It was time for Jesus’ Medicine!

It might surprise you to learn that in the cupboard we have some divine medicine that is super-effective for healing. It goes by the name of communion, which last night meant Ribena and pita bread. This is what the Bible says about communion:

“Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor 11:26)

Do you know what it means to proclaim the Lord’s death? It means we are proclaiming that Christ’s body was scourged for our healing and his blood was shed for our forgiveness.

Most people understand that Jesus died for our sins. But he also died to deliver us from all the effects of sin, including sickness and disease.

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows… and by his wounds we are healed.” (Is 53:4-5)

When we take communion we are proclaiming his death which brought us life – abundant, healthy life. To take communion when you’re sick is to exercise your God-given faith. It’s like saying, “I don’t identify with these symptoms. I identify with Jesus who was wounded that I might be healed.”

When those sickness symptoms try and tell you that you are not going to be healed, don’t agree with them. Say instead, “Jesus paid for my healing. I have a right to healing.” Command those lying symptoms to go. Confess God’s word over those symptoms. “Surely he took up my infirmities.”

But what about the other part of that scripture in 1 Corinthians 11, the bit that warns against taking communion “in an unworthy manner”?

When I started leading Island City Church in the late 1990s, I used to wonder about this passage. I wondered whether we should be offering communion to sinners who happened to be visiting the service. Are sinners worthy of communion?

You know what? It’s silly to withhold communion from unworthy people. Christ died for unworthy people! It is unworthy people who most need to hear Christ’s death proclaimed. When I realized this it set me free. Communion went from being solely a time of worship and became an opportunity to preach the good news. Since then I have also come to see communion as an opportunity for healing miracles. The result is that Jesus is worshipped even more.

So last night we took communion as a family right before dinner. Stina immediately perked up, like within a minute. She went to her seat and wolfed down her meal. Then she had seconds which she rarely does. She was her usual cheerful self. And when she went to bed she thanked Jesus for healing her.

If you’re reading this and you’re sick, get something red to drink and something bready to eat – it really doesn’t matter what the symbols are made of – and proclaim the victory that Christ won at the cross.

This is pretty mind-blowing stuff when you’re a teenager who thinks anyone who doesn’t go to your particular kind of church is deceived and in danger of hell-fire!

But reading this again as a middle-aged man what struck me most was not Aslan’s inclusiveness, but the name he gave to Emeth. This also had a deep effect on the man himself, for he says:

“Then he breathed upon me and took away the trembling from my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. And after that, he said not much, but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in. Then he turned him about in a storm and flurry of gold and was gone suddenly.

“And since then, O Kings and Ladies, I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but a dog – ” (p.155)

Do you know that God calls us Beloved too?

At the River Jordan the Voice from Heaven said of Jesus,

“This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17, KJV).

Ephesians 1:6 tells us that God has accepted us “in the Beloved” (KJV). This means that God relates to us in the same way that He relates to Jesus. He accepts us, is well pleased with us, and He calls us His beloved sons.

Joseph Prince writes about this in his book, Destined to Reign. He notes that in Matthew 3 God says of Jesus, “this is my beloved Son,” but in Matthew 4 the devil says, “If you are the Son of God…” The devil did not remind Jesus that He was the beloved Son of God and neither does he remind us. The devil doesn’t want us to know what God thinks of us because once you know you are beloved, says Prince, everything changes. We rise up against the enemy’s temptations and we stand secure in our God-given identity.

“Beloved, there is nothing you can do today to make God love you more, and there’s nothing you can do to make Him love you any less… Beloved, it’s not enough that you know that God loves everyone. You need to know and believe that He loves you, and let that revelation burn in your heart, especially when you fail.” (Destined to Reign, pp.300-1)

It is such an awesome privilege to be adopted as a son of God (Gal 3:26). But we are more than sons; we are His beloved sons.

Lewis was onto something here. He knew that when we apprehend the divine audacity of God calling us Beloved, our joy is so overwhelming that it weakens us like a wound. And knowing that we are His Beloved, it is the easiest thing to turn our backs on the world and set out to find Him and to be where He is.

Now lest you get the wrong impression, let me preface everything by saying I am a huge fan of CS Lewis. As far as I’m concerned The Chronicles of Narnia are the best children’s books ever written. The older I get the more I enjoy them. And I am well aware that they were not written as some sort of Christian analogy. Any fan can tell you how Lewis started writing and Aslan the Lion just showed up and took over. (If you want to know the back story, The Narnian by Alan Jacobs is the one of the best biographies of Lewis.)

That said, it is fair to treat the Narnia Chronicles as suppositions. Lewis certainly did when he said: “Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would have happened.” In our world, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. But what about Narnia? What does Aslan model of the grace and goodness of the “Emperor-over-the-Sea”?

Well obviously Aslan died for the sins of Edmund and that was really something. He also set the witch’s captives free and broke the curse of endless winter. Everything he says is wise and full of grace.

Or is it?

Look at the snippet below which comes from ch. 14 of The Horse and His Boy. If you haven’t read the story – and it’s brilliant – Aravis is running away from the cruel land of Calormen. She was being forced into marriage and to make good her escape she drugged her stepmother’s maid. Later in the story she is chased by a lion who claws her shoulder. Aravis escapes but is wounded. Later she meets Aslan who says:

“It was I who wounded you… Do you know why I tore you?”
“No, sir.”

“The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You need to know what it felt like.”

“Yes, sir. Please – ”

“Ask on, dear,” said Aslan.

“Will any more harm come to her by what I did?”

“Child,” said the Lion, “I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”

When I read this as a younger man, Aslan’s wounding of Aravis struck me as fatherly discipline. Afterall, Aravis needed to learn the consequences of her actions. But in reality Aslan’s clawing is punishment applied in the merciless Mosaic sense of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Deut 19:21). Aslan says as much and I’m stunned. I’m as shocked as I would be if Jesus had flung stones at the woman caught in adultery. Why would Aslan do such a thing?

Now in the story Aravis starts out as an arrogant young lady. But by the time of her arrival in the northern lands she is well on the way to becoming, according to Paul Ford, “an example of true Narnian nobility.” She has confronted death and suffering in her desperate quest to be free and she has learned compassion and humility. In her heart she is no longer a Calormene but a woman of the free north. Then, just as she arrives in the land of safety, out jumps Aslan with sharp claws! Welcome to your new life kid.

Aslan tears her because her actions caused the slave to be whipped. It makes you wonder what Aslan would’ve done if the slave girl had been whipped and beaten. What if she had been killed?

So what lesson do children take away from this story?

Perhaps the lesson is that God keeps score and one day He’ll punish you for every sin. Or perhaps the lesson is about suffering. If you’re suffering it means God is punishing you for something you did a long time ago. Or perhaps you’re suffering because you were born in the wrong race, or in the wrong place, or in the wrong gender.

So all in all, the gospel of Aslan is wonderful if your name happens to be Edmund. But it’s not such good news for anyone else. Thankfully Jesus is nothing like that (Mt 5:38-39). Thankfully the true gospel offers grace and mercy to all who would put their trust in Him whether slave or free, man or woman, Calormene or Narnian.

I had a hard time falling asleep last night. Maybe it was Lewis’s legalism that was gnawing on my mind. Or perhaps it was the thought that for the first time in my life I was actually a tiny bit relieved that I don’t live in Narnia.

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Related posts:
- Grace and propitiation in the Chronicles of Narnia
- Grace and love in the Chronicles of Narnia
- How to really overcome discouragement