It’s bad news to think you’re sorted when you’re not. To think you’re a Christian when you’re not. Really, it is. Here’s a current example. No true follower of Jesus who has eternal life within them has been out on the streets whooping and cheering and celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. It’s not conceivable. It’s not possible. It is like saying that cats can write sonnets or that snails can drive cars. Christians do not glory in death nor celebrate executions. They love and forgive their enemies and glory in the resurrected son of God who triumphed over death. ‘Love your enemies’ said Jesus, not ‘laugh, dance and cheer over their bloody and tattered corpses.’

No, the execrable scenes of crowing that we have seen outside the White House and in New York and elsewhere is the carnival celebration of the old lie; that retributive violence is a bringer of peace, rather than a generator of further carnage and mayhem.

Those who celebrate Imperial executions with joy and delight accept with shocking ignorance the easy and pernicious fiction that a bit of gun-slinging can deal once and for all with those evil Red Indians. They worship the power of the gun, the missile, the arm and might of Caesar and not the rule and reign of the Prince of Peace.

And yet they may call themselves Christians; inevitably many do. Fools.

Bad news. The gospel of Jesus is actually bad news for those who think they are already sorted, rather than acknowledging that there is a bit of Bin Laden in all of us. Jesus came for those who knew they were sick and in need, not the ones for whom nominal subscription to a creed takes the place of a substantial, living and breathing, moment by moment connection to Christ. The ‘sun of righteousness’ that Malachi predicted would rise to save His people refuses to be used as a cosmetic. He will not be like a fake sun tan lotion, providing a bright religious gloss to your otherwise ego centric existence. He’s either the light by which you live, or you’re in pitch darkness. He’s either the centre of your Universe or you don’t know who He is at all.

The good news of Jesus is terrible bad news, therefore, if at the last you actually have to own the fact – when Jesus returns – that you don’t know him. It’s those kind of people who get to be in the darkness forever whilst the sick, the criminals, the terrorists and the rest of those saved by grace go in to feast with the crucified revolutionary Jesus, the most famous victim of an Imperial execution.