Colorado Supreme Court Building. By Riverwalker/stock.adobe.com.
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Colorado’s ban on LGBTQ “conversion therapy” for young people infringes on the free speech rights of a Christian counselor. Their ruling reversed a lower court’s decision that had upheld the law.
According to Associated Press, “The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide if it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.” Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint” and added that the First Amendment “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
Notably, the Court ruled eight-to-one, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson the lone dissenter.
However, the news is not all positive on the religious liberty front. The Family Research Council has documented 1,384 “acts of hostility toward US churches” occurring between January 2018 and December 2024. Catholic churches have especially come under attack in this country.
In the Middle East, the Hoover Institution reports that Christianity is declining rapidly due to the persecution of believers. In Finland, a member of the Parliament and a Lutheran Church bishop were convicted for writing and publishing a pamphlet twenty years ago defending biblical sexual morality. In India, Christian groups are speaking out against legislation they say could enable the government to seize their properties.
But none of that may feel especially relevant to you today. If you’re not a Christian counselor who seeks to share biblical truth with your clients or an evangelical living in the Middle East, Finland, or India, such threats may seem too distant to be personal.
Here’s why they’re not, and why this day in Holy Week is especially significant for our souls.
“Tempted as we are, yet without sin”
The same enemy who inspires persecution against Christians also persecutes us directly by tempting us into sin, knowing that its “wages” are “death” (Romans 6:23). In this way, every moment of every day, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He is a “thief” who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10).
The closer you are to Jesus, the more you are a threat to him.
This is why our Lord encouraged us, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:40). He knows that Satan is better at tempting than we are at resisting, that we cannot defeat this enemy in our own strength and resolve. But our Lord can. Jesus defeated every attack of Satan and thus “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
Consequently, “Because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18) when we turn to him for “grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
But before Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sat at the right hand of the Father, where he is interceding for us today (Romans 8:34), he knew to go to his Father when facing his own temptations and challenges.
- He fasted and prayed for forty days and nights before defeating Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11).
- He prayed “very early in the morning, while it was still dark,” as he launched his public ministry (Mark 1:35).
- Most notably, he prayed repeatedly and earnestly in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion, submitting himself to his Father’s will (Matthew 26:36–46).
And I believe he spent the day before that night doing the same.
The “Fast of the First Born”
This brings us to Wednesday of Holy Week. On this day, Jesus did nothing that was recorded in Scripture. Since he spent the evenings each week at the Bethany home of his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus (cf. Matthew 21:17), scholars assume that he spent this day there as well.
What was he doing?
This was the day before Passover, a day of preparation during which Jews typically remove from their homes anything that is forbidden during the Passover meal. Notably, firstborn males take part in the “Fast of the First Born,” fasting in gratitude for being spared from the Plague of the Firstborn in Egypt (cf. Exodus 12:29). As the firstborn son of his family, Jesus would have participated in this day-long fast along with his friend Lazarus.
And he would have prepared himself through time with his Father for what he knew was to come: not just the physical torture he would face, as horrific as it was, but the spiritual torture of bearing the sins of humanity on his sinless soul.
Like many theologians, I believe our Savior spent “Silent Wednesday” preparing for Good Friday. And I believe the silence of his day is “recorded” in Scripture as a model for us today.
“If you don’t come apart”
When Job finally said to God, “I lay my hand on my mouth,” he heard what the Lord needed him to know (Job 40:4). When God spoke to Elijah through “the sound of a low whisper,” the prophet had to be silent enough to hear it (1 Kings 19:12–13). Scripture is similarly “breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16), but we must be still to hear its voice.
Cognitive studies show that humans cannot effectively talk and listen at the same time. The same is true spiritually. Our Lord, therefore, invites us to “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Note the comma—the first verb enables the second.
There are times when we are Martha, working on “many things” to serve our Lord (Luke 10:41). But there are times when “one thing is necessary” (v. 42), the choice Mary made when she “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching” (v. 39).
The days I do the same, the days I “practice the presence of Jesus” in conscious communion with him, are always my best days. They are the days when sin is least attractive and the Spirit is most powerful in my life.
The philosopher Dallas Willard observed,
“If you don’t come apart for a while, you will come apart after a while.”
Which do you choose today?
NOTE: For more on the power and privilege of personal worship, please see my latest website article, “This has never happened before on ‘American Idol.’”
Quote for the day:
“Solitude, silence, and the strait keeping of the heart, are the foundations and grounds of a spiritual life.” —Robert Leighton (1611–84)
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