Tag Archives: persecute

SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS…RETALIATION -9

Bible Study, ,

In an earlier study, we explored the meaning of Jesus’ suffering. Let me recap.

Jesus was made like us. 

He was born with the nature of the first Adam, before he fell, that is, able to sin and able not to sin. Jesus is called “the last Adam”. 

“For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way…

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭2‬:‭16‬-‭17‬a NIV‬‬

Jesus suffered being tempted. 

To give in to temptation, that is, to act on His own instead of out of obedience to the Father, would have meant death…for Him and the human race. 

“Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭2‬:‭18‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Jesus was tempted “in the flesh”, that is in His human nature. He was tempted to react to the way others treated Him by retaliating in some way, out of His emotions, out of insecurity, or in defence. However, Jesus never reacted to persecution by reflecting the words or actions back on those who insulted or abused Him. 

“Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body (His “flesh”, that is, in His human nature), arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin.”

‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭4‬:‭1‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Jesus always chose to absorb the mistreatment by entrusting Himself to the Father’s justice. His defence was truth, not emotion. He used the Word of God to silence His accusers. 

Jesus taught His disciples how to deal with persecution. 

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5‬:‭11‬-‭12‬ NIV

His strategy to handle persecution was twofold. 

“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭2‬:‭23‬ ‭NIV‬‬

  1. He refrained from reacting. 
  2. He trusted the Father to vindicate Him. 

The Apostle Paul learned this lesson through hardship and persecution…he prayed for deliverance but God  said, “No!” 

“…Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me (the temptation to retaliate). Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭12‬:‭7‬-‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Paul turned hardship and persecution into celebration because thanksgiving in his suffering submitted ti the discipline, killed the desire to retaliate, and gave him power over his weakness. 

Now let’s apply these principles to our lives when we are tempted to react out if our fleshly nature to any kind of suffering, hardship, or persecution. . 

Since our sinful human nature always wants to reacts to any kind of suffering especially criticism or abuse, we will interpret such behaviour as rejection.  Our first natural reaction to rejection will be some form of retaliation. We will resort to self-defence or counter accusation to deflect the offence away from our injured “ego”. 

We can either compound the sin of our accuser by our own sinful counter-reactions or we can choose not to retaliate by absorbing the insults, accusations, criticism, without reaction. 

This way of non-retaliation depends on the way we view ourselves in the light of what God says about us. If we are secure in the love of God, we will not be moved by the opinions of others. If we depend on ourselves for self- preservation, we will be quick to retaliate, believing and absorbing the “poison” from others into ourselves and allowing it to damage our confidence in God. 

Once again, Jesus has given us the solution. Turn opposition into opportunity! Rejoice and be glad! The weapon of thanksgiving will immediately neutralise any temptation to retaliate. 

Thanksgiving is the language of faith. It turns our attention away from self to the Lord and defuses anger and resentment. God’s Word renews our minds with truth. Whatever God says about me is more real and powerful than any abusive language or behaviour thrown at me which is a lie and does not exist. 

This is “spiritual warfare” in essence, nullifying lies with truth, and taking the heat out of conflict by dousing the flames of emotion with the cool head of reality. What God has said carries far more weight than anything any person says and, best of all, God’s peace continues to reign in the heart. 

Jesus Did Not Say That We Must Be Peace-keepers

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE MUST BE PEACE-KEEPERS

There is a huge difference between being peacemakers and peace keepers. What did Jesus say?

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5: 9-12)

This chiasm has been arranged a little differently. The central thought has been put first.

 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Once again, to understand this chiasm, we must go back to its use in Scripture. There are only two places in the New Testament where the term, “making peace” is used, apart from here.

For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and though Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross. (Col. 1: 19-20).

Through His shed blood, Jesus reconciled to God everything in the universe that was alienated from God through Adam’s disobedience.

Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth . . . were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.  (Eph. 2: 11-16)

Wow! Can you see how deep the roots of peace-making go? There can never be peace between God and man and between man and man outside of the sacrifice Jesus made to reconcile us to the Father by doing away with the reason for the hostility. Sin alienated us from God, an impenetrable barrier that we could not nothing about.

There was only one solution – a perfect sacrifice made by a perfect son. God demands death as the penalty for sin, but every sinner must pay for his own sin. Only a sinless human could pay the debt for all sin, and Jesus was that sinless human.

Reconciliation, then, is not about bringing warring parties together. Reconciliation is about dealing with the cause of the war. God did that through His Son, so that there is no more reason for people to be alienated from God or from one another. The roots of the hatred between the races lie in the problem of alienation between God and man because of sin. Racial hatred will never be removed apart from the cross. It cost Jesus His own blood to do away with the hostility and make peace between God and man and between man and man.

Where does persecution fit into the picture? Human beings are not neutral in their attitude towards God. Because of our natural bent towards rebellion, we are at enmity with God. There is deep-rooted hatred of God and anything that has to do with Him. Why was Jesus crucified? Because of man’s hatred for God!

Those who represented self-help religion in Jesus’ day, the leaders of His people, the religious leaders, rejected Him because He showed them what God the Father is really like, and they hated Him for it. How accurately He diagnosed the problem:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (John 3: 19)

The way people view sin divides the whole world into two camps – those who hate their sin and those who hate God because of their sin. Those who hate their sin readily respond the Jesus and embrace His solution. Those who love their sin are against God and those who are with Him. The outcome is persecution. The sinner can’t do anything to God so he attacks God’s people.

Jesus did not say that persecution is enjoyable. He did say that persecution is a reason to rejoice because it is a sign that we are in good company; those who hate God persecuted the prophets and killed Jesus. We must not be surprised that we come in for persecution as well.

So, what’s the bottom line?

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you, on God’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. (2 Cor. 5: 17-20)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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The World’s Most Heinous Crime!

Bible Study, , ,

THE WORLD’S MOST HEINOUS CRIME!

“‘I admit that I didn’t always hold to this position. For a time I thought it was my duty to oppose this Jesus of Nazareth with all my might. Backed with the full authority of the high priests, I threw the believers — I had no idea they were God’s people — into the Jerusalem jail right and left, and whenever it came to a vote, I voted for their execution. I stormed through their meeting places, bullying them into cursing Jesus, a one-man terror obsessed with obliterating these people. And then I started on the towns outside Jerusalem.'” Acts 9-11 (The Message).

What a list of accomplishments to put on your CV, Paul! What a confession! Religious extremist! Fanatic! Murderer! Terrorist! Talk about a religious war! Paul could have been fighting the cause of any one of the world’s most prominent religions today. They all have the same intention — get rid of believers in Jesus; 165,000 Christians murdered every year. Why? What have they done? Put their faith in the Son of God who was raised from the dead? What kind of a crime is that? Why did he do it?

We have only two options — believe in the God who created us in His image or believe in a god we created in our image. How do we know the difference? By our fruit. We always become like the god we worship. If we worship a god we, or someone else, has created in our image, we reveal the nature of that god by our disposition and behaviour.

Paul thought that he was fighting for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but this God revealed Himself as gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faitfulness, full of mercy and forgiving sin (Exodus34:6). Does that look like the God he was representing in his murderous hatred of believers?

What was Paul’s problem? He was deceived. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NIV). There was nothing wrong with his zeal but everything wrong with what he believed.

Why did God not take him out for his actions against His people? He deserved to die there and then, didn’t he? I suspect that God saw beyond his fanatical persecution of Christians to a passionate desire to serve and please the God he thought he knew. That he went about it the wrong way was not the issue. That could be corrected. That he had a heart for God was a characteristic that could be honed into a loyal and faithful son of God and worshipper of Jesus.

A story in the Old Testament clearly illustrates this principle. Isaac, Abraham’s son, had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau, it seems, was the more pleasant character. He was an outdoor man, a good hunter and a daddy’s boy. His brother, Jacob, like his name meaning “deceiver”, was a scheming, lying, twisted namby-pamby mommy’s boy.

But Esau had an inborn fault — he had no interest in spiritual things. He gave away his right as the firstborn just to fill his belly on the spur of the moment. On the other hand, Jacob coveted his brother’s position as the firstborn and the privileges and advantages that came with it. Through lies and deception he stole his brother’s birthright and the father’s blessing. For a good part of his life he lived by deceiving and being deceived.

But, from God’s perspective, Jacob’s thirst for spiritual realities was a characteristic He could work with, even though he went about it the wrong way. God moved him, slowly but surely, into the place where he was cornered, wanting to go home, but desperately afraid of Esau and the repercussions of his deception. In an all-night struggle with the Angel of the Lord, Jacob surrendered and he was changed, from “deceiver” to “prince with God.” The same zeal that drove him to lie and steal, now drove him to love and obey God.

God is looking for those who yearn for Him, though they may not know it. He will make Himself known to anyone who seeks Him with all his heart.

The Word’s Most Heinous Crime!

Bible Study, , ,

THE WORLD’S MOST HEINOUS CRIME!

“‘I admit that I didn’t always hold to this position. For a time I thought it was my duty to oppose this Jesus of Nazareth with all my might. Backed with the full authority of the high priests, I threw the believers — I had no idea they were God’s people — into the Jerusalem jail right and left, and whenever it came to a vote, I voted for their execution. I stormed through their meeting places, bullying them into cursing Jesus, a one-man terror obsessed with obliterating these people. And then I started on the towns outside Jerusalem.'” Acts 9-11 (The Message).

What a list of accomplishments to put on your CV, Paul! What a confession! Religious extremist! Fanatic! Murderer! Terrorist! Talk about a religious war! Paul could have been fighting the cause of any one of the world’s most prominent religions today. They all have the same intention — get rid of believers in Jesus; 165,000 Christians murdered every year. Why? What have they done? Put their faith in the Son of God who was raised from the dead? What kind of a crime is that? Why did he do it?

We have only two options — believe in the God who created us in His image or believe in a god we created in our image. How do we know the difference? By our fruit. We always become like the god we worship. If we worship a god we, or someone else, has created in our image, we reveal the nature of that god by our disposition and behaviour.

Paul thought that he was fighting for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but this God revealed Himself as gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faitfulness, full of mercy and forgiving sin (Exodus34:6). Does that look like the God he was representing in his murderous hatred of believers?

What was Paul’s problem? He was deceived. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NIV). There was nothing wrong with his zeal but everything wrong with what he believed.

Why did God not take him out for his actions against His people? He deserved to die there and then, didn’t he? I suspect that God saw beyond his fanatical persecution of Christians to a passionate desire to serve and please the God he thought he knew. That he went about it the wrong way was not the issue. That could be corrected. That he had a heart for God was a characteristic that could be honed into a loyal and faithful son of God and worshipper of Jesus.

A story in the Old Testament clearly illustrates this principle. Isaac, Abraham’s son, had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau, it seems, was the more pleasant character. He was an outdoor man, a good hunter and a daddy’s boy. His brother, Jacob, like his name meaning “deceiver”, was a scheming, lying, twisted namby-pamby mommy’s boy.

But Esau had an inborn fault — he had no interest in spiritual things. He gave away his right as the firstborn just to fill his belly on the spur of the moment. On the other hand, Jacob coveted his brother’s position as the firstborn and the privileges and advantages that came with it. Through lies and deception he stole his brother’s birthright and the father’s blessing. For a good part of his life he lived by deceiving and being deceived.

But, from God’s perspective, Jacob’s thirst for spiritual realities was a characteristic He could work with, even though he went about it the wrong way. God moved him, slowly but surely, into the place where he was cornered, wanting to go home, but desperately afraid of Esau and the repercussions of his deception. In an all-night struggle with the Angel of the Lord, Jacob surrendered and he was changed, from “deceiver” to “prince with God.” The same zeal that drove him to lie and steal, now drove him to love and obey God.

God is looking for those who yearn for Him, though they may not know it. He will make Himself known to anyone who seeks Him with all his heart.