Did Jesus Ever Get a Stomach Virus?
— Sunday, December 12th, 2010 —
Last week a friend called my office to leave a question she wanted some help thinking through. Could Jesus have gotten a stomach virus? Or the flu? Or a head cold? This question was rooted in something a little deeper. Since sickness is part of the curse of the Fall, would Jesus’ sinless nature have exempted him from viruses and bugs and fevers?
That night one of my sons woke us, crying as the stomach virus hit with all the unpleasantness that brings. As I watched his little frame tremble as he vomited, I thought about this woman’s question. Would Mary have ever watched her little firstborn in the throes of such sickness?
Why is it so hard for us to imagine Jesus vomiting?
First of all, it’s hard for us to imagine the radical nature of the Incarnation. No matter how orthodox our doctrine, we all tend to want to think of Jesus as a two-dimensional figure with a shaft of light squarely fixed on his forehead. But the gospel tells us that Jesus took on every aspect of our “flesh and blood” in order to redeem us from the power of the devil (Heb. 2:14-15).
The Scripture repeatedly makes a point of telling us about Jesus’ exhaustion, about his digestion of food, in order to make the point that our Christ really identified with us in every aspect of our common humanity, except for our sin (Heb. 4:15).
The very beginning of the Christ story itself tells us that part of the sign of the Messiah is that he is wrapped in cloths (Lk. 2:12). Why do you wrap cloths around a baby? For the same reason you might diaper your baby, or wrap her up in a blanket. The point is to keep the baby warm, and to keep him dry from waste. This signifies from the very beginning just how much Jesus is our brother, sharing with us a human nervous system and a human digestive system.
It’s also hard for us to imagine the radical nature of substitution. Of course, we understand Jesus’ suffering for us on the Cross. But the Cross was culmination, not the beginning of Jesus’ identification with us. Jesus walked into a world fallen with sin, a world cursed by thorns, death, and, yes, sickness. Though Jesus clearly had power of sickness in his healing ministry, and over death itself, he voluntarily joined us in a world of suffering and pain, for the purpose of offering up a sacrifice and restoring human peace with God and nature.
“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering,” writes the Book of Hebrews (Heb. 2:9). “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became a source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb. 5:9).
This is why Jesus weathered the suffering of temptation. This is why he hungered and thirsted. This is why he experienced the death and desertion of friends. This is why he shuddered in blood-soaked anguish at Gethsemane at the prospect of his execution. And this is why he was beaten, humiliated, and spiked through with nails. Jesus was exempt from no aspect of our human condition, except for our rebellion. He was not exempt from something as common as sickness.
It just doesn’t seem right to us to imagine Jesus feverish or vomiting. But that’s precisely the scandal. It didn’t seem right to many to imagine Jesus as really flesh and bone, filled with blood and intestines and urine. Somehow that seemed to detract from his deity. It surely didn’t seem right to many to imagine the only begotten of the Father twisting in pain on a crucifixion stake, screaming as he drowned in his own blood. This was humiliating, undignified. That’s just the point. Jesus joined us in our humiliation, in our indignity.
I hope you don’t get a stomach virus this year, or the flu or the fever or a cold. But, if you do, I hope you remember, just for a minute, in your discomfort that Jesus has passed through everything you’ll ever face. He might have been racked with nausea or chills or aches, just as you are. And then he faced far, far worse.
But, as you lie there, remember the gospel of incarnation and substitution, a gospel that comes, as the old song says, to make his blessings known “far as the curse is found.”
36 Responses to “Did Jesus Ever Get a Stomach Virus?”
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If it was sin that brought the world’s maladies to the world, then so be it. And I figure one of the maladies it brought was the stomach virus, which means it is now here in the world. And there has to be a reason He told us that He didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, which tells me He didn’t.
Further, I don’t think it’s my sin that gives me the stomach virus, either. It’s just .. .. here, you know?
Cautionary note: Marty Duren got all kinds of heat for writing a similar piece a few years ago.
Thanks for that, Dr. Moore.
Blessings!
This issue was a topic of discussion in our Sunday school class today.
What a different way to be reminded of the glorious blessings of the gospel! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?
I’m going to go sing Joy to the World now, haha.
Thanks for the post, Dr. Moore.
Your post focusing on the Incarnation reminds me of this reflection from Jean Vanier::
“. . . Jesus begins to make the passage
from the one who is healer, to the one who is wounded;
from the man of compassion
to the man in need of compassion;
from the man who cries out:
‘If anyone thirsts let him come to me to drink,’
to the man who cries out: ‘I thirst.’
From announcing the good news to the poor,
Jesus becomes the poor.
He crosses over the boundary line of humanity
which separates those whose needs are satisfied
from those who are broken and cry out in need.”
http://www.msgr.ca/msgr/body_broken%2000.htm
If you want to examine this theme more, you can explore some of the writings of the Eastern Orthodox who see, within the Mystery of Incarnation, even more than we do in Western Christianity.
Does the fact that Jesus “emptied Himself” of His glory, taking on the form of a servant (human nature), shared the “flesh and blood” experience and was tempted “in every respect” as we are mean that He experienced illness such as a common cold or stomach virus (or any other sickness or disease)? The answer seems to me to be “No” unless sickness is an essential part of being human. Isaiah 53:4 and Mathew 8:17 (as well as other passages) seem to at least strongly imply that sickness is a consequence of sin that Jesus came to deliver us from. Though He certainly shared in the weaknesses that are essential to humanness (some of which you mention, i.e. hunger, fatigue, etc.), I do not know of a single passage that suggests that Jesus ever suffered the effects of sin, though He did bear the penalty for sin (our sin) on the cross.
It is not hard to imagine Jesus vomiting. In fact, I find it easy to imagine Him vomiting as a result of the physical pain inflicted upon Him. Vomiting, in that context, would appear to be perfectly consistent with full humanness. But that is quite different from suffering consequences of sin never committed.
It doesn’t seem to me to be necessary that He experience everything that we experience in order to sympathize with us; just that He be fully human – and that He was and is regardless of whether or not He ever had a virus.
@Skip Rainbolt,
I appreciate the argument you present; however, I do not believe it withstands further scrutiny. You stated that you didn’t know of any passage revealing that Jesus suffered effects of sin, but there are. Physical death is the ultimate effect of sin. He experienced that. Furthermore, He ate meat (at the Passover at least) which is also an effect of sin and He dwelled on a fallen world that was not as God created so He “suffered” the effect of His creation being cursed.
So the door stands open and, if one uses an argument from the greater to the lesser, it is quite probable that Jesus experienced other effects of the Fall such as sickness.
@Skip Rainbolt, I agree with you. good point.
“Somehow that seemed to detract from his deity.”
Would Adam have gotten sick in the Garden before the Fall? It has nothing to do with detracting from his deity, it has to do with his sinless humanity… no sin, no curse, no sickness. Hunger and thirst are not a result of the curse. Nor is digestion or the elimination of waste.
@HC Wap,
If hunger and thirst and fatigue are not a result of the curse, why will they be eliminated in heaven?
Jesus wept. There will be no weeping in heaven. Couldn’t he have sucked it up as God?
Thank you, Dr. Moore. This is a great reminder that the Incarnation is about so much more than fuzzy pictures of a cute little baby in clean manger.
I’m lactose intolerant. Therefore so is Jesus. I have issues with killing things–animals usually, but no one ever knows about it since I make sure to keep it private–therefore Jesus did. A lot of people I know are lactose intolerant and like to kill critters–therefore Jesus did too? I mean, he’s our brother right so why assume he’s only vomited or only gotten a cold? Why not include lactose intolerance, killing small creatures, being confused about his sense of deity–all without sin, of course….
Athanasius, the staunch defender of Christ’s full godhead and full humanity in his incarnation would disagree:
“‘The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life Itself. If He had died quietly in His bed like other men it would have looked as if He did so in accordance with His nature, and as though He was indeed no more than other men. But because He was Himself Word and Life and Power His body was made strong, and because the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion of perfecting His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others. How could He fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that body weaken and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again, you may say, ‘Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?’ Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, ‘Did He then not hunger?’ Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom al, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself.”
De Incarnatione, chapter 4, section 21
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm
For Athanasius, Christ’s humanity is not revealed in undergoing sickness, disease, or the effects of sin. He suffered God’s wrath upon sin much more intensely than flu or cold or cancer could reveal–but His body had to remain incorrupt in order that He might prove Himself God and give assurance to men that their bodies too would be raised incorruptible. Hunger, thirst, fatigue are all products of the body’s own limitations; not of some alien condition or flaw, as is sickness–at least in Athanasius’ view.
@Joshua Butcher,
Regarding Athanasius:
Athanasius comment makes perfect since in a Pre-Chalcedon Christianity, but for me, its a little to close to a moderate Nestorian view. Personally, I find the definition of Chalcedon to be a much better explanation of the communication of attributes in regard to the God-man, than Athanasius comment. To be fair to Athanasius, I need to read the comment in it fullest context, but my initially thought is that he view the deity of Christ as the dominate nature of Christ, which at best is a misreading of the text and at worst a fast track to heresy.
In General:
Any view of his deity that makes little of his humanity is just as dangerous as a view that makes more of his humanity than it does of his deity. When scripture speaks of Christ, it generally speaks of him as a whole man instead of one possessing two natures, which means, we should be comfortable when speaking of the human or the divine attributes of Christ without feeling the need to qualify or defend the other.
Resources on Christology:
anything by Donald McLeod
Sunday School notes from HBC-Shreveport: http://www.ncmin.com/christology
Thank you so much for this wonderful blog, i’m sending it right over to my Mom after i post here.
This is such an important reminder! Jesus’ death was not easy, and it is what always brought me back to just … lying at God’s feet when i thought for a second or hour or month that maybe there was something better “out there”. There just isn’t. I have been chronically ill for 20 years with an illness that is largely marked by chronic pain in muscles, tendons, connective tissue. It has been amazing to me, just in my little life circumstance, that God doesn’t just know my pain because He knows everything…. he knows it because (this always makes me tear up, we just have this amazing Father God!!) because He literally went through it. And though i have known Jesus since i was very young (thanks to my Mom and amazing Sunday School teachers at a young age!!), i need to be reminded of these basic, true, wonderful things often. And to thank the Lord every day!
We had a similar conversation at a Bible study yesterday evening. I’m going to point the participants to this post.
That Jesus is fully God and fully human is not abstract theology – it’s great hope for living life today! Thank you.
~Stanley
Wonderful post. I agree we too often think of Jesus as two dimensional. In the end He knows what we deal with through experience (aside from sin). Amazing.
Ah, for some of you folk the angels are still on the head of the needle. What wonderment!
Tougher question I asked my coworker today:
“Could Jesus have had a teenage crush on a girl?”
Part of me says yes, but the other part is reminded that Paul speaks of those who have been given the gift of celibacy. Did Jesus have the gift of celibacy? Could he have gotten a crush on a girl without lusting?
Dr. Moore,
Thank you so much for the post, it’s a question that I have found myself asking on more than one occasion.
But I have a further question if you would just maybe take the time to answer as well.
It is my understanding that death did not enter into the world until sin did, physical death being one of it’s direct consequences. I would figure with that is also the many various diseases and aliments that can lead to death. Which in that day I’m sure that even the most insignificant sickness could since they didn’t have our medicine. So… I’m having trouble accepting that Jesus could even get sick since that would be a direct result of sin. Would it just be that, death and sickness are results of the fall in general and not one’s own personal sin? Or would Jesus be “exempt” from that because he did not have original sin?
Thanks so much for your blog, it’s very insightful and teaches me a lot. I hope you find the time to answer my question.
My professional opinion as a biochemist who now works in microbiology/immunology is that Jesus would NOT have been susceptible to infectious diseases. I don’t think he would have become decrepit in old age, either. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Adam and Eve were susceptible to those things either before that bit of unpleasantness in the Garden. Their relationship to their microbial flora and fauna (on the skin, in the gut, and other places) would have been such that they dwelt in harmony with them (even us sinners manage to do so much of the time).
Experiencing heat and cold, yes. Wounding and death at the hands of others, yes. Disease, no.
One question, Did ever Jesus sin? if answer is no, then Jesus won’t get sick. If he was susceptible to the attack of sin and temptations, and he did not sin then he may be susceptible to the attack of sickness and did not get sick, though he experienced hunger, thirst, and tireosme because he is also a perfect man with flesh (but not sickness which is the consequence of the fall) in addition to he is deity at the same time. However, it doesn’t mean he does not share the pain of our suffering of sickness. In the same token, Jesus did feel our suffering of sin but he did not sin. I know it is too few words to explain such a subtle question. but I am not convinced Jesus got sick because sickness is a consequence of human’s fall, sin. On the contrary, He is the healer of the sickness. Please check Athnasius (3rd-4th century) “on the incarnation” amazon has it. He gave an excellent view on this issue. this is an ancient topic not a new one.
I remember holding my tiny firstborn son as he writhed and screamed from tummy pain and thinking, “Baby Jesus had gas.”
I know he did. Why? Because I have yet to meet a newborn who didn’t.
As trite as it may sound, it was a moment when I grasped that our Lord was FULLY man.