“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “He Himself took our infirmities, And bore our sicknesses.” – Matthew 8:17 NKJV
In quick order in Matthew 8 Jesus heals a leper, a servant, and mother in law, then delivered a demon possessed man. Not exactly a who’s who list in that culture…
Jesus Himself absorbed and took on the sin and sickness of these people… Jesus has the authority to be the end of all sickness and all sin… the natural world doesn’t look like this… we tend to pass things on…
If we have Christ within us, God is called us to follow in His ministry of absorption, in a sense we can become a place where sin and sickness stop…
- When gossip comes to us, it stops…
- When injustice comes to us, we bear the cost, and instead of passing that injustice on we pass on mercy, love and truth…
- When we’re in the middle of the crossfire between political wars, we don’t allow ourselves to become marked with partisanship, but we set aside the ideologies of the world, and choose to love both sides…
This is not a calling without a cost, we will be misunderstood, thought too liberal or too conservative, we will be thought weak or too loud…
- Just as there is a price, there is also a provision… In the Spirit of God, and our dependency upon Him in these moments, He will give us the strength we need…
“God grants us the right and power to put an end to what is wrong if we are willing to pay the cost of absorbing it with, and for Him…”
God is calling us in a real world way… with real people… not just ideas… to love beyond ourselves… to value human life in all its diversity… in all its tragic flaws… in all its failings… whether we’re comfortable with them or not…
- That in us, we can be the clearest reflection of God’s love to a world that desperately needs it…
- That to me is a Christianity worth living for… Let us reset the immense value of human life to the world around us…”