Mr. President, you and Jesus Christ have something in common. Politicians, lawyers, pundits, and cultural icons are out to destroy you just as they sought to destroy him.
Am I saying you are some kind of Christ-figure? Hardly. You are as fallen as any other man in America. Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham count themselves among that number.
But there are some striking parallels between what you are experiencing right now and what Jesus went through on the way to being tried, convicted, and executed as a common criminal. For starters, the American people love you just as the ordinary people of Israel loved Jesus. In fact, the fierce loyalty of the people is what protected Jesus from the powerful and forced them to resort to wretched perfidy to go after him.
Just as your problems are generated by bent politicians aided by crooked lawyers, so Jesus suffered at the hands of the corrupt lawmakers of his day.
The “Pharisees” of Christ’s day were the politicians, which means, by the way, that Jesus was involved in politics every day of his public life. The Pharisees made the rules that everybody had to live by. They imposed regulations out the kazoo that told people how far they could walk on Saturdays and how they had to wash up before supper. They were impervious to the burdens they laid on people’s shoulders and didn’t lift a finger to help them.
They had lawyers (called “scribes”) who gave them workarounds and loopholes so they didn’t have to play by the same rules that bent the backs of their constituents. They even interfered with the freedom of the people to choose the health care provider of their choice.
The “Sadducees” were the Congressmen and the Supreme Court justices of Jesus’ day, all rolled into one body called the “Sanhedrin.” They took offense at the controversial pronouncements of Jesus, twisted his words, relentlessly condemned the “hard sayings” that came from his mouth, even though they were true, and made one false accusation against him after another. They persuaded people in his own circle to turn on him and treacherously sell him out.
They took Jesus down with a sham, scam, and hoax of a trial that pretended to be about justice but was nothing but a jealous, greedy, and malicious lust for and abuse of power. They conducted this trial in secret, behind closed doors. Their case against him was so thin they had to suborn perjury, but their witnesses couldn’t keep their stories straight. They allowed no witnesses to testify on his behalf.
Even though they had no case against Christ, it didn’t matter - they still found a way to bend the rules and come up with a guilty verdict, removing an utterly innocent man permanently (or so they thought) from public life.
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Despite all the injustice and treachery that was arranged against him, Christ triumphed in the end, over the worst that men could do to him. Today he is honored by two billion people around the world as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, while those who took him down, like Judas, have a reputation for betrayal that will last till the end of time.
May the God who sustained Jesus to the very end and gave him victory over death itself be the God who sustains you in the darkest hours, upholds your cause, and vindicates you in the end. Take heart from the word of God, which says, “No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their vindication from me, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 54:17). May it be so for you.
The author may be contacted at [email protected]
