When Jesus died, His enemies breathed a sigh of relief. Jesus had given them everything they needed to believe that He was the promised Messiah, but they chose to reject Him, and they were instrumental in putting Him to death.
We may struggle with our decision to accept Him or not, but sooner or later, if we refuse Him long enough, we will reject Him and turn hostile toward Him. We will look for proof that we are right in rejecting Him, and we will make Jesus out to be a villain, a liar, or a simple sorry man who succumbed to a deserved death.
But once we cross the Rubicon of our inner struggle with God and choose to reject Him, we work to tear Him down in every way we can. It may not be so egregious or blatant, but we no longer entertain the idea that He could be our Savior.
In order for us to find some semblance of peace with our decision, we begin to see Jesus as an imposter. Sometimes this comes in the form of recreating Him in our image. The Jesus we wish to serve is nothing like the one we read about in the Bible. That gives us a modicum of comfort because we can at least cling to the things we like about Jesus.
But sometimes, we can divorce ourselves so fully from considering Him as our Savior that He becomes the enemy. He is the one who duped everyone. He becomes the one who leads people away from the true higher power we all seek.
This is how the chief priests and Pharisees saw Jesus. And when He died, they doubled down on their disdain for Him. They remembered that Jesus claimed He would die and then rise from the dead on the third day, so when Jesus died, they went to Pilate to ensure this could never happen.
“The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate
and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’” (Matthew 27:62-63 ESV).
The chief priests and the Pharisees were “all in” on their decision. Jesus had given them signs and had fulfilled the prophecies, yet they would not consider Him. He was not the Messiah they were looking for. They had a perverted image of what He would be, and rather than allow their hearts to be molded by the truth, they hardened their hearts and stuck to the truth they had created.
This meant only one thing. If Jesus wasn’t the Messiah they had envisioned, He was a fraud, a phony, a charlatan, a cheat, a quack, a pretender.
Jesus was an imposter.
And this is exactly how they referred to Him when speaking with Pilate.
Perhaps we will never be as bold to look Jesus in the eyes and call him an imposter. But if He claims to be our King and we refuse to bow down to Him, don’t our actions accuse Him of being an impostor King?
If He claims to be our Savior and we refuse to be saved by Him, don’t our actions accuse Him of being an imposter Savior?
If He claims to be our Judge and we refuse to heed His words, don’t our actions accuse Him of being an imposter Judge?
If He claims to be our Good Shepherd and we refuse to hear His voice, don’t our actions accuse Him of being an imposter Shepherd?
If He claims to be our Lord and we refuse to submit to Him, don’t our actions accuse Him of being an imposter Lord?
The men responsible for killing Jesus on that Friday were honest in their assessment of Him. In their minds, He was an imposter. As an imposter, He deserved no sympathy or consideration. And so they asked Pilate to:
“Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” (Matthew 27:64 ESV).
After all, if we believe someone to be an imposter, we will go out of our way to prove Him to be an imposter. This is exactly what the Jews did.
“Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.”
So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.” (Matthew 27:65-66 ESV).
But here’s the danger in accusing someone of being an imposter. If we are wrong, it will come back to bite us in the end. Had Jesus been an imposter, the chief priests and Pharisees would have proven it, and no one would have ever heard of a man named Jesus of Nazareth.
But if Jesus was who He claimed to be, then not even a sealed tomb could hold Him. The truth would come out, and no mere mortal could prevent it. If Jesus were the Messiah, the promised King, the Savior, the Good Shepherd, the Lord, and the Judge of all men, then a simple accusation against Him would mean nothing.
Jesus is who He is. It is our choice to believe Him or not. Calling Him names or disparaging Him to others does not change the fundamental truths about who He is. He claims to be the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, and our Lord. We choose to believe Him or to claim He is an imposter.
“because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9 ESV).
This is our choice. But our choice will not change who Jesus is. It only changes who He is to us.
To the chief priests and Pharisees, Jesus was an imposter. But their assessment of Him was in error. He is all who He claimed to be. He always was, and He always will be, regardless of what you and I may say about Him.
Are we still struggling over who Jesus is to us? Let us make it simple. No matter what we think, He is our King, Savior, Judge, Shepherd, and Lord. The only thing up for consideration is our assessment of Him. That assessment may or may not be correct.
The assessment of the chief priests and Pharisees about Jesus was not correct. Is our assessment of Jesus correct today? Regardless, our assessment of Him will not change who He is.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8 ESV).
The clouds are low and thick in North Central Texas today. The perfect setting for a return trip.
“Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.” (Revelation 1:7 ESV).
“Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:17 ESV).
Sometimes, when two people get married, they decide to get a divorce for irreconcilable differences. If our marriages are built on God, nothing is irreconcilable. Our marriages will work if we look to Jesus, no matter how different we are.
If you don’t believe me, just look to the tax collector Matthew and the Zealot Simon. Apart from Jesus, they would be at each other’s throats. But when they both looked to Jesus, they accomplished great things in His name.
Even if we grow to realize that our spouse and we have nothing in common but God, as long as we both look to Jesus, we will also be able to accomplish great things in His name as a married couple.
Only Jesus can turn irreconcilable differences into harmony built in heaven.
There are a couple of ways we need to be careful lest we become overcome by pride.
We may feel so confident of our own ability to master and conquer sin that we do not guard ourselves with the protection that God will give us.
We may also be puffed up in pride when we openly do what we want to do in spite of knowing what God wants us to do.
Pride is insidious in whatever form it takes in us.
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18 ESV).
Would we believe in Jesus had we met Him in the first century? I would hope so, but who knows? If we were Jews, we would have a tough choice to make. Do we believe a man of flesh and blood who claims to be the Son of God but doesn’t hold up to our well-established interpretations of who the Messiah is, or do we adjust our understanding of whom the Messiah is based on the evidence that Jesus presents?
If Jesus appeared today with the same miracles, would we believe, or would we be so beholden to our interpretations that we would reject Him, no matter what proofs He gave us?
That’s what the Jews did. I am not so sure that many of us wouldn’t do the same thing.
Are we converted to Jesus or our own interpretations of what we believe about who Jesus is and what His Kingdom is? Will we live and die by our own doctrines and theology, or will we stand by Jesus if our study leads us to an understanding of His truth that may be different from ours?
This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where we become willing to forsake all to follow Him. This is where we deny ourselves. This is where we hate father, mother, brother, and sister and follow Jesus.
If we are faced with that choice, will we choose, like the Jewish religious leaders, to reject Him and hold to our own doctrines and traditions, or when it shatters our worldview, will we be like sinners and tax collectors who embraced Jesus?
This may be perhaps the hardest sacrifice we will be called to make in the absence of laying down our lives as martyrs.
It is amazing to me that I serve a God who created the universe and personally knows the vistas from hundreds of billions of planets around hundreds of billions of stars in hundreds of billions of galaxies.
Thinking about Father’s Day made me reflect on God as our Father. Sometimes we’re tempted to think that God gives us the opportunity to prove we’re worthy of His grace, and if we are, He will give us a perfect body to live in a perfect paradise with Him.
But I’m learning more and more that a perfect body and a perfect environment aren’t simply something that God bestows. Perfection is found in Him. It’s something we experience in His presence.
So, as I live in Him now, I experience more of a life that is waiting for me.
My Father is calling me to choose to live in Him because that is the only place I will be able to find perfection, free from the curse of a fallen world.
The ultimate fulfillment is in eternity when I am in His presence, when faith becomes sight, and I am shielded by His presence.
My Father is calling me to Him, not to simply reward me for a life well-lived but to take shelter in His presence where no curse can exist. Death, disease, sin, and tears cannot exist in the Father, so He invites me to live in His reality by choosing Him.
And He gives me a taste of joy in the midst of a fallen world until I can live fully in His protective reality in eternity.
This is what I am thinking about this Father’s Day.
I’m finishing up Acts in my daily Bible reading. It’s amazing how depraved people can get when you challenge what they hold to be true.
While we need to stand for the truth we read in the Scriptures, there is a danger for us in becoming so bound to our own interpretations we can become blind with rage when someone challenges what we hold to be gospel.
We see this precisely with the Jews when Paul addressed them in Acts 22. They quietly listened to Paul give his defense until he told them that God sent him to the Gentiles (Acts 22:21).
They were so set on what they believed God wanted they could not accept that anything else could be an option. Rather than remaining open that Jesus could be the Messiah and that God now opened His table to Gentiles, they had this reaction:
“Up to this word they listened to him. Then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” (Acts 22:22 ESV).
It is commendable to stand unshakingly on the firm foundation of God’s word. But let us never mistake our own interpretations and reasoning of the Scriptures as the same as God’s word itself. This is the cause of the same guilt of the Jews in Acts 22.
We must all be open to studying the Scriptures ourselves, regardless of what our forefathers have concluded on issues of faith and doctrine. For it will be the Son of God we will answer to on Judgement Day and not our church fathers who have given us the interpretations, reasons, and hermeneutics we embrace today.
Let us stand on our own faith and not the faith of others. Standing on the shoulders of the giants of faith from the past can be a blessing, but it can also be a dangerous curse if their faith is what we appeal to as our authority.
Perhaps the nature of men hasn’t really changed much in 2000 years. This should confirm how much we still need Jesus and His saving grace.