Glad you asked - Jimmy Saville

Glad you asked – Jimmy Saville

A 10-minute audio version of this is available at: http://www.thebeaconchurch.com/category/podcasts/glad-you-asked/

Terrible Realities

Recently terrible allegations have been made against Jimmy Saville and a number of other high-profile media figures.  Rightly people are angry.  Understandably many people feel that Jimmy Saville’s death means he has avoided justice.  

In the Bible Peter encourages us not just to have an answer to these sorts of terrible realities, but to have a response that points people toward the ‘hope that we have’ in Jesus (1Peter 3:15). 

Wrong is wrong, justice matters, and anger is a right response.

Many people will speak with anger at the situation – at the wrong and injustice.  And anger sometimes is a right, Christian, godly response.  So agree – respond with an appropriate emotional anger.  These allegations, if true, are terrible things and deserve justice.  They should disturb and upset us – allow people to see your agreement with their anger and upset.

All wrong is ultimately wrong done against God.

These allegations are horrific and we must not belittle the real people and real pain.  But ultimately the person most sinned against is God.  God made this world and he made it with rules by which we should love, serve, protect and care for one another.  It is those exact rules that have been broken. 

In the Bible King David misused his power to force Bathsheba into an adulterous affair; to orchestrate the murder of her husband; and to hide his indiscretion from public attention.  Nathan finally called him to account.  David then writes, in prayer to God: ‘against you and you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight’ (Psalm 51).  Of course he has done terrible evil against Bathsheba, her husband and others.  Yet the injustice is ultimately against God as it is his rules of love that have been broken.  And, because God is the perfect Judge, justice will be done – a justice fuller and truer than any prison sentence could have brought, even if Jimmy Saville had lived to face the courts.

Help people see that the world was made by God to be a place of deep and true love and community and as much as it grieves us it grieves God far more deeply.

All of us, to a lesser degree perhaps, have broken these same laws of love from God.

It may not be in the extreme or horrific way we are reading about in the papers, but all of us have abused the relationships we are in.  All of us, even in small ways, have not treated one another as we should.  All of us have broken the guidelines and rules that God made his world to reflect.  We have not always loved or served or protected or spoken well of others.  We are all called to account before God for breaking his rules, however small we feel that is.

Help people realise that all people everywhere have failed to live a life of love, and before God that has consequences.

Hope is found in Jesus

The good news of Christianity is that Jesus willingly and readily accepts as his own the justice we deserve for breaking God’s rules.  We, who have broken God’s laws, do not need to face God as Judge.  In accepting Jesus taking our punishment for our crimes against God on himself, our crimes have already been paid for.  The punishment we deserve was willingly accepted by Jesus.  This is great news.  This is the hope Peter has in mind: 'Christ died for sins, one for all, the righteousness for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.'  (1Peter 3:18)

This is good news.  

This is the hope Peter urges us to bring to people.  The punishment for our crimes Jesus willingly accepts if we allow him (the heart of what ‘faith’ is) and so both justice is fully and ultimately met; and we are fully and ultimately forgiven for all crimes.

Help people grasp this great news for themselves – there is the wide-open opportunity to avoid being held accountable for breaking of God’s laws of love.  Either we allow, by faith, Jesus to accept the punishment for our crimes.  Or we continue independently from Jesus and when we stand before God the Judge accept the punishment for our crimes ourselves.