Deeper Life #225

Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

—1 Peter 4:16

TO SUFFER AS A CHRISTIAN is not the same as being marked as peculiar because of your views or because you will not bend to conventionality. These causes of suffering are not uniquely Christian; they are things from which all people suffer, irrespective of creed or religion, or no religion. But to suffer as a Christian stems from an essential difference, which rouses the contempt of the world.

You will suffer as a Christian because you have no answer when the world’s satire is turned on you, as it was on Jesus while He hung on the Cross. There Jesus’ enemies turned His words into a jesting and a jeering, and they will do the same to you. He gave no answer, nor can you.

It was in the throes of that blinding problem that Peter staggered. He meant to go with His Lord to death, and he did, but never had he imagined that he would have to go without Him. To see Jesus, His Lord, taken by the power of the world as meek as a lamb to the slaughter, making no answer, performing no work to explain it—this froze Peter to the soul!

That is what it means to suffer as a Christian. To hear people taunt and tear His promises to you in pieces, and know you cannot answer, or to smart under the merciless, pitying sarcasms of belonging to the contemptible sect of “Christians”—that is Christian suffering.

Prayer Thought: Glorify Yourself, O God, through my sufferings.

SUGGESTED READING: Philippians 4:10–19