A good name
One can only imagine what Lord McAlpine has gone through, being falsely accused of being a paedophile, and without being given the chance to answer the charge. He has described it as “a horrendous shock”, and I should think that only begins to tell us what it was like. Perhaps, worst of all, he says that, “it can’t be repaired … This is the legacy that sadly the BBC have left me with.” And that is true. His name will forever be linked with this accusation, however untrue and unreasonable.
I have no idea where Lord McAlpine stands spiritually. I hope he might be able to see, or that there might be someone to show him, that God himself knows what it’s like to be falsely accused and to be an object of hatred for many. In the person of his Son, exactly as Isaiah prophesied: “He was despised and rejected by men … Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3, NIV).
When we are unjustly accused, Jesus is able to sympathise with us – and more than that. Not only was he “numbered with the transgressors”; wonderfully he also “bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (verse 12, NIV). As we sometimes sing (in different hymns), “We may not know, we cannot tell what pains He had to bear; but we believe it was for us He hung and suffered there … Hallelujah! What a Saviour!”