You may be reading this because you know the huge pain of a ruined reputation. The Bible doesn’t shy away from how difficult this experience is:

Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. (Psalm 69:20)

Here, King David—writing with God’s inspiration—shares how lonely and life-defining gossip, slander and damage his reputation felt. The slander David experienced led to friends and family pulling back from him, leaving him isolated, without comforters.

God wants you to know that your experience is real.

And God recognises your suffering and knows it. That’s what David says immediately before:

You know my reproach, and my shame and my dishonour; my foes are all known to you. (Psalm 69:19)

In fact, God doesn’t just know it, he experienced it. Because in the very next verse, David’s poetic lyric reflection in the pain of being slandered turns out to be one of his clearest prophesies of Jesus on the cross:

They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink. (Psalm 69:21)

Jesus knows what it’s like to be gossiped about, slandered, and abandoned by friends. It didn’t just figuratively taste like sour wine in his mouth—while he was dying, people actually gave him sour wine to drink (John 19:28-30). At the point of death, this was among his final experiences of the world.

That same Jesus who empathises with you, gives you this assurance:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. (Matthew 5:11)

Expect to be slandered for telling people you belong to Jesus.
Expect to be slandered for preaching the doctrine and truth of Jesus.
Expect to be slandered for dealing with people in a way consistent with Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t say where that slander will come from. It may even come from other Christians—almost all of Jesus’ own slander, gossip and persecution came from others who claimed to confess the same religious beliefs as him.

It doesn’t matter where it comes from. What matters is Jesus’ words of assurance: “when others revile you”—at that very moment—you are blessed.

You look for pity among men, and find no empathy. But God knows. He has pity. And God shared your experience: Jesus knows what it’s like to receive no pity.

You look for comforters among men, and find no friends. But God is your friend. His Spirit comforts you. And God shared your experience: Jesus knows what it’s like for his friends to abandon him.

And that God will not let this situation stand forever.

Job, at the height of his suffering, at the centre of a circle of slandering “friends” cried this:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. (Job 19:25)

And so, God gives you this command and promise:

Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. (Psalm 37:5-6)

We don’t know what or how he might act in this life. But certainly on the last day: this is the hope he gives you. You will stand before all people. And Christ will point to you and say: “This one is mine. This one is perfect.”

And no accusation will ever be spoken against you again.

Everyone will see it. None will disobey it.

God gives you promises like these because he wants you to be assured of them. But, of course, you can’t create that assurance yourself. Without pity, without comforters, you know how locked into yourself you are.

God himself gives you assurance in these promises through his Word, and he’s promised to be present and do this when we meet together around it. That gathering is the church.

So, come. Gather with others. Receive these promises and the assurance that they’re true for you in person in Manchester every Sunday, or online from anywhere every Wednesday.