Jesus Has AIDS
— Thursday, December 1st, 2011 —
Jesus has AIDS.
Just reading that in the type in front of you probably has some of you angry. Let me help you see why that is, and, in so doing, why caring for those with AIDS is part of the gospel mandate given to us in the Great Commission.
The statement that Jesus has AIDS startles some of you because you know it not to be true. Jesus, after all, is the exalted son of the living God. He has defeated death in the garden tomb, and defeated it finally. Jesus isn’t weak or dying or infected; he’s triumphant and resurrected.
Yes.
Yes, but, what we’re often likely to miss is that Jesus has identified himself with the suffering of this world, an identification that continues on through his church. Yes, Jesus finishes his suffering at the cross, but he also speaks of himself as being “persecuted” by Saul of Tarsus, as Saul comes after his church in Damascus (Acts 9:4).
Through the Spirit of Christ, we “groan” with him at the suffering of a universe still under the curse (Rom. 8:23,26). This curse manifests itself, as in billions of other ways, in bodies turned against themselves by immune systems gone awry.
That’s why the church is to suffer, continually, with Christ as we take his presence into the darkness of a fallen creation. The Apostle Paul says, then, “I rejoice then in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24).
Some of Jesus’ church has AIDS. Some of them are languishing in hospitals right down the street from you. Some of them are orphaned by the disease in Africa. All of them are suffering with an intensity few of us can imagine.
Some of you are angered by the statement I typed above because you think somehow it implicates Jesus. After all, AIDS is a shameful disease, one most often spread through sexual promiscuity or illicit drug use.
Yes.
Yes, but those are the very kinds of people Jesus consistently identified himself with as he walked the hillsides of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, announcing the kingdom of God. Can one be more sexually promiscuous than the prostitutes Jesus ate with? Can one be more marginalized from society than a woman dripping with blood, blood that would have made anyone who touched her unclean (Luke 8:40-48)? Jesus touched her, and took her uncleanness on himself.
AIDS is scandalous, sure. But not nearly as scandalous as a cross.
At the crucifixion stake, Jesus identifies himself with a sinful world (including the scandal of my sin). He was seen to be cursed by God (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13). This is why it seemed so reasonable to the shouting crowds to curse him as a false Messiah, because only those rejected by God would ever be hanged on a tree. And that’s why the apostle Paul had to repeatedly insist that he was not “ashamed” of the cross. At Golgotha, Jesus became sin (though he never knew it himself) by bearing the sins of the world (2 Cor 5:21). Now that’s scandalous.
Moreover, some of you are angry because you believe that the statement I typed above is an affront to the dignity of the ruler of the universe. He doesn’t have some immune deficiency disease; he’s ruling from the right hand of God.
Yes.
Yes, but we cannot see Jesus only in his Head but also in his Body, also in his identification with those he calls “the least of these, my brothers” (Matt. 25:40). Jesus isn’t right now hungry, is he? He isn’t naked, is he? He isn’t thirsty, is he? He isn’t in jail, is he? Well, yes, he is…in the nakedness, hunger, thirstiness, and imprisonment of his suffering brothers and sisters around the world.
When we stand in judgment, we’ll stand, Jesus tells us, accountable for how we recognized him in the trauma of those who don’t seem to bear the glory of Christ at all right now. We see Jesus now, by faith, in the sufferings of the crack baby, the meth addict, the AIDS orphan, the hospitalized prodigal who sees his ruin in the wires running from his veins.
I wonder how many of us will hear the words from our Galilean emperor, “I had AIDS and you weren’t afraid to come near me.”
And so, if we love Jesus, our churches should be more aware of the cries of the curse, including the curse of AIDS, than the culture around us. Our congregations should welcome the AIDS-infected, and we shouldn’t be afraid to hug them as we would hug our Christ. Our congregations should be on the forefront of missions to AIDS-ravaged regions of the world. Our families should be willing to welcome those orphaned by this global scourge.
Through it all, we should be insistent in gospel proclamation. To those whose blood has become their own enemy, we should announce blood they know not of, the blood of One who can cleanse them of all unrighteousness, just as it cleansed us (1 Jn. 1:7); the blood of One who is forever immune to sin and death and hell (Jn. 6:53-56).
Jesus loves the world, and the world has AIDS. Jesus identifies himself with the least of these, and many of them have AIDS. Jesus calls us to recognize him in the depths of suffering, and there’s AIDS there too.
Jesus has AIDS.
A version of this article originally ran on December 1, 2009.
31 Responses to “Jesus Has AIDS”
Trackbacks
- World AIDS Day | davegullett
- "Jesus has AIDS" - Russell Moore
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- Russell Moore Or Less To The Point: Is “Jesus Has AIDS” Goading Sheep With The Social Gospel? « A Rose by Any Other Name
- Jesus has AIDS | Calvary Baptist Church
- Saturday Survey #8 | Southern Gospel Yankee
- Ανοσοποιητικό σύστημα
- Theology Thursday – Some Thought-Provoking Thoughts from Russell Moore « provPRESS
Wow!! Great article!!!
Im sorry but I just don’t like the the title……..
@Matthew, You really wouldn’t have liked it 10 years ago when people were still talking about AIDS.
Thanks for writing this great article.
Sorry, but the title is remarkably unhelpful. The point of the article is well taken, and an important teaching, but could have been made without the absurd title. Using the logic you have used you would also need to say that Jesus has uterine, or ovarian cancer, both of which, given the testemony of scripture with respect to God’s one and only SON are also absurd on their face and only serve to confuse the larger message and teaching.
How about a simple and direct ‘Jesus love people with AIDS (and any other stigmatizing or otherwise ailment of condition). Do you?
@Chuck Thomas,
Would you have read the article if it had said the same thing. I love Russell Moore anyway but the title definitely influenced my opening it.
Wow! this article is AMAZING! I’m crying… I’m young, christian, medicine student & I can understand this like other people cannot. A family friend died this year because AIDS, and was so sad see that all church who we belong was afraid to visit him. Christians must think about this. We must see Jesus’ face in all sicks, hungers and neededs.
@Luis GonzOlv, when christ looked at the hurting and the lost he saw SIN! he knew why all these horrible diseases were and are infecting people. christ saw the sheep as lost without a true shepherd. were they lost because of aids,cancer,etc. no, it was the result of SIN, yes SIN.
we as believers are to point people to the cross to show them how much christ is willing to LOVE them if they accept HIS OFFER of spiritual cleansing and foregiveness.
yes we must show love and compassion to all. BUT we must show them christ crucified, for thier SINS and christ resurrected, for thier salvation!
I think this is awesome. From the title to the last period. I would not had the words to say all of this. GOD bless you ;)
It seems you’ve blurred the Great Commission with the Great Commandment, and “Jesus has AIDS” is an improper identification. Surely in Christ’s sufferings he identifies with those who suffer, and in one sense he “sympathizes with our weakness” (though that verse is referring to temptation, particularly to apostasy).
You said, “caring for those with AIDS is part of the gospel mandate given to us in the Great Commission.” I would strongly disagree. Love is not the Great Comission, preaching the gospel is. The Great Commandment is to love. Without this distinction we can end up thinking “Jesus wants us to go in to all the world and LOVE”. The Great Comission was not “Go into all the world and love your neighbor as yourself”. That would simply be a mandate of the Law.
Second, you seem to muddy the distinction between those inside the church and those outside. People suffering with AIDS outside the church are not identified with Christ’s suffering as Paul is speaking of in Acts 9:4 and Col 1:24.
A better distinction would be “Jesus understands the suffering of those with AIDS, those who are socially ostracized because of public suffering, because he himself experience the same thing” not “Jesus has AIDS.”
I do wholeheartedly agree with you that we must as Christians not distinguish who we love on the basis of social faux pas. But my love will look different than Jesus’ love. Unfortunately I do not have the divine healing power of Jesus to touch leapers on a regular basis and make them clean. I would certainly do everything in my power to make sure that persons knows and understands the love of Christ communicated to them in my words and actions.
@Nate Paschall, I would agree with your concerns, the emphasis seems a bit unbalanced, but Dr. Moore did make it clear that the “least of these” refers to “brothers and sisters”; the family of God.
In the vein of “preaching like an Arminian but teaching like a Calvinist”, in order to reach those of the family of God within these people groups we need to, in a sense, do missions like the Liberal Christian who espouses social justice but filter our efforts through the subtext of God’s sovereign election by means of offering these the Bread of Life.
However, I would agree with you that if the basic premise is to “Love” in this context apart from an upfront gospel then this is certainly beyond the scope of our mission… and should be categorized as ‘hate’. There is no greater from of oppression than meeting the physical and emotional needs of someone and withhold the bread of life.
One might argue that through the credibility of the meeting of felt-needs we are able to “clear a way” for the gospel. This is logical because the gospel is offensive, nevertheless the gospel is the power to save even apart from our attempts to soften it with “love”. This does NOT mean that we avoid caring for the physical needs of the unregenerate, but it is a spoke on the hub of gospel preaching. I don’t think Dr. Moore would disagree.
Awesome. Thank you.
Well said and beautifully written. Despite the other comments, I think the title, though obviously provocative, makes your point quite well.
AIDS is not a shameful disease. Many victims who develop it from HIV are not promiscuous–sometimes it is as simple as a blood transfusion gone awry.
So shame on you, Russel D. Moore, for marginalizing and stereotyping a group largely comprised of victims, and not promiscuous, shameful creatures.
If God were real, or if God were real and hadn’t treacherously created HIV/AIDS, he would likely agree.
@Robin Sulkosky, I don’t believe Dr. Moore meant AIDS is shameful in the way you appear to have understood him. He actually qaulified what he meant by writing it is, “one most often spread through sexual promiscuity or illicit drug use”. According to WHO, between 5% and 10% of HIV infections worldwide are transmitted through the transfusion of infected blood and blood products. If this stat is accurate then, Dr. Moore is correct in saying, “most often.”
Do you think his reference to the Luke 8 passage would leave room for the cases to which you refer?
Thank you for the article. It’s a much-needed call to the Church to reach out in love to the marginalized, the disenfranchised…And as to the title, Jesus did not say, “I ‘identify’ with the hungry or the naked or…” He said, “I WAS hungry; I WAS naked…” Comedian–and thoughtful Christian thinker–Mark Lowry once said that he’s decided that after reading about Jesus in Scripture, he needs to spend a lot of time around prostitutes. Provocative, and there was nervous(?) laughter, but he went on to make the point, as you did, that that’s where you’d find Jesus much of the time: with the outcasts. The church needs to quit driving across the overpasses on their way to their nice suburban churches and go down below those bridge overpasses to see who lives there, on the streets, amidst the drugs and squalor and desperate need–for the Gospel and for their basic physical needs.
Its hard to compare anything to the scandal of dying a death as a crucified man, stripped naked and so badly beaten that you barely look human, along with other criminals. Good article though - sometimes we need to re-acquaint ourselves with the scandal of the cross - and His stunning and unexpected identification with sinful man (that’s you and I) - and this is one way to accomplish that.
Re: Stephen, “Jesus did not say, ‘I ‘identify’ with the hungry or the naked or…’ He said, ‘I WAS hungry; I WAS naked…’”
-Good point. Some blog commenters try to be more ’spiritual’ than Jesus.
Sorry, I just wasn’t that impressed with this article. It comes off rather shallow (and I’m not even going to get into the controversy over whether there really is such a thing as “AIDS,” which doesn’t have as clear an answer as most people think).
Isn’t it amazing what we “think” we must do to get a point across. I take your “attention grabber” as an afront to our LORD. Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world and all that goes with it but He NEVER WAS ABLE TO SIN. Your statement implies that He could. Think about it. The gay community has just fallen in love with you. Please use the KISS method in the Lord’s servies.
K eep
I t
S imple
S tupid.
@Ted Gilbert, Jesus, Who was both sinless and impeccable, was made sin for us. I don’t believe Dr. Moore’s article in any way implies that He could sin. The spiritual death and physical/emotional misery that sin in this world has caused was dealt with at the cross. “The gay community has just fallen in love with you”? I would hope that in Dr. Moore’s article and in the spreading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we’d show our suffering Savior in such a way that, by the power of the Spirit, the gay community would fall in love with Him. And make no mistake, He died for the gay community as well as the murderer, and the rapist no less than the religious. He didn’t make demarcations based upon societal perceptions.
Mr. Moore-
You write so well.
In regards to some of the unfavorable feedback you’re receiving… well…
I’m SO glad that Jesus isn’t as easily offended as some Christians can be.
Unfortunately, I think this says it all: http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2011/12/a_highly_regrettable_blog_post.html#more
Yeah Ed, unfortunately I’d agree that post says it all—in the sense that I think it’s correct. Am I right in thinking that’s what you meant too?