By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
In the Bible, we are told that when Pilate brought Jesus before his enemies,
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!” So he delivered Him to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus and led him away (New King James Version, John 19: 15-16).
Like the chief priests who lived almost 2,000 years ago, we are all confronted with the question of what we are going to do with Jesus. Are we going to receive him as the king of our lives or crucify him in our hearts? Jesus himself said:
He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters. (Matthew 12:30)
God has given each of us a free will so that we can make our own decision. We can either fall down before him and cry out, “My Lord and my God” (John 20: 28), or we can be like those mentioned in a parable who said, “We will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:1).
The Bible says there are eternal consequences involved in this decision. Speaking to those who questioned his divinity, Jesus said:
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36)
In our natural condition we are not fit subjects for the kingdom of God. In Isaiah 59:1-2 we read:
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.
In his book, Plain Christianity, page 75, J. B. Phillips speaks of the gulf that separates us from God:
For the gulf between us and God is not merely an intellectual one—it is not that God is infinitely wise and we, by comparison, blundering fools, though that is true—but the real gulf lies in the moral realm. You and I, through our own sins and failures, as well as by the infection of the sins of other people, are separated from God by a moral gulf.
In Romans 3:23 we find that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Because of our sinful condition we do not know the personal God who wishes to have fellowship with us. Fortunately, however, God has prepared a way for our salvation through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross:
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10)
Although we usually think of the emperors of Rome when we hear the word “Caesar,” anything which controls our lives and keeps us from coming to the Lord could be considered to be as tyrannical to our soul as Caesar was to the people who lived in the Holy Land during the time of Jesus. When the Pharisees were trying to trick Jesus, they brought him a coin. Jesus looked at it and said:
“Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:20-21)
If we become enslaved to the desire for money, for instance, we find ourselves worshipping in the court of Caesar. We find these words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 6:19-21:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break through and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The way of Caesar is the popular way. It is disastrous when we put our desires for fame, power or riches above our relationship with the Lord. In John 5:44, Jesus warned:
How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?
While it is certainly worth it, there is a price we have to pay if we desire to follow Jesus:
Then Jesus said to His Disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
“For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
We accepted the Lord into our lives over thirty years ago and have never been sorry for that decision. While life on this earth is not always easy, we have great joy and peace and have received many answers to prayer. Moreover, we look forward to the time when we will have inexpressible joy in the kingdom of heaven.
Instead of saying, “We have no king but Caesar,” we would urge all our readers to turn their lives over to God so that they can say:
“We Have No King But Jesus”
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