October 9 - King & Country

John 19: 12-16

They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” (John 19:15 ESV)

Who is your king? We all have one. For the Jews of Jesus' day they identified their king as Caesar simply out of spite. But who is our king? For many of us, our king is the person we see in the mirror every day.

And the question is a question of kingdom. What do you pronounce ownership over? Do you owe allegiance to yourself? There are a lot of good questions stirred up by the example of a bunch of super religious Pharisees rejecting God himself as their king to proclaim false homage to a pagan dictator and conqueror they showed no true love for.

The reality is that under Caesar the corruption of the Jewish Temple greatly benefited the religious bureaucracy. With Jesus as king they would lose their power base while seeing equality, fairness, and justice brought to the common people.

Just to be clear, Jesus is King. In fact, he is the King of all kings. It's not a matter of who actually is the king, rather it is a question of who we each proclaim as our king. Self-worship and humanism are the order of the day. Placing our pride upon the thrones of our own choosing are the trend. But acknowledging Jesus as your true King, and stepping into his Kingdom is the better future.