King of the Jews
Yes, Herod was the King of the Jews who killed children to hold onto his power, but Jesus, He is the Christ, the King of the Jews who surrendered his power, became a child and was killed for his children. When our suffering and the suffering of this world seems too much we have to ask God to give us the heart to see his King of the Jews, strung up and pinned down on the cross, forsaken and left to die, not only by humanity, but by his Father too.
The Human Rights Chief of the United Nations, Volker Turk, reported that a “quarter of humanity is caught in global conflicts.” That’s two billion people. We might wonder what comfort the Christian story offers to folks who will not plan easter egg hunts for their children, or cook a President’s Choice spiral ham, or attend a Easter Sunday worship service, but instead must listen to gunfire and missiles, struggle to find food and water, flee to refugee camps.
The story in Matthew 2:1–18 talks about a King of the Jews called Herod who cared little for the people he governed and mostly obsessed over his own legacy – a leader like many who rule today. At the time of Christ’s birth Herod the Great was in charge and this passage tells us a lot about his lust for dominance and disregard for human life.
There’s more.
Titled King of Judea by Marc Antony himself, Herod was a vassal of Rome and given to building things and tyranny. This King of the Jews had 45 members of the Sanhedrin killed, ordered his favourite wife murdered, then her mother, brother, and two sons, and in 4 BC he had 40 dissenting Jewish students burned alive. The week before he died he had his first born son executed and it is said he had influential men imprisoned, ordering they be killed as soon as he died, so Israel would be sure to grieve.
History describes Herod as a friend to powerful men, a visionary, ambitious, ruthless, obsessive, jealous, cruel. Herod, King of the Jews, wanted to be seen and known by everyone but had no desire to see and know his own people or their suffering. In fact, he caused much of it.
This Herod, King of the Jews, is a lot like the wicked rulers of today, brooding and afraid in his palace, ordering others to do his murderous work. Like most monarchs there was probably no dirt under his fingernails, no dust on his sandals, no literal blood on his hands. We see and know him, don’t we. He’s the King of the Jews who had his family, influential citizens, dissenting students, and children murdered.
But all the while, during Herod’s unstable reign, there was another King of the Jews who would eternally supplant him; a King of peace for the war weary world.
Years before King Herod would walk the earth the prophet Micah promised that out of lowly Bethlehem, a town of no great reputation, would come the greatest King (Mic. 5:2).
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Hey PCA Friends, You Paying Attention?
It is a moment to point out that many of my friends in the PCA, willing to deal Biblically and compassionately with people struggling with sin have opened the door to those who do not want to struggle with sin, but normalize sin to make the sin no longer a sin.
Some of my friends inside the Presbyterian Church in America have made excuses for pastors like Greg Johnson of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, MO, and of Revoice, the conference held at his church a few years ago.
Revoice made waves for what seemed to be an attempt to normalize unbiblical sexual identities behind biblical veneers.
Well, let’s fast forward to today. Revoice is still going, and Johnson’s church might leave the PCA. And what of Revoice’s antics?
They’ve gone exactly where I predicted they would go.
Speakers have always emphasized homosexuality as an identity, not just a behavior. But this year, such assertions from the dais seemed more insistent, with speakers assiduously using civil-rights language to present radical change as settled truth. That identity rhetoric extended to transgender ideology. Speakers frequently referred to “sexual and gender minorities” and used preferred pronouns, along with terms such as women “assigned female at birth.” The group’s reach and influence are growing, but leaders now emphasize parachurch activities. Speakers frequently referenced ongoing rejection within the church and encouraged attendees to form their own spiritual communities in local Revoice chapters.
Oh wait, there’s more:
During the conference’s two-hour lunch breaks, Revoice offered “affinity groups,” broken into various categories: gender minorities, family/loved ones of LGBTQ+, bisexuals/pansexuals, asexuals/aromantics, women “assigned female at birth,” mixed-orientation heterosexual marriages where one spouse remains same-sex attracted, and celibate partnerships where those who are same-sex attracted but celibate live together. In Side B circles, those are called “spiritual friendships.” Other affinity groups were categorized by race: BIPOC for black or indigenous people of color and AAPI for Asian American or Pacific Islanders.
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How Discipleship is Like Cooking
As we trust Jesus and follow Him, we can also feel the freedom of knowing that God has created us each individually, each with different personalities and traits, with skills and experiences all our own. All of these things come together in the actual fashion that we carry out Jesus’ command. In other words, we observe the guardrails, but we practice discipleship with some measure of individuality. And that is a wonderful thing.
I’m not a great cook.
Early in our marriage, I wanted to make boxed mac and cheese for dinner, and because we did not have any margarine in the cabinet, I substituted vegetable oil. The results were… slick.
Then, several years later, I accidentally used baking soda instead of baking powder in a batch of pancakes I was putting together. The results were… sharp.
There have been other missteps over the years, but as with all things, they have become fewer and fewer the more I have practiced. In fact, I’ve even found in some cases that I don’t even need to use a recipe any more. Not always, but sometimes, I’m able to go off script. I can season according to taste or preference rather than following a step by step recipe. The ability to do that comes with time and experience; it happens through trial and error. Though the basics of cooking a dish remain the same, it can be adapted and customized based on the person cooking it and the people it’s being cooked for.
That, in some ways, is the way discipleship works.
If you look to the call of Jesus in Matthew 28, there are a lot of observations we can make about it:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).
We can observe clearly that this call is rooted in the authority of Jesus, and that He doesn’t only command the task to be done but also promises His presence in doing it.
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Incorruptible Love FOR Jesus
I pray that we love Christ so greatly that our souls feel that Christ deserves more love than we have toward him, so we continually cry out to Him to help us love Him more. I pray that we love the Lord Jesus Christ with an incorruptible love.
In the final verse of Ephesians, Paul brings up something he has not mentioned at all previously in the book: the believer’s love for Jesus Christ. Five times he has mentioned Jesus’ love for us, and eight times he describes our love for each other, but he saved this final category for the very end. It is as if everything Paul had written in this incredible letter (and everything God’s grace accomplishes in us) is supposed to lead us to loving Christ. Inevitably and gloriously this is the all-important goal of Christian life. And not just any kind of love: it is an incorruptible love for Christ which marks out a true Christian.
Thomas Vincent began The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ with this:
The life of Christianity consists very much in our love to Christ. Without love to Christ, we are as much without spiritual life as a carcass when the soul is fled from it is without natural life…Without love to Christ, we may have the name of Christians, but we are wholly without the nature.
Where there is no love for Christ, there is no true Christianity.
That’s why this Ephesian church, some 30 years later in the book of Revelation, was threatened by Christ to be destroyed. Although they had all of their doctrine right and were fastidious about kicking out false teachers, they had neglected true love for Christ. The same warning applies to each church that has lost its love for the Savior.
Nevertheless, the goal of the gospel is true love for Christ, incorruptible love for Christ in our hearts. This should be the heart’s desire of every church that seeks to honor and follow the Lord.
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