Scripture repeatedly warns about opposition and rejection:
When you have an interactive blog site, you receive plenty of interesting comments. Some of them are just plain false or foolish. Quite often I get some pretty bizarre comments. One that recently came in is a good case in point. It was in response to a post I penned 15 years ago: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2010/04/02/on-rejecting-christianity/
Because this person did not share his name (as my commenting rules demand) I did not post his comment. But because it raises an important issue, and other folks might like to have seen how I would have responded to it, I share what he wrote here:
“I don’t believe people reject Christianity. It’s more likely they reject the Ugliness of some Christians who have lost the essence of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Were I to step into the Purity of Jesus’ shoes, I would weep at what I see or read some people are perpetuating in ‘My Name’.”
Hmm, how should one respond to this? Two immediate thoughts come to mind. Are there some rather poor and unhelpful representatives of Christ out there that can turn off unbelievers and tarnish the gospel message? Sure. But people reject Christ and Christianity all the time, and it usually has nothing to do with how well or how poorly some believers model Christ.
And it certainly has nothing to do with how Christ modelled himself. Indeed, those points I had already made in the article he was responding to. So in a sense all I can do here is repeat these points and expand upon them a bit further. The main point to keep reiterating is this: being rejected is just what Jesus said would happen – about him and about his followers.
This is exactly what Jesus repeatedly warned about. Only someone who is biblically illiterate could make the claim that folks do not reject Christianity. To reject Christ of course entails rejecting Christianity, and Jesus told his followers that people would hate them because they first hated himself. As we find in John 15:18-21:
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.
And Jesus told us exactly why people would reject him and his followers as they proclaim the Christian gospel:
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. (John 3:19-21)
Just as people rejected Jesus back then because they preferred their sin, their darkness, and their evil, so too today. Thus from the very outset Christ was rejected, and we cannot put this down to any ‘ugliness’ on his part. Early on in the gospel accounts we hear about how things are going to pan out:
“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” (John 1:9-11)
All throughout his ministry he encountered this. As just one example of people opposing Jesus, read the encounter he had in Nazareth where he was rejected by the people as found in Mark 6:1-6. Many more such episodes can be mentioned.
And at the end of his life the same hatred and rejection was there. When Jesus was before Caiaphas and the Council we are told that “many false witnesses came forward” to incriminate him (Matthew 26:60). So too his disciples, and Jesus forewarned them repeatedly about the rejection they would face:
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.” (Matthew 10:16-18)
“I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.” (John 16:1-3)
And again: “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.” (John 17:14)
The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, went about doing good, sharing the love of Christ, and healing people of their diseases, but they were also rejected by many. Again, simply reading the book of Acts and the epistles will show over and over again how those early Christians were constantly being rejected.
In sum, I repeat: believers can at times let down our Lord by things we might say or do. We can do a lousy job of modelling and demonstrating who Christ is and what he is like. But some of the most loving, gracious and godly Christians out there will also find they are being hated on, fiercely opposed, and rejected.
And if our perfectly loving and perfectly gracious Lord was hated and rejected by many, then we know that there is much more to the rejection of Christianity than just some of his followers being lousy witnesses.
A few quotes from some great saints are worth concluding with:
“Those that are born after the flesh cannot but persecute those that are born after the Spirit”. George Whitefield
“It is not the infirmities of a believer that the world dislikes, but his godliness; it is not the remains of the old nature that call forth the world’s enmity, but the exhibition of the new. Let us remember these things, and be patient. The world hated Christ, and the world will hate Christians.” J. C. Ryle
“Opposition! It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day that it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of it being wrong, I should know from that. When the Church and the world can jog along together comfortably, you may be sure there is something wrong. The world has not altered. Its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was, and if Christians were equally faithful and devoted to the Lord, and separated from the world, living so that their lives were a reproof to all ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as it ever did. It is the Church that has altered, not the world.” Catherine Booth
“The Christian need not expect to escape opposition. As long as Satan stands to resist the sons of God, as long as the world and the flesh remain, the believing man will meet opposition. Sometimes it will be sharp and obvious, but mostly it will be just the hidden and unsuspected friction set up by circumstances. No one need be anxious about this, however, for God has figured it in and made allowance for it.” A. W. Tozer
Thanks Bill, great article.