Is sickness caused by personal sin?
InferredNo single verse settles it; the conclusion is assembled across texts and leans one way.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, the text explicitly rules out personal sin as the universal cause of sickness, while showing it can be the cause in specific cases.
Jesus himself directly denies that a man's blindness was caused by his own sin or his parents' (John 9:3), and denies that disaster victims were worse sinners than others (Luke 13:2-5). God's own speech in Job declares Job blameless while permitting his affliction. But Jesus also tells one healed man "sin no more, so that nothing worse happens to you" (John 5:14), and the text records Miriam's leprosy following her sin (Numbers 12:10). The evidence assembled across texts leans toward: sin is one possible cause of sickness in some cases, but not the universal or automatic cause.
What scripture leaves unaddressed: The text does not provide a systematic rule for determining which cause applies in any given case of sickness, it shows multiple causes but gives no diagnostic method for distinguishing them in a particular person's situation.
…and 12 more verses weighed in the full analysis.
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SAM answers from primary-source texts only, weighing each verse by its authority tier. Every quotation is verified word-for-word. How the method works →