Aliens in America: Day 36

Redemption>Republican 

‘As aliens, live in reverent fear’ (1 Pet. 1:17). 

One fallacy from this election season? All conservative Christians Trumped out. Not so. I had zealous pro-life friends who voted Democrat to give Trump a blackeye for abortion-ban compromises, for misogyny, for creating an alternate unreality (victory in ’20, etc.), and mostly, for fomenting hate toward immigrants.  

No person or party can be reduced to one issue. Nor can any political group claim to be the more ‘Christian one.’ What defines aliens in America is not Trump Republicanism but redemption through the Blood of Jesus. Period.  

Peter helps us here. We are freed ‘to live in reverent, godly fear’ by the One who gave His life to lay claim to our empty ones. That futility includes those basing hope in political progress. I have seen this over and over: young idealists who became enslaved to a system that betrayed them––from traditionalist to socialist.  

Thank God for Jesus, who ‘redeems us from the empty way of life handed down to us by our forefathers’ (1 Pet. 1:18). Don’t get me wrong; we’ve an adult responsibility for our land. But unless the ground of our being is Blood-soaked, sourced in the fountain of Divine freedom, we build on sinking sand.   

Let me explain. Sin makes us stupid and subject to other masters. For the Israelites, that meant enslavement to Egypt or Babylon, indentured by greater powers. We Americans may have been seduced by a host of other masters: political, spiritual, sensual, or financial, shortcuts to power that deceived and now deride us.  

Jesus invites us to freedom. He offers us His life, divine and human Blood shed to break us free from the false masters we serve. All it requires is that we own that slavery and exchange it for His Blood. Nothing holier than thou here: it means owning the humiliation of an empty life and giving Jesus Lordship over our lives.  

My turn toward the Blood converted me. I became familiar with this Jesus for a couple of years in preparation for choosing to align myself with Him. He revealed Himself as the Lamb slain for me. (I listened continuously to Handel’s Messiah and fell on my knees in my UCLA dorm to the tune of ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’) Really. I quietly offered my divided body to His blood-soaked One. He took away MY sin. I chose to follow the Lamb that day and haven’t looked back since. 

No political party is founded on redeeming empty lives through the Blood of Jesus. It’s too weird. Strangely Christian. Divisively spiritual. I dare say Trump won’t include Cowper’s hymn— ‘There is a Fountain…filled with Blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins’—at his inauguration. Gruesome to the untrained ear.  

Yet for aliens in America, the Blood is the melody of the Lamb which extols how His Life dissolves our slavery to sin. Invoking the Blood cleanses us from stains and wards off death, as foreshadowed by the Passover lamb’s blood smeared on Israelite’s homes to save lives. 

And restore them. Toyohiko Kagawa writes: ‘The action of blood is universal; it functions throughout the body as it circulates, feeding nerve tissues and organs, bones and muscles, restoring any part of the body in need. It is the same with love. Love is endowed with power to redeem and heal throughout the past, present, and future, every part of the whole. The supreme manifestation of love is the Blood Jesus shed on the cross.’  

Everyone needs the saving Blood of Jesus. Kamala has never needed it more. Nor has Trump. We can pray that they accept their need to live through Another Life, Jesus’. His Blood restores the heart aware of its emptiness, the futility of having everything but His Presence and purpose.  

We’ve witnessed a ruthless political fight. Many of us are still hurting from it. Will we surrender our wounded body, soul, or spirit to the only One who can reorient us around a single hope, Himself? Peter insists on a personal reckoning with God’s Son. He says, ‘Jesus was revealed in these last times FOR YOUR SAKE’ (1 Pet. 1: 20). For you.     

Jesus. His Blood. Redemption in Jesus alone, who roots and grounds us in holy love. We stand in reverent fear over any god that supplants the true One who won us with His life. That includes political gods, which will never redeem us from the futility of sin and death.   

Behold the Lamb. Because of the Blood, Peter closes by exhorting us to ‘put our hope and faith in God’ (1 Pet. 1:21). Only Jesus. Only Jesus. 

‘A human being is saved in no other way but through the cross…Only in that way, in this acceptance, does a man become free. All offers that promise freedom at less expense will fail and prove to be deceptive.’ 

Joseph Ratzinger     

‘Thank You, Father, for reminding us through Peter of the Blood of Your Son. It is a Mystery that matters. May we never trample underfoot Jesus by treating as an unholy thing the Blood that sets us free (Heb. 10:29). May we invoke the Blood that cleanses and heals us; may we view others through the lens of the Blood, ever patient and hopeful that he or she—Trump and Harris alike—may invite Your redemption. Thank You for the grace to own our futility and to live from Your Blood.’ 

‘Jesus, You are the King, and we are first citizens of Your Kingdom. Would you free us for You in this election season, not to hide but to shine? You’ve always asked nothing less from Your elect whom You have made ‘strangers in a strange land’ (Ex. 2:22). Here we are, a people who don’t know what to do but who look and listen to our King.  

“Father of all holiness, 

guide our hearts to You. 

Keep in the light of Your Truth 

all those You have freed from the darkness of unbelief. 

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son.”’ 

Amen