Jesus Is King!

When Jesus appeared for trial before Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea, Pilate had one question for him: “Are you the King of the Jews?” The Jewish authorities had dragged him through their own “grand jury” throughout the preceding night. They determined that this man was claiming to be the Christ, the King of the Jews. This charge was worthy to bring before their provincial governor to be tried in the court of Rome.

When we read this story in twenty-first-century America, we tend to read it the way we have been trained to read it culturally: this is a religious story, not a political one. The Gospels, Jesus’ life, etc., all deal with our inner spiritual life. These were simply the necessary, external trappings that had to take place in order for our souls to be saved. (And, generally, when we hear of our souls being saved, we tend to think of a disembodied bliss that is free from a material world.) The authorities obviously misunderstood Jesus’ claims to being king. He was to be a “spiritual” king, not a king that actually challenged the governments of the Jews and Rome. It was a great, big misunderstanding that Jesus allowed to happen so that he could die for our sins.

The story is very clear in the Gospels as well as in the apostolic epistles that Jesus did indeed die for our sins. His death was the righteous for the unrighteous, a substitutionary atonement. But the accusations and situations that provide the context for his death were not mere disposable hulls of the story. Jesus’ kingship of the Jews is integral to the mission of the atonement.

When God created and commissioned Adam to take dominion over the created order, he was calling him to be a king. The rule that Adam was to exercise would be over the ground, the animals, and societies (as they began to form). The original call of God for his son, Adam, was to be a king in every sense of that word; that is, not just over some immaterial aspects of his own life, but over everything. When Adam sinned, this dominion was distorted. Men would still be kings, but they would establish kingdoms that would oppose the King of kings. These are the kingdoms, the principalities and powers, that Jesus faces at his trial.

Jesus came as the second and last Adam to undo the sin of the first Adam and be the king, the Son of God, that was intended from the beginning. This means that Jesus’ mission was to rule over the governments of this world. They were to come and bow before him, answering to him as the King of kings. Their governments were to be under his government, and of his government there would be no end.

When Jesus was asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?” everybody there understood what this meant: Are you a rival king? Do you believe that the Jews and Caesar himself are answerable to you? When that question was answered in the affirmative, that was the death knell for Jesus. He was understood to be an insurrectionist, a revolutionary, a challenge to the throne.

This wasn’t only true at the time of his trial and death. When the apostles preached the gospel in the synagogues and surrounding areas in the Roman Empire, they were accused of preaching against the decrees of Caesar, that there is another king, namely Jesus (Ac 17.7). The gospel of the apostles challenged the authority of the government powers in Adam that ruled God’s creation sinfully. These powers, unwilling to submit, had to use the only powers they had to stop their rivals: death. They killed Jesus and they killed the apostles because these governments didn’t like the arrangements of the new king.

If the gospel we proclaim today doesn’t challenge our present governments, then, I dare say, we are preaching, at the least, a truncated gospel. If the gospel we preach leaves the church isolated from the culture, happily going through all of the religious activities that our government will allow without offending them, then maybe, just maybe, we are not preaching the same gospel the apostles were preaching.

Several years ago in Kentucky, after the abominable SCOTUS decision came down on Obergefell, there were county clerks who used their lawfully granted positions to resist evil and protect the counties they have been called to serve. They were been caricatured as “fools” by local media. They weren’t supposed to let their “private religious conscience” get in the way of them “doing their job.”

Herein lies the rub. Caesar says that you can have your religion as long as it is private. But Jesus is a very public Lord who calls Caesar to bow the knee. Jesus isn’t a pluralist. These heroic Christians, whether well-versed in theology or not, were proclaiming the lordship of Jesus in this area of creation. Quite frankly, while conservative, Christian officials and candidates for office were wanting to yield ground in this area of marriage and have the church retreat back to its buildings, these lesser magistrates were acting as Christians in proclaiming Jesus’ lordship.

As the church in America, we will be continuing to face more and more challenges such as these. These cosmic rebels don’t want mere tolerance. They want control. Consequently, any biblical speech will be viewed as “hate speech.” “Reality Czars” in the government, the Ministry of Truth, will determine whether or not what you say lines up with their reality.

Having lost our Christian foundations, arguments such as “natural law” (“This is just unnatural!”) or “We’ve never done it that way before” (i.e., traditional family values), won’t work. Good riddance. They were never solid arguments anyway. We oppose these sinful actions of our government because Jesus is Lord and he said they are sinful. What he declares sin is an offense to creation’s King and is death for society. We cannot be ashamed of the gospel that proclaims Jesus Christ as King.

May God help us all to be courageous.