The Lord will vindicate His own

One month after the inauguration of Donald Trump, Christians are rightly grateful for his election and the early actions of his administration. Removing the party of death and moral insanity from the White House is always a cause for celebration. At the same time, we are under no delusions that a second Trump administration will cure all of our ills. We are still living in the midst of what might be called the Great Unraveling. The center isn’t holding. Civilization is fragmenting, with various groups and ideologies vying for influence and power.

In times like these, conscientious Christians frequently worry that our message—the gospel of Jesus Christ—will be confused and conflated with competing ideologies and programs. In the face of such confusion, how should sincere Christians speak and act? How should we approach the unavoidable confusion of the present time, with enemies and opportunists all around?

We can start by considering the way the apostles approached this problem in the first century. They too lived in the midst of a great unraveling. The mid first-century A.D. was a time of turmoil and unrest throughout the Roman Empire. The air was full of religious competition and political agitation, including even insurrection and rebellion. The New Testament is filled with evidence of political maneuvering and religious opportunism. Christ himself was crucified by an alliance of opportunistic religious leaders manipulating Pilate into ordering his execution with subtle political threats: “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend” (John 19:12).

So then how did the apostles in the book of Acts navigate the confusion around the fledgling church and its message? Consider the confusion they faced.

Among the Jews, the apostles were thought to be the followers of a failed insurrectionist. Gamaliel’s counsel in Acts 5:33-39 assumed that Jesus, like Theudas and Judas the Galillean, was a rebel against Rome and her proxies, and that the best course of action was to allow Christ’s followers to come to nothing after the death of their leader.

Some Jews sought to draft in the church’s wake, attempting to leverage spiritual power for their own ends. The sons of Sceva (a Jewish high priest) attempted to invoke the name of Jesus and Paul in order to gain power of evil spirits, and they discovered that the name of Christ is not a magic talisman (Acts 19:11-16).

When the church continued to grow and expand, the Jewish leaders resorted to slander and false accusation tailored to different audiences. To hinder the apostle’s efforts among other Jews, they accused them of blasphemy against Moses and God, of hatred of the temple, and contempt of Jewish customs (Acts 6:11-14). When Paul returned to Jerusalem in Acts 21, his opponents had tarnished his reputation by preying on the people’s zeal for the law and convincing them that Paul teaches that Jews should forsake Moses and the customs of their ancestors (Acts 21:21).

Before Gentile audiences, these same leaders sought to run the same play on Paul that they ran on Christ. Opportunistic leaders gathered a mob of wicked rabble, started a riot, and accused the apostles of sedition and rebellion before the city authorities. “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus” (Acts 17:6-7). In doing so, they twist a truth (that Christ is Lord) into a falsehood (that Christians are revolutionary insurrectionists who completely disregard the decrees of Rome).

The Gentiles themselves were no less confused. In Athens, they heard the apostles as pagan teachers who preached foreign divinities (Acts 17:18). The message of Jesus and the resurrection was heard as an encouragement to add two more deities to the Roman pantheon. After healing a cripple, Paul and Barnabas were mistaken for Hermes and Zeus (“the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” (Acts 14:11)), and were barely able to interrupt the attempted acts of worship. And, as if to illustrate the confusion of the times, immediately after they are almost worshiped as gods, the apostles were stoned by the same crowd, which had been stirred up by Jewish leaders from Antioch and Iconium (Acts 14:19).

So how did Paul and the other apostles respond to these cases of mistaken identity? First, they refused to be distracted by it. They clarified their identity without being derailed and hijacked by false accusations. When the Roman tribune arrests Paul and accuses him of being an Egyptian rebel who had led 400 assassins into the wilderness, Paul simply responds “I am a Jew of Tarsus.” No panic. No vehement denunciation of the assassin party and all it stands for. Just simple clarity (and a request for the microphone).

More than that, the apostles took every opportunity afforded them to deliver their message and advance the kingdom of God. They regarded the confusion of the day as a stepping stone to witness. They refused to be steered by their enemies. False accusations about their attitude to Moses and the law did not keep them from preaching that Gentiles are free from the demands of Torah. Slander about their supposed revolutionary agenda did not keep them from preaching the Lordship of Christ over all men.

We should take a page from the apostolic playbook. Enemies and opportunists abound. But instead of spending all of our time differentiating ourselves from others, we ought to entrust our reputations to God. Our task is to be faithful, whether we are falsely praised or falsely accused. So keep calm and carry on. Christ is Lord.