Imagine hating Jesus

As a hate-figure he shouldn’t have qualified. For all the things that usually stir up hatred Jesus totally lacked. He wasn’t selfish. He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t smug and arrogant. He didn’t lie or cheat or take unfair advantage of anyone. He wasn’t a hypocrite or a deceiver. Ever.

On the contrary, there was no-one more loving, kind, and selfless. He went around doing good. He healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead, and preached the best news the world had ever heard. He literally lived to serve and save people. And yet for all that, he was hated. Passionately.

Nor is that putting it too strongly. It is true that in his early years, when he lived and worked in Nazareth, his fellow citizens thought the world of him. I do not doubt there was many a parent who would have gladly had him for a son-in-law. But everything changed when he began his public ministry. All too swiftly people divided over him. He had his loyal and loving followers. But he also had the bitterest of foes.

The upshot? What is without question the darkest episode in our dark human history. For Jesus is the Son of God. And God the Father gave proof of that by the miracles he enabled him to perform. Everyone should have worshiped him. But they didn’t. Instead, they plotted to get rid of him. And when they had him in their power they subjected him to the cruelest of deaths.

So how are we to explain it? It had been prophesied that he would be “hated without a cause” (John 15.25) i.e. without just cause. People did, however, have a reason. People always have a reason for their hatred. In Jesus’ case, we learn what it was from his own lips. Can you guess? He told people unwelcome truth.

Here are his words: “The world…hates me because I testify that what it does is evil” (John 7.7). Just as simple as that. Or here is how one of his disciples put it: “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light…” (John 3.19-20a).

I think of what I used to do when my two girls were small and we were vacationing by the sea in Scotland. We would go down to the water’s edge at low-tide and lift up rocks to see what was underneath. How the crabs and other creatures would scurry for cover! They did not like the light!

And nor did the people of Jesus’ day. He told them the truth – about themselves, about their sin, and about how it would all end in judgment if they did not repent. He did it lovingly, too, with their highest interests at heart. And they so hated him for it that they could not rest until they’d killed him.

If you are truly a follower of Jesus there is a message in all this for you. Don’t expect it to be any different. It was what Jesus himself said: “‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15.20). We ought not to be surprised, therefore, when it happens. Faithfulness to him means doing what he did. Calling evil evil. Lovingly but firmly. Warning people that God will reckon with them for their sins. Appealing to them to turn in repentance to Jesus. People will hate for us that. And they will show it.

Our encouragement? His own precious promise: “great is your reward in heaven” (Matt.5.11).

David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013

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Abortion – God’s right to choose

We start with the all-important question of ownership. To whom, as human beings, do we belong? You may respond by saying, “I don’t belong to anyone!” But you’re wrong. By virtue of the fact that God is our Creator every last one of us belongs to him. “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24.1). Balk at it and deny it as we may we are all the possession of another.

Now that gives us the proper framework for the discussion of abortion. Why should we not approach abortion in terms of a woman’s right to choose? Because the fetus that is developing in her womb is not, in the final analysis, her own. It is God’s. Before we assume to ourselves the right to terminate its life, therefore, we urgently need to know his mind on the matter.

So what has he told us? We note for one thing that in both Hebrew and Greek (the original languages in which the Bible was written) the word for a child outside the womb is the same as for a child still in the womb. The shepherds who visited Jesus the night he was born, for example, were told that they would find “a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2.12). The identical word is used earlier in Luke’s Gospel of the as yet unborn John the Baptist (Ch.1.44). Other examples could easily be cited.

What does it mean? It means that no essential distinction is being drawn between them. The unborn, in biblical thinking, are children. They may be at a very early stage in their development and it may be long enough before they are capable of independent existence. But they are children nonetheless.

Nor is vocabulary God’s only way of making the point. He makes it in other ways as well. A moral judgment is pronounced on the unborn to the effect that they are sinners. They can enjoy the blessing of God’s salvation. Their time in the womb is regarded as part of their personal history. These things taken together forbid the thought that the unborn are merely potential human beings. God would have us view them, rather, as actual human beings – with enormous potential.

That being so, the unborn are as entitled as children outside the womb to the protection of the sixth commandment. The sixth commandment prohibits the taking of human life and admits of few exceptions. It is lawful to take life for certain crimes. So too in the context of a just war. So too in self-defense. In all other cases, however, the killing of humans is categorically forbidden. It reflects God’s sense of the value of human life. It may be cheap enough in the eyes of certain people. Not in the eyes of our Creator.

It is this that makes abortion the grave offense that Christians have historically held it to be. Abortion is the destruction of a life that ought to be held sacred. That is why it is our duty to be pro-life. That is why our government ought to legislate for the protection of the unborn. That is why the temptation to abort ought to be resisted. That is why women who are considering abortion need all the help they can get to continue to carry their child. And that is why those who have had an abortion (unless for the preservation of their own lives) need to face up to their guilt in the sight of God.

Guilt, however, need not have the last word. Through Christ there is both forgiveness and healing. Let the guilt-haunted and the hurting look confidently to him for his grace!

David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013

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