Shopping! Whether that one single word brings a smile to your face, or a feeling of terror to your heart will depend on many things, not just whether you are male or female! For some, a Saturday afternoon’s ‘retail therapy’ is the ideal form of relaxation, but for others there are a thousand other places they would rather be. But for all of us, there’s one moment at the shops which is always a little bit unnerving … and I don’t just mean paying.
How many times have you handed over a ten or twenty pound note to the cashier, only for them to put the note under the ultra-violet light they have attached to the till? Maybe as they do that you feel a little annoyed. ‘Do I look like a counterfeiter?’ you ask yourself! Maybe in annoyance you have similarly held the £5 note you have received in your change up to the light to make the point that you feel insulted by their suggestion. Or is that just me!
The simple fact is that there are an awful lot of counterfeit notes in circulation. Many of them are so good, both in appearance and in ‘feel’, they easily pass as the genuine thing. They might even have fooled you and so you simply pass on in the shop what has been passed on to you. But the special light at the till isn’t fooled. It spots the counterfeit, and you’re left embarrassed. The fact that the note might have done a lot of good as it’s passed through previous owners is of no consequence. It might have been given as a present from a grandparent to a child, or as a donation to a person in the depths of poverty. It might have been put in the collection in church just weeks before, or in a charity box. But it’s still a fake, and like all fake notes it will end up being destroyed.
A Christian writer, Warren Wiersbe, in his book ‘On being a servant of God’ uses this illustration when talking about counterfeit Christians. Like banknotes, there are a great many counterfeit Christians about. Like the banknote, we can have the look or feel of the genuine article and do a lot of good as we pass from person to person. We may give to charity or to the church too, not just our banknotes but our time, energy and concern. But that doesn’t make us real Christians either. Sooner or later we too will stand before a light that will show up all our failings. That will be on the Day of Judgement.
When He was on earth, the Lord Jesus Christ warned people about that day. His words, spoken as part of the Sermon on the Mount, and recorded in Matthew 7 tell us that there will be people who seem like Christians, even casting out demons in His name, but Jesus will say to them; “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”
For to be real Christians we need to know Christ. We need to know Him personally and intimately, because Christianity is a relationship not a religion. We need to have come to put our trust exclusively in Him, and His death on the cross at Calvary alone. We need to be living every day in obedience to His word. Is that true of you?
