I order you in the name of Jesus Christ.

 

Tuesday, August 15, 2023


Psalm 104:1-25

2 Samuel 18:5-18

Acts 16:11-24


Observance: The Blessed Virgin Mary


I order you in the name of Jesus Christ.


There is a certain Japanese take-away chain that I was recently surprised to see still in business. My surprise came from the fact that I clearly remember how, some years ago, they caused quite the scandal; their chicken curry did not, in fact, contain any chicken. What they had been caught serving to customers was in fact the “forbidden chicken”: ibis meat. I suppose when it had been crumbed, deep fried, sliced, and then slathered in sauce, nobody really noticed until the food inspectors got a look into the back room.


The feeling of getting one thing and later discovering it is something completely different begins at disappointment, and ranges to much worse. Having put food in your mouth only be told that it is actually something else automatically makes you want to spit it out. This is why Paul got fed up with the woman in Philippi possessed with the snake-spirit. She had made a name for herself as someone who could give you spiritual benefit without any spiritual cost. Jesus, by contrast, demands complete obedience, which is something altogether different, and Paul could not abide having his Lord dragged down to her level.


Becoming a Christian and being saved is not like going to a fortune-teller, handing over some cash, and getting some nice words in return. Evangelising as if this were the case would result only in surface-level Christians: people who want all of the benefits of God’s love without any of the cost of the cross of Jesus. Such a person would be like the one who ordered a chicken curry but got ibis instead.


To follow the Lord Jesus as one of His disciples is truly the greatest calling one can follow. But the Christian life is not a spiritual sugar-rush. Jesus dined with sinners, yes – but He was calling them to repentance. This is real chicken curry. To be truly freed of our sins, of that darkness that threatens every human being, is real spirituality. The Lord Jesus has power and authority, and if we repent of our sins, be baptised in the name of the Triune God, and love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbours as ourselves, then Jesus grants us that authority of His to cast out evil in His name. If we go to the cross with Him, we will be raised with Him, and rule with Him forever.

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