……do you know what Jesus is doing?

‘WWJD’….’What would Jesus do” was a phrase that reached fad proportions in the 1990’s!

Millions of Christians were swept along with this noble idea, and joined the bandwagon!

“What would Jesus do” armbands and jewellery soon became the ‘in thing’ in contemporary Christianity! The distinguishing symbol of the ‘believer’ who was really ‘serious’ about ‘living for the Lord”!

Christian celebrities, sportsmen, ordinary lay believers and everyone from the ‘Who’s Who’ of the Church world, proudly displayed their open commitment, to not only be mere followers of Christ, but indeed even aspiring to, and at the same time inspiring others to also become faithfull  ‘imitators’ of Jesus.

Yet, like all passing fads, the concept had a certain lifespan and then fizzled out and passed into obscurity!

I refused to get myself one!

Although I understood perfectly the lofty ideal behind ‘What would Jesus do’, yet for me personally it provoked an intuitive inward resistance.

For me, it had totally the wrong implications!

Why?

Because it invariably suggests that Jesus has stopped doing anything, and that it is basically up to you and I to now do something ‘for’ or ‘instead’ of Jesus.

It further implies that there exists a vast divide between what is ‘secular’ and what is ‘holy’ in everyday life!

It also suggests that some things I do as a Christian, one having ‘eternal life’, would be considered ‘spiritual’, and other actions the mere ‘ordinary’ activities of my life, as though I was simultaneously living two antithetical and mutually counter productive lives, instead of just one live!

And that life was indeed spiritual! Furthermore WWJD empasises the notion of distance, perpetuating the illusion of seperation between Christ and His ‘Body’!

That Chist has not already given us Himself , in order to live out as a reality! However, my Bible tells me that I, Andre had in fact died with Christ at Golgotha, and rose again from the grave in Him, and that therefore, my very life is now ‘hidden with Christ, in God!’

Thus I now no longer live, but, it is indeed Christ Who now lives in me, and in a sense… as me!

This does not mean that I am Christ, no, God forbid!

I am indeed Andre, a mere mortal human being, distinguished from Christ, yet in perfect union and communion with Him in the Spirit! Christ having become my very life, yes indeed, at an essential core level, the only life that I now  have!

Of One Spirit with Him, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh! And indeed, this incredible spiritual reality is in no way contingent upon my own merit, worthiness or qualification!

It is  borne exclusively and undeservedly in His divine  initiative and grounded purely upon His grace alone.

This is rather deep, spiritual and sounds quite mystical, I admit, yet New Testament Scripture compels me to believe it and confidently state it…. exactly  as it is written!

For me, a much more compelling and potent question, in order to expose the undergirding reality, as well as to express the over- arching motive of our lives as followers of Christ, would be to enquire of ourselves ;

Not …“What ‘would’ Jesus do?”…..but rather ……..“What ‘is’ Jesus doing?”