The Sin Sick Soul

There's a song that I grew up singing in church that, for years, I sang without understanding what it meant. The name of the song is "There Is A Balm In Gilead". Since I didn't know what a balm was, the song was sort of lost on me.

I don't know that there was a day when I suddenly knew what a balm was, but I know what a balm is now. Webster's simply defines a balm as "a healing or soothing medicine".

I've been thinking about healing a lot today, because the flu hit my house last night. As a result, I am miserable. I can't breathe, I ache, I'm feverish. I find myself wishing I could throw up and just get whatever it is that's making me sick out of me.

I've also been thinking a lot about sin. I'm preparing a sermon for Sunday and perusing nooma videos online and wishing we had a better terminology for sin that didn't sound so much like something you have and I don't. That didn't sound like you're bad and I'm good, you're wrong and I'm right.

And I started thinking about the "sin sick soul". This is a phrase in the song "Balm In Gilead". A soul made sick by sin. That's something people can understand whether they believe in God or not.

That feeling of guilt, of shame, of loneliness and hopelessness. The reality of lostness. The inability to breathe, the ache, the fever. The wishing I could just puke out whatever it is that's making me feel this way.

I think it's helpful to think of sin as something that's bad for you. Too often, because we've handpicked certain sins as worse than others and called some things "sin" that weren't, sin has been seen as something arbitrary, a way for those who are without sin to feel superior to those with sin.

But what if we accepted these realities:

God wants what is best for us (not necessarily what we want most, but what is best).
God views sin that which keeps us from what is best.

Our common venacular for recovering from illness is "getting better". What if we saw recovering from sin the same way?

Lying, greed, lust, hate, pride, gluttony, and so on.

These things are bad for us.

These things are sin.

These things make us spiritually sick,

I think it's helpful to think of sin as sickness. Then we're no longer talking about me being better, but me getting better. We're not talking about something I can lord over you, but something I can share with you. There is a balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead that heals the sin sick soul.

As Christians, we're not called to bring a message of condemnation into the lives of others, but a message of healing and hope. Jesus came so that we might have life, and we share that life with others who have yet to discover it.

The message of Jesus is for those who are sick and suffering. Jesus himself said that he came to heal those who are sick, So we simply have to acknowledge our sickness and desire healing and be willing to take in or put on whatever is necessary to get better. We put on a balm as an external remedy that brings internal healing. we put Christ on in baptism the same way. In the case of the flu, we take in a whole lot of bad tasting medicine. In the case of the soul, we take in the body and blood of Christ. It may be hard to swallow at first, but it brings healing in the end.