4:16
The world will seek to heap shame on Christians. We saw it doing this in the whole same-sex marriage debate. However, if we are being faithful to Christ and His word then we should not be ashamed. Instead we should praise the Lord that we bear His name. There is no greater honour than to bear the name of Jesus. And we also need to remember that Jesus said He will acknowledge those who acknowledge Him, but deny those who deny Him.
4:17
“It is time for judgement to begin with the house of God”. Most events and actions have several meanings and purposes to them. One may be primary, but there will be other secondary ones as well. One mistake we can make is to focus only on the primary purpose, a more serious mistake is to consider a secondary purpose to be the primary purpose. The best example of this is the cross. The primary purpose of the cross is Christ paying the price for our sins, the atoning nature of His sacrifice. But this is not the only purpose. The cross is an example to us, the cross involves healing, etc, but if we make any of these other purposes the primary one we will start to be in error. So the persecution of the church is first a reflection or fruit of the world’s hatred of Christ, but that is not the whole story. God uses persecution to purify the church, just as He uses difficult times in our lives to teach us things, to correct and transform our lives. Moreover, if judgement begins with those who actually have repented and believed, how much more will judgement one day come on those who do not obey the gospel?
Note the phrase “obey the gospel”. We too often talk of people making a choice regarding the gospel. Yes it is a choice, but it is a choice of whether or not to obey God, and making the wrong choice has terrible consequences.
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