What if a miracle worker had done something comparable with the Black Plague? Imagine a man born with bubonic resistance. The bacterium can't penetrate his system unless he allows it to do so. And, incredibly, he does. He pursues the infected and makes this offer: "Touch my hand. Give me your disease, and receive my health."
The boil-and-fever-ridden have nothing to lose. They look at his extended hand and reach to touch it. True to the man's word, bacteria pass from their system into his. But their relief spells his anguish. His skin erupts and his body heaves. And as the healed stand in awe, the disease bearer hobbles away.
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Our history books tell no such story. But our Bible does.
He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. . . . GOD has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong on him, on him. . . . He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many, he took up the cause of all the black sheep. (Isa. 53:5-12 MSG)
Christ responds to universal sin with a universal sacrifice, taking on the sins of the entire world. This is Christ's work for you. But God's salvation song has two verses. He not only took your place on the cross; he takes his place in your heart. This is the second stanza: Christ's work in you. "It is no longer I who live," Paul explained, "but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20 NKJV).
Or as he told one church: "Don't you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?" (1 Cor. 3:16). In salvation, God enters the hearts of his Adams and Eves. He permanently places himself within us. What powerful implications this brings. "When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life" (Rom. 8:11 MSG).
Let me show you how this works. It took three hundred years, but the Black Plague finally reached the quaint village of Eyam, England. George Viccars, a tailor, unpacked a parcel shipped from London. The cloth he'd ordered had arrived. But as he opened and shook it, he released plague-infected fleas. Within four days he was dead, and the village was doomed. The town unselfishly quarantined itself, seeking to protect the region. Other villages deposited food in an open field and left the people of Eyam to die alone. But to everyone's amazement, many survived. A year later, when outsiders again visited the town, they found half the residents had resisted the disease. How so? They had touched it. Breathed it. One surviving mother had buried six children and her husband in one week. The gravedigger had handled hundreds of diseased corpses yet hadn't died. Why not? How did they survive?