“Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been accused of something? Were you guilty of the thing you were accused of? If not, how did you defend yourself? If so, what did you do about it? Trying to defend or otherwise clear our name when it has been soiled somehow is no small task. It is made all the more difficult when we are trying to do it on our own. Well, as followers of Jesus, Paul says, we are not alone. Today, let’s take a look with Paul at another of the incredible blessings of the Gospel.

In the opening section of Jesus’ most famous sermon, He offered His audience a series of observations on what makes a person truly happy. These are often called the Beatitudes, and they reveal the nature and mindset of the person who is blessed. The word translated “blessing” means something like “supreme happiness.” So again, Jesus is talking about how to experience this ultimate happiness.

The first several Beatitudes are not necessarily easy, but they all feel doable. Be humble, strive for righteousness, be merciful, pure in heart, and a peacemaker. Those are all pretty concrete things we can strive for in our lives. But then He gets to a final one. This is where things take a turn to the hard.

“You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Now, there are several things in there that seem pretty likely to make someone many things other than supremely happy. They don’t seem poised to put someone in the mood to “be glad and rejoice” no matter how great our reward in heaven may be. Nobody loves to be insulted or persecuted.

Let’s focus for right now, though, on just the third thing Jesus says will make us blessed. We are blessed when people “falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me.” I should note that it is the very last part there that actually brings the blessing. Having people treat us poorly generally is not a blessing. Having them do it because of our association with Jesus is. The difference is Jesus. When they treat us like they did Jesus, that means we are so thoroughly connected to Him they can’t tell the difference between Him and us. That’s a very good thing indeed.

The point I want to make out of this for the moment is that being a follower of Jesus means we are going to occasionally be accused of all sorts of things. There will be people lining up to bring accusations against us. I can speak to this somewhat personally. Go scan through the comment sections on some of my pieces. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been accused of child abuse for my intentional efforts to pass my faith on to my kids (efforts that have so far been most successful). Christians more generally are indeed accused by the world of every kind of evil. That’s par for the course as a follower of Jesus.

So, there are many people who do “bring an accusation against God’s elect.” Is there anyone, though, who can do such a thing legitimately? That’s what Paul is getting at here with this second question to help us better understand some of the mind-blowing implications of the Gospel. He asks not simply who does bring an accusation against us, but rather “who can bring an accusation against God’s elect?”

The answer to that question is no one. No one has the standing to bring an accusation against us before God when we are walking in Christ. The reason for this lies in Paul’s immediate answer to the question: “God is the one who justifies.” If God has pronounced us clean from all sin and free from all judgment, then no one has a legitimate claim against us. When the world “falsely [says] every kind of evil against [us] because of [Jesus]” we can just ignore it and move on. More than that, we can indeed be glad and rejoice at knowing we are walking in the path of the righteous, faithful servants of the Lord who came before us.

Now, I should offer an important caveat here. This applies when we are walking the path of Christ and in a right relationship with God. When someone is in a truly right relationship with God, they are going to be in right relationships with the people around them. The one necessarily follows the other. If you aren’t right with the people God loves, then you aren’t right with Him. If you are accused of things because of your association with Christ, that’s a blessing. If you are accused of things because you have done them, that’s on you.

The apostle Peter emphasized this same thing in his letter: “If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a meddler. But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God in having that name.”

In this same vein, no one has the standing to condemn us of anything either when we are walking in the path of Christ. “Who is the one who condemns?” Many will try, of course. That’s to be expected. Jesus and pretty much every New Testament author told us as much. But in God’s eyes, none of those condemnations are going to stick. Why? “Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he is also at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.”

We have Jesus Himself, God in human flesh, standing eternally at the right hand of God advocating on our behalf. Any time we might be condemned for something, Jesus just whispers a bit in God’s ear, and the condemnation goes away. God is the final judge. In the end, His assessment is the only one that matters. Thanks to Jesus, though, we don’t have to fear His assessment. We are covered by the blood of Christ. All our sins have been atoned for and God has pronounced us justified and righteous. If we are justified by God in Christ, there is no condemnation left for us. It’s just as Paul put it way back at the beginning of the chapter: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”

If you’ve ever struggled under the weight of condemnation, go to Jesus. If you are justly accused, He won’t necessarily take away the natural consequences of your sin, but in Him you can have your relationship with God set right and all the condemnation He would otherwise have on you for your sin removed entirely. Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me. Walk in Christ and become condemnation-proof. The Gospel really is good.