Many people today who have heard of Jesus, think He
is a good chap. “He did lots of good things for people, didn’t he?” they might
say. Indeed our Lord did many good works. He healed the sick, He taught the
ignorant, He forgave sinners, and He restored lepers.
This much most people are willing to accept as evidence of a good man. (In
acknowledging this much they are of course conveniently ignoring that He also
raised the dead, He exorcised demons, He disturbed as well as comforted, He
angered some people until they hated Him, and He also claimed to be divine!)
Christ’s good works were not done however because He
was a nice chap. They were signs. His mission was not to eradicate earthly
evils: hunger, injustice, illness and death. Jesus performed messianic signs.
He came not to abolish all evils on
earth, but to free men from the greatest slavery, sin, which thwarts them in
their vocation as God’s sons and daughters. The slavery of sin is the root
cause of all forms of human bondage (Jn 8:34-36).
We need as Christians to appreciate that there are
two kingdoms. One kingdom is of injustice, hunger, illness, misery, bondage and
death – this is the kingdom of Satan. The Good News is that there is another
kingdom – the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is justice, generosity,
health, blessed happiness, freedom and life eternal. The kingdom of Satan
enslaves and it does so through sin. People cannot just merely choose not to do
unjust things etc.; they are enslaved into thinking that some things are good
when they are actually evil in God’s eyes. They are also enslaved by habits of
thinking and habits of deed which cloud their vision and make it difficult to
change.
So Jesus performed messianic signs pointing to
another reality, but He called on people to repent, and He forgave sins. In
some cases He performed exorcisms which freed some people from the domination
of demonic powers.
It is therefore no good just battling against
injustice, or hunger, or any particular evil, because if one does not go to the
root of the problem they will continue to spring up over and over again. The
battle we wage as Christians, in Christ’s name and in Christ’s power, is
against the principalities and powers of the kingdom of Satan, and it is
against sin. We Christians work most of all to free others from their
enslavement to sin, and consequently their blindness to what is actually evil.
Fr Ian
