Isaiah 53:6
In October of 1347, a Genoese fleet returned from the Black Sea, carrying in her cargo the death sentence for Europe. By the time the ships landed in Messina, Italy, most of the sailors were dead. The few who survived wished they hadn't. Fever racked their bodies. Festering boils volcanoed on their skin. Authorities ordered the vessels out of the harbor, but it was too late. Flea-infested rats had already scampered down the ropes into the village, and the bubonic dictator had begun her ruthless march across the continent.
The disease followed trade routes northward through Italy into France and the northern nations. By spring it had breached the border of England. Within a short and brutal five years, twenty-five million people, one-third of Europe's population, had died. And that was just the beginning.
Three centuries later it still raged. As late as 1665 an epidemic left a hundred thousand Londoners dead, taking some seven thousand lives a week until a bitter, yet mercifully cold, winter killed the fleas.
No cure was known. No hope was offered. The healthy quarantined the infected. The infected counted their days.
When you make a list of history's harshest scourges, rank the Black Plague near the top. It earns a high spot. But not the highest. Call the disease catastrophic, disastrous. But humanity's deadliest? No. Scripture reserves that title for a darker blight, an older pandemic that by comparison makes the Black Plague seem like a cold sore. No culture avoids, no nation escapes, no person sidesteps the infection of sin.
Blame the bubonic plague on the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Blame the plague of sin on a godless decision. Adam and Eve turned their heads toward the hiss of the snake and for the first time ignored God. Eve did not ask, "God, what do you want?" Adam didn't suggest, "Let's consult the Creator." They acted as if they had no heavenly Father. His will was ignored, and sin, with death on its coattails, entered the world.
Sin sees the world with no God in it.
Where we might think of sin as slip-ups or missteps, God views sin as a godless attitude that leads to godless actions. "All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own" (Isa. 53:6). The sinful mind dismisses God. His counsel goes unconsulted. His opinion, unsolicited. His plan, unconsidered. The sin-infected grant God the same respect middle-schoolers give a substitute teacher. Acknowledged, but not taken seriously.