What are faithful, wise Christians to do? How can we avoid both extremes, of over-reaction and under-reaction, of panic and complacency? How can we respond to this situation in terms of the two great commandments, to love God and to love our neighbors?

This is a long article. I hope you’ll read it all anyway. If you’re staying home to help reduce the spread of the new Coronavirus (COVID-19), you may have more time on your hands anyway!

I’ve prayed and pondered long and hard what to say about the pandemic, wanting to encourage simultaneously both prudent care and fearless confidence.

Unsurprisingly, many in the media and politics exaggerate the danger. Both have strong incentives to do so. The media incite fears to increase audience, which attracts advertisers, which pays bills. Hence the saying common among journalists, “Bad news is good news; good news is no news.” Politicians incite fears to lead people to think they’re doing great things to protect them, which garners votes.

Also unsurprisingly, some people understate the danger. Some do it because they suspect politicians are just acting on the principle, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” making every emergency a new reason to shrink liberty and expand government. Some do it because they’ve seen many claims of catastrophe come and go unfulfilled and suspect this is just another. Others do it because they simply feel confident that God is in control.

What are faithful, wise Christians to do? How can we avoid both extremes, of over-reaction and under-reaction, of panic and complacency? How can we respond to this situation in terms of the two great commandments, to love God and to love our neighbors?

I believe five Biblical principles can help us.

First, trust God.

Psalm 91:1–3 speaks directly to our situation: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.” Indeed, all the rest of that psalm is relevant; I hope you’ll read it. Does it guarantee that no Christian will ever get sick? No. But it gives us reason to believe God is in control, and if He afflicts us with illness, it is only because that’s better for us than not. As Romans 8:28 says, “… for those who love God all things work together for good ….”

When godly Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, learned that a vast army of several nations was about to attack, he

was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord. And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said, “O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save.’ And now behold, the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy—behold, they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chronicles 20:3–12)

Then “all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children,” and God instructed them through Jahaziel, “Do not be afraid … for the battle is not yours but God’s. … Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf ….” The people of Judah then held a worship service, singing praises to God, and God used other nations to “set an ambush” that routed the attackers, so that “when Judah … looked toward the horde … there were dead bodies lying on the ground; none had escaped” (verses 15–24).

I’m not saying God will wipe out the Coronavirus (though He could) and we should do nothing. What I am saying is that our first resort should be to God in prayer, and one thing we should pray for is widespread repentance and revival in our country and around the world. Scripture is filled with instances in which God used diseases to chasten or punish cities or nations. Who knows if the Coronavirus outbreak is such? Certainly responding in part by calling out to God in faith and repentance is an appropriate response to it. We should be thankful that our President called for March 16 to be a day of prayer; we should continue praying faithfully throughout this season.

Second, don’t fear.

Jehoshaphat “was afraid,” but “he set his face to seek the Lord.” When he did, his fears were stilled.

The most frequently repeated command in the Bible is “Do not be afraid,” or “Fear not.” Perhaps the best known is when God told Joshua, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). When the disciples were in a boat battling a storm on the Sea of Galilee, they were afraid when they saw Jesus walking on the water, and He responded, “It is I; do not be afraid” (John 6:20). Why shouldn’t Joshua or the disciples have been afraid? In both instances, because God (in the disciples’ case, Jesus, God in the flesh) was with them. As God told Jeremiah, “Do not be afraid … for I am with you to deliver you” (Jeremiah 1:8). For just a few other examples, see Genesis 46:3; 1 Samuel 12:20; 2 Kings 1:15; 6:16; 19:6; 25:24; Nehemiah 4:14; Proverbs 3:25; Matthew 28:5, 10; Luke 1:13, 30; Acts 27:24).

Keeping things in perspective can reduce fear. COVID-19 is a serious risk, but we live with others every day. In the average year, over 37,000 Americans die of flu and over 38,000 in traffic accidents. COVID-19 is likely, like most epidemics, to peak and fall in weeks or months and so is unlikely to kill that many Americans ever, let alone each year.

Even in the face of grave danger, Christians need not be afraid, for God is with us.

Third, be prudent.

This will be my longest point, because prudence is difficult. As you’ll see in a moment, we need what I call “prudent prudence.”

When Satan tempted Jesus to throw Himself down from the temple, he quoted Psalm 91:11–12: “He will command his angels concerning you” and “On their hands they will bear you up ….” If anyone could have claimed those verses as justification, Jesus could. But He didn’t. Instead He quoted another scripture: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16).

Proverbs 22:3 says, “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” Apparently that’s a pretty important lesson, for it’s repeated, word-for-word, in Proverbs 27:12.

Our trust in God is no excuse for laziness, imprudence, or outright folly. In 1527, Martin Luther, responding by letter to a pastor who had asked whether it were permissible for a Christian to flee from the plague, wrote words that are astonishingly relevant to our present challenge:

If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and must beware lest he become a suicide in God’s eyes. By the same reasoning a person might forego eating and drinking, clothing and shelter, and boldly proclaim his faith that if God wanted to preserve him from starvation and cold, he could do so without food and clothing. Actually that would be suicide. It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over. Indeed, such people behave as though a house were burning in the city and nobody were trying to put the fire out. Instead they give leeway to the flames so that the whole city is consumed, saying that if God so willed, he could save the city without water to quench the fire.

No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city. What else is the epidemic but a fire which instead of consuming wood and straw devours life and body? You ought to think this way: “Very well, by God’s decree the enemy has sent us poison and deadly offal. Therefore I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become   contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely, as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.

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