Colossians 3:2 tells us to "set our minds on things above." And in John 3, John the Baptist tells us about the unique claim that Jesus places on our lives and our world, flattening the many systems of power that exist in our world.
According to John, the fact that Jesus was sent from God's heavenly kingdom is enough for Christ's claim on the world. Anyone born of the earth belongs to the earth. In other words, we have no divine claim as human beings (Genesis 3 would say that such a claim got us in trouble in the first place). Likewise, Caesar had no divine claim, as Caesar was just a human being. The act of taking anything human and attributing divinity to it is an act of idolatry. John is laying the foundation here for the apostate claim of the religious leaders of Israel in John 19:15 that "we have no king but Caesar!" This claim strikes to the very heart of what it means to be Christian- that Jesus is Lord.
Today we live in a world of competing claims. And in an election year, millions are being spent and millions more will be spent on influencing us toward loyalty toward one person, one party, one issue or another. And this political game that we play every 2-4 years is only a symptom of a much greater lie- the allure of money as a god-maker.
For example, almost $80 million has been spent on political advertising for this campaign season already. And yet we read this in Isaiah 55:1-3:
“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost."
Indeed, the allure of money-power is so powerful that God emphasizes "free" throughout the entire Bible. And John the Baptist is one figure who resists the allure completely. He reminds his hearers and (today) his readers to not be sucked in by the thousands of influences out there, but to remember that the One from above lays claim to it all.
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