Our Security In Christ
One of the things that the people of our time and place are so concerned about is their security. We are concerned about our security because we believe that there are many physical and spiritual forces around threatening it.
We have seen thieves and hired assassins breaking into people’s houses both in the day and night time, taking all their properties, wounding some of them and even doing away with the lives of some.
We have seen people becoming sick suddenly or even dying in such a sudden and mysterious way, of no medical cause that we easily believe that the death has been caused by an enemy or an evil one, acting from one angle.
We have seen people being accused of an offense that they have not committed, sometimes by the state and at other times by the powerful and mighty ones, and as such being tortured, intimidated, made to languish in prison or even being killed.
At other times, people have even directly threatened us and promised to deal with us: should we dare to cross them, even by our just actions. Some must have even made it clear to us that we live at their mercy and they have our lives in their hands.
All these have made many of us to feel quite unsecured and to seek protections from any possible angle.
Some, out of their meagre resources, spend more than what they use for the maintenance of their lives, seeking protection. Some live most of their lives in fear and a sense of insecurity that life ends up becoming a prison for them.
To all of us who are in this kind of state, Christ comes to bring freedom and security. Through a prayerful meditation on the following sections of the word of God, we will realize that believing and living in Christ means being secured forever. Jeremiah 20: 10-13, Psalm 68, Romans 5: 12-15 and the Gospel of St. Matthew 10: 26-33.
One thing that both the scriptures and our day to day human experience affirm is that there is a strong presence of evil in world. Evil, in terms of morality, is another name for sin. The evil of killing, stealing, cheating, violence, promiscuity, insincerity and so on which we see around us, entered into our world on the day one of humanity through the failure of our first parents.
Right from then, evil has continued to root, to compound and to bring about fear, insecurity, suffering and death to the whole of humanity.
To the Romans, Paul stated: “Sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned” (Romans 5: 12).
Someone therefore who is looking for an absolute security in this world will definitely have nowhere to turn his face. Some people have done great injustice to others and have deceived them under the pretence of being Religious people, spiritual healers or fetish priests by promising to secure them against all forms of sickness, danger, suffering and death under the condition that they pay this or give them that.
After wasting all they have on spiritual healers and fetish priests, many people realise quite late in their lives that such kind of security that they are looking for is out of consideration and above all, quite unnecessary in this life. This life is passing away and is not meant to be secured in an extra-ordinary way. Whether we secure it or not, when its span is off, it is bound to be terminated by God the giver of life.
The only thing that is demanded of us about the care of this physical life is not to be careless with our life and health. Anything beyond this means running ahead of the author of life.
Christ the Lord, assuring us that it is God our father alone who preserves our lives as the need arises questioned us: “Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid, you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows” (Mt. 10: 29 & 30).
In the midst of the evils surrounding us in this world, the temptation that the devil, the father of sin confronts us with is to compromise our own salvation and eternal security for temporal ‘security’ which we are bound to discover sooner or later not to be a true security.
When we see that the truth that we say hurt our friends and that the right which we strive after makes us somehow disdainful to our associates, the tendency is to strike a compromise with them, to tread the path that makes them at ease with us, and equally make us at ease with them.
This is the kind of bargain that Jeremiah the man of God (a conscience which could not compromise the truth) could not settle for, hence he describes the reaction of his adversaries as follows: “I hear so many disparaging me, terror from every side, ‘denounce him let us denounce him’ all those who used to be my friends watched for my downfall ‘perhaps he will be seduced into error then we will master him and take our revenge.’ “ (Jeremiah 20: 10). Christ insisted that no amount of such a threat on our security should make us to compromise our steadfastness or to give in to the seduction of sin.
To do that would amount to losing our true eternal security which is rooted on our faith and righteousness in him. He declared: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell” (Mt. 10: 28).
When we get rooted in Christ and in the true righteousness, we will realize that any kind of security be it temporal or spiritual which couldn’t be obtained through our faith in God the Father through his Son Jesus Christ, is a false security.
We will also come to understand that any kind of security which is guaranteed by anything less than a gospel oriented life of righteousness is a counterfeit.
