How Can God Use COVID-19 to Bless Us?

We’re all struggling because of COVID-19. Some are very sick, some have lost loved ones, many have lost their jobs, our economy is endangered, and most are frightened at the prospect of getting sick and perhaps dying. At the very least, we are tired of being cooped up at home. So, how can God use COVID-19 to bless us?

Why God Allows Diseases like COVID-19

There are many reasons, but in this post I’ll focus only on three. First, it helps if we understand the disease’s origin: We live in a fallen world. By that I mean that after Adam and Eve (our first parents) sinned, God cursed the ground (Genesis 3:17). What cancer or virus could not have arisen from God looking at planet Earth and saying, “I curse you”? If you’re upset by the fact that Adam and Eve’s sin led to our living on a cursed planet (and you should be), there is a cosmic lesson here: Hate sin!

Second, we are seeing how human sinfulness can kill. China’s leadership initially covered up the origin, nature, and severity of COVID-19, and many have suffered and even died because of that.[i] We’ve also seen many people openly flaunt warnings to distance themselves from others. How many died because university students refused to forgo spring break? There is a cosmic lesson here: Hate sin! The Lord is using suffering in this fallen world to teach us to hate sin, and that’s eternally valuable knowledge.

Third, and this is hugely important, God uses these kinds of tragedies to unsettle our worldliness.

The World’s Warning Label

After all, if we love this present world, if this world consumes our hearts, then we’re certainly going to dread anything that threatens it. But in 1 John 2:15-17, we are commanded, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” Notice that this world is dying—it is “passing away” (even atheists agree with that!)—and if you love the world, then you won’t love the Father, and when the world dies, you will die with it. Instead, John tells us, “Do not love the world.” If you do love the world, but love the Father, you will abide forever!

Peaches and “Permanent, Irreversible Eye Damage”

We have a Red Barron peach tree, and its peaches are delicious. Sadly, in this fallen world, pests harm it. So some years ago I went to Home Depot to find a solution. The warning label of one fungicide, which I suspect does the job very well, warns it is fatal if swallowed or inhaled and can cause “permanent, irreversible eye damage.” Really? I’m not going to wear a hazmat suit! I don’t need peaches that badly (thankfully, our tree survived without it)! Well, I think of the above 1 John passage as the world’s warning label: “Love this world, and you will die.”

The trouble is that most of us would be much more careful with something that causes permanent, irreversible eye damage and was fatal if inhaled than with something that, if misused, causes us not only to physically die but to also die spiritually. We are warned not to love this world or the things of this world, but it is so easy to love this world! Well, God can use COVID-19 to help us not love this present world. This pandemic unsettles our worldliness and that keeps us safe. As Hebrews 12:7 tells us, “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” We are in hardship and so let’s receive it as discipline and love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our minds, and love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37, 39).

So my fellow servants of our Lord Jesus, let’s thank God, not for the virus itself but for the fact that God can use COVID-19 to remind us to not love this present world. Let’s examine our worldliness and repent as needed, love the Lord and our neighbor, and focus on the fact that we’re going to live forever and ever and ever and ever!

I have much more to say about how we can feel hopeful, even joyful, in this disease-ridden world and I’ll post some practical advice on how to do that next Tuesday.

If you would like to ask questions, I’m going to try something new (to me anyway!) and take your questions live, this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. Pacific time at my YouTube channel. Here’s the link.

Some of this was excerpted from my book Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It. 

[i] There are many sources regarding China’s cover up. Here’s an example: Nick Wadhams and Jennifer Jacobs, “China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says,” Bloomberg, April 1, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says, accessed April 20, 2020.