the cure is available for the asking. When we ask forgiveness for sin against God we are already forgiven because of what Jesus did on the cross and this cures our sin just as our forgiveness heals a wrong someone does to us.

The truth is awesome! If only everyone knew it.

I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek.