Murder on the Celestial Express

What many people don’t know about me, and what I try desperately to hide from them, is that I am a murderer. Worse, I am a mass murderer. Some of my killings are cool and calculated because vengeance is a dish best served cold. Some are hot and passionate because it heightens the sense of killing pleasure to have all those delicious glandular substances coursing through the body and the brain.

You won’t find any bodies in my freezer or under my cellar. I haven’t buried people in remote fields or dumped their weighted corpses into murky streams. I didn’t dissolve them with corrosive compounds in my bathtub. I committed the perfect crimes; undetectable by anyone but me - and God.

It’s not a very pleasant subject to talk about, but then sin never is - and we can all acknowledge that murder is most certainly sin. Some sins are debatable (or rationalizable) depending upon circumstances and viewpoints, especially in this most relativistic of moral societies; but there are only a few, including the sociopaths, who would excuse murder altogether.

So, who are my victims? My victims are the people who don’t phone me when I want, or who get my paycheck wrong, or who stymie any of my needs and desires in the slightest way. How dare they! Don’t they know the rage that lies within me? Don’t they fear the slumbering Leviathan? Coiled deep inside me is a serpent of such ferocity that he can spring out in the blink of an eye to sink his poisonous fangs into any hapless victim. And he has.

That serpent is my own godless self. It is what fills me when I am not filled with God. It is what I am apart from the grace of God in me, through faith in Jesus Christ. And the victim most often killed by this sly lurker is myself; yet the victim he most desires to slay is the most Holy God - and His Christ. My inner man - my old man - is wedded to the Prince of Darkness and obeys his killing desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and I had united myself to him in the bonds of servitude.

On some days I hear his rumbling deep within my own soul. Like a roaring wave thundering up through the subterranean cavern of my inner being, the crest of delicious mayhem reaches the tip of my tongue where it lingers in savoury delight. Oh, sweet on the lips, you delightful sin, you momentary pleasure, you beguiling satisfaction; yet, how bitter in the stomach you shall be. But I don’t care, for I am mesmerized by the promise, by the instantaneousness of the sensation. I hate, resent, despise, judge and execute. It is done. And I am curiously empty. It is the cold emptiness of a murderer’s soul when the passion has gone and he stares his lifeless victim in the face.

To any who think this is only melodrama I have a word of warning. You are a murderer, too. It is serious business. It is life and death stuff. It is what the cross of Christ is all about. That cross was as real as the murderous heart within each one of us. These aren’t just words. It is not simply something for the imagination - an unsettling but useful little parody. It is reality. It is truth. Don’t believe me - I am, after all, a murderer; instead, believe Jesus Christ from His own words in #Matthew 5: 21-22

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. {Raca: that is, Vain fellow}

Of course, if you have never been angry without cause, or held onto justifiable anger for a second longer than was justifiable, then this cannot apply to you. You have no need of a physician, for you are not sick. You don’t need a saviour because you are free from sin. But if you know you have, you should know you are a murderer because to be angry with your brother is to want him dead, and to want him dead is the same as killing him. God makes no distinction. Sin is sin.

But it goes deeper. For, in wanting our brother dead we really want to kill the God who made him. It was God who put the brother in our path, God who allowed the behaviour which sparked our reaction, the very God to whom that brother answers. The brother does not answer to us - he answers to God alone. Killing the messenger, the servant of another is the same as killing the sender of the message, for it says that the wishes of the sender are not welcome. That was the fate of the prophets. They prophesied with their own persecutions and death what mankind wanted for God Himself, and what they would have when He came. Nothing less can satisfy our fallen nature, nor that most depraved of beings whom our fallen natures serve. God must die, for we hate Him, just as Satan hates Him. To disobey and to mistrust God IS to hate Him. It IS to want Him dead. We are all murderers of God as soon as we sin.

Yet - what a God we have that He has given us what we most desire - His own death. He has allowed us to murder Him. Therein is love. He has taken the desire of our hearts to eradicate the life of He who IS life itself and, by willingly submitting to it, He has made it a sacrifice instead of a murder, for those who believe. All of God’s dealings with mankind now come sharply into focus at the cross of Christ; if we believe, then He has turned our murder of Him into an atonement for us; if we do not believe, we are guilty of the actual murder of the supreme being from which there can be no deliverance. We have killed the One Being in whom there is life, and whose life is our light. We must then live in eternal darkness with no hope of redemption.

Why then, as a believer, do I still struggle with my murderous inner man? Why am I still tempted to murder and maim through resentments, hatreds and perceived offences? And what should it mean to me that I am - and that God is saving me despite that fact? How should I then live? And where is the power to be found to live without desiring the death of the God Who is saving my by grace alone? The blood. The blood. The blood. There is power, power, wonder working power in the precious blood of the Lamb. The blood of a thing is the life thereof. The blood of Christ is His life poured out for me - to cover forever those evil desires of my old man’s heart and to pour into me the eternal life of God Himself. I must look upon the cross and believe. That is all I can do. For as soon as I look upon Him Whom I have pierced, all is made well; I am reminded of Who He is, what He has done and how freely He did it.