You can’t clear your name.
But you don’t need to.
We live under constant evaluation from others. Socially. Online. At work.
In fact, 79% of UK workers experience workplace stress regularly. And 1 in 4 of us feel stressed more days in a month than not.
A major aspect of workplace pressure is caused by the opinions of others. The weight of being continually watched, assessed, judged.
And most of the time it feels unfair.
All of us have tried to fix what people think of us at one time or another. But it’s high effort, low return. Because:
You can’t control how other people think.
The Bible says something surprising about this court of public opinion:
1) God doesn’t agree with it.
2000 years ago, God gave his legal verdict about all human beings—including you. At the cross, God declared you forgiven for all mistakes in your past or future. He declared you perfectly righteous in Jesus’ name: a verdict that doesn’t depend on your performance. Or on people’s opinions.
2) God has power over it.
God is not swayed by human opinion. And he is not bound by it. He is your Father Almighty.
“Almighty” means he has power over every false judge of you, and over everyone who’s ever misrepresented you. One day, they will stand before him and give account for every word they said about you. God always wants you to be assured of final judgment, never threatened by it.
And when he sits there hearing what they’ve said—you can be assured of this: He already declared to the world his verdict. That is the power and purpose of the cross.
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The opinion of others around you may feel like it rules you. The judgment of others may have some serious sway over things you can see.
But don’t be fooled: God is in charge of all of that. He permits evil to survive for a time. But he’s set a day when he’ll crush it completely. And even before then: he ensures that even the worst things have a positive purpose.
You don’t need to do anything to persuade him to act on your behalf. He’s already doing it. You can’t see it. And most of us aren’t assured that he’s positive toward us at all.
But he is.
He “works all things according to the counsel of his will,”—which means “what he wants” (Ephesians 1:11). And what God wants is always good.
Because he’s your Father. And he even loves those who hate him.
For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Jesus, Matthew 5:45)
That’s why God declared his verdict long before anyone else opened their mouth to judge you.
God got in there early: Jesus—God himself become man, declared innocent yet convicted by two law courts—died to legally declare you forgiven, righteous and just.
Before your boss, that colleague, that bully, or whoever else could say or judge anything—God declared of you in Jesus: “Forgiven! Perfect!”.
Whether you feel it or not, this is objectively true:
You are forgiven and just in his sight.
But, of course, if you’re not assured of that—if you live under the court of human opinion and not the court of Jesus Christ—then of course you’re not benefitting from God’s work and verdict for you.
This is why God gave you the church. This is why we’re here.
As a clear and public place where God distributes his verdict. As the place he has promised to meet you in his Word and give you the assurance that you’re forgiven and made righteous already.
To hear more, listen to this: Is My Faith Real?
Or join us:
Featured image: Joanna Nix-Walkup (from a now unavailable Unsplash account)
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