Standing Firm: Love as a Response to Persecution

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

So now the teaching in the book of Romans leads us to loving our neighbor. This is Romans chapter 13. Paul has just talked about loving the government and walking faithfully, law-abiding citizens who take care of the needs of the community. respect the government, and yet we also stand for the truth, which often brings us into conflict with the government. But now he says in verse 8 of chapter 13, “‘Owe no one anything except to love one another.'” For he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. How incredible this is. It continues on with the, that is, it continues what Paul has established earlier, and that is that we do not repay evil for evil, and that we bless our enemy. If our enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head. In other words, here we have the clear teaching that Christians are not militants. They are men and women who follow the life of Jesus. They don’t do it perfectly, of course, but they try to follow his pattern. Because Jesus died for them. Jesus submitted to the forces of evil. That’s what the crucifixion was all about. Jesus was not accidentally killed. He was not unexpectedly brought into this situation. He walked to Jerusalem. He walked willingly towards his own death. And the result of that was the crucifixion of Christ, which became the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world. God brought himself into the human realm, and in so doing in Christ, he allowed that human realm to kill him. This is submission to death, and that is an astonishing truth that has led Christians throughout the history of the Christian era to stand for Christ even while being persecuted and even while being killed. Now, I know this is not a popular doctrine today. We have linked Christianity with politics. We have linked the idea of standing for Christ as an act of aggression sometimes. Not always, of course, not mostly, thank God. But What we have now here before us is what the Christian message was right from the beginning, and that is that Christians stand for Jesus Christ and are willing to suffer evil. We should take a careful study of that sometime. I might bring up some texts tomorrow, or rather the next time we meet, in regard to suffering. Paul was so privileged, he felt himself so honored to suffer with Christ. Do we do the same? owe no one anything except to love one another. This is active love. It’s not just a sentiment, a nice feeling. It’s a decision to look for the betterment of my fellow man, of my neighbor. Remember what he says, love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. When a Christian does not retaliate against evil, when he submits to it, giving praise and thanks to God and loving his neighbor, he creates confusion in his neighbor’s mind. That’s a major teaching here. That confusion… leads the opponent to the Christian to think about his reaction. How come the Christian reacts this way? and I react the other. You remember the story, I can’t remember the name of the son of one of the leaders of Hamas, who was imprisoned by the Israelis, and during that time, he was with all the prisoners, Muslim prisoners, activist Muslims, and he heard a Christian somewhere in there, or he heard someone say, Jesus said, love your enemies. He had never heard that teaching before. He had never heard it from Islam, and it so stunned him that he turned to Jesus Christ. And so the son of this Hamas leader is now an active witness to Jesus Christ in this world, in this country of the United States. Owe no man anything but to love one another. Why do we owe love to a neighbor? We owe our neighbor love because Jesus loved us. Christ’s love for us, when we didn’t deserve it, a love that is very, very merciful, is so great that we then begin to feel obligated to love the neighbor just as much as Jesus loved us. We owe it to our neighbor. because our neighbor was loved by Christ also, and is loved by Christ. Jesus Christ will save our neighbor, and therefore we ought to love him. But notice this, for the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet adultery, and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now this is astonishing because Paul has already taught us, and a full chapter he’s given on this, that we are dead to the law. The law has no claim upon us to cause us to feel guilty or to be condemned. Because Christ was our judgment, and he died on the cross as a judgment for all humanity, so therefore, in him, we are no longer condemned. Therefore, we look at the law as having no power over us, no power to judge us, define us, or condemn us. And yet, because of that fact that we are no longer under its judgment, we have a freedom from guilt and shame, we live in the resurrection life of Jesus, and therefore we inadvertently, almost accidentally one might say, fulfill the law by loving our neighbor. because Paul summarizes the law in verse 10. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. You know, Gandhi… the one who liberated India from the British Empire, was not a Christian, but he used to go to the Plymouth Brethren Church in England when he was studying law there, and he read the Bible and the New Testament. Unfortunately, he rejected the Bible. He couldn’t make sense of the Old Testament, but he accepted the teaching of Jesus in regard to the way Jesus suffered evil and allowed himself to be killed. That pacifism, some people call it, is not what Gandhi taught. It is not a passive thing to let your neighbor harm you. It is an active Christian thing. And he stood up to the whole British Empire by resisting, their evil upon him by allowing them to abuse him, to jail him, when he was not guilty of anything that demanded jail. And so we saw the collapse, astonishingly, of the British Empire after the Second World War, the collapse of the control of India, that is, by the British Empire after the Second World War, by the act of a man who followed the teachings of Jesus. Now when society discovers how Christians react in prayer and praise and love and kindness to their enemy, They are going to be truly puzzled and astonished. They are going to be confused. Just as Paul said, If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head. you will so confuse his mind, because he will say, this is not a normal reaction. These people ought to be angry with me. They ought to want to fight back. But they don’t fight back, not because they’re wimps, but because they are strong in heart and willing to take abuse. This is what Paul did. He was willing to take abuse. He did not fight back. And Paul, of course, was following the example of his Savior, Jesus. This astonishes the world. Now this is why in the last days Christians are going to shine because they are persecuted. Not simply because they proclaim the gospel, but when they proclaim the gospel and the world reacts to it by being opposed to the gospel, the Christians react by submitting to abuse. That is something that the world cannot gainsay. It cannot argue against it. It is confused and it is full of wonder. This is where the gospel and how the gospel will spread. It will not only spread by a revival among Christians that leads them to speak the name of Christ and the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. It will spread by Christians suffering the results of what they proclaim. And when that happens, people in the world will be ashamed. And this will spread right into the final judgment. That’s described in Ezekiel chapters 36 to 39 and Revelation 20, isn’t it? It will spread right into the judgment when Gog and Magog will attack the city and there will not be the kind of response that they expect. But there will be that glory and praise to God who will protect them. and that will lead the world to humbling itself and being ashamed. So, we need to ask ourselves, all right, I’m making myself available to service, just as Paul starts teaching in Romans 12, am I making myself available to suffer? I’m scared to say it myself because I don’t know whether I could endure. But I don’t have to look to the future. I simply live for Jesus today, and what happens tomorrow, God will take care of and help me through it. How about you? Thanks for listening today. Colin Cook here, and you’ve been listening to my broadcast, How It Happens, which you can hear any time of the day or night on your smartphone. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com, and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. Thank you for all your support. 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