Whatever your politics, there is something rather sad about the whole
concept of rejection. Whilst some will say that such is the price of politics,
and that is right, to suffer defeat is a hard thing to take, whether as a
Liberal Democrat or a Labour politician. It means that your political message
has been rejected. It may mean that you as a person or a leader have been
rejected. That is tough however much some may feel it is deserved.
I thought of another rejection – one far more intense and far bitterer
than that experienced by any politician in recent days. The event took place in
Jerusalem some 2000 years ago. The Roman Governor paraded a man before the
people and said, ‘Behold the man!’[2]
It was not that the people were unfamiliar with Jesus Christ. They had seen him
heal the sick, deliver those who were demon possessed, and even raise the dead
to life again. Not many days previous they had greeted His arrival in Jerusalem
with shouts of ‘Hosanna’. Now, the cry was a cry of hatred: ‘Away with him,
crucify him’.[3]
The Bible tells us that Jesus was ‘despised and rejected of men . . . and we
hid as it were our faces from him’.[4]
God’s Son was taken and crucified upon a Roman cross.
Why? There is a two-fold answer. Jesus Christ was there because mankind
put him there. It was men who hated him, and hounded him to that cross. As he
exposed their sin and guilt, so they rejected him and had him killed. The cross
of Jesus Christ reminds us all that we are sinners – we have failed to live as
God wants us to live. What I found very honest in the recent events was the
words of Ed Miliband. He said, ‘I take absolute and total responsibility for
the result and our defeat’.[5]
The question we all have to ask is whether we are prepared to take
responsibility for our failure and sin before God.
The second reason that Jesus Christ was upon that cross outside
Jerusalem was because He chose to be there. The remarkable message of the
Christian gospel is that ‘Christ died for our sins’.[6]
As one who has taken Jesus Christ as my Saviour I can say that He was there for
me, and He bore the punishment of God for my sin and my guilt. He bore the
consequences of what I did wrong. Can you say that? Jesus Christ was rejected
by men that I might not be rejected by God. Is he your Saviour?
