Hated and Blessed

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

HATED AND BLESSED

Luke 6:22

22 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

NIV

It does seem rather odd to be hated because we are disciples of Jesus in today’s world, but in fact it may be truer than we realize. During the early church, those who were disciples of Jesus were in fact thought of as men of sedition. They were considered as men who stirred up trouble among the Jews. Paul was accused of that very thing. James tells the believers that it is the rich who drag them into courts, the rich who slander the name of who those disciples belong to. The name Christian or Nazarene were names of reproof, not of noble ideals. Today is a little different in that we are considered by some as a Christian nation, but that is not really the way it is. We may have started out that way, but that is not how we are now. Those of us who are believers have been set aside from society in some sense. Men want laws to prohibit symbols of Christianity from the public square. Others use the name of Jesus Christ but give him a middle initial with no respect for him at all. If we say too much about Jesus or our faith, we might find ourselves being shunned by many. Others think we are foolish to believe, that their concepts of the world are far better than ours. If we look around we can see many ways in which men hate us, exclude us and insult us because we belong to Jesus. Being a born again believer in Jesus Christ is not the normal lifestyle of the average American, we are in fact a very small group in the whole of society. There may be many who think themselves as Christians, but still think otherwise about us who are born again. That is fine, we cannot bend to the thinking of the average American, or for that manner the average so called Christian. We must remain true to Jesus, to the truth of the word of God. If we do not allow the thinking of the world to infiltrate our thoughts, Jesus tells us we will be blessed.