"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." —Deitrich Bonhoeffer
That is the ultimate issue. Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." What does it look like to follow Jesus? What does it look like to deny yourself and lose your life for the sake of Christ? You need to count the cost of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, because it could cost you everything. If you are not willing to lose it all, then you cannot be His disciple. Everywhere Jesus went, He was despised and rejected. Scripture says that He was a man of sorrows.
A constant and consistent problem in the first century was that God's
people confused the work of the Spirit with the work of the flesh.
Divine life reacts completely differently than human life. The behaviour
of the Spirit is dramatically, profoundly, different from the behaviour
of the flesh. The root is a lack of spiritual discernment, which comes
from a lack and unwillingness to deny ourselves and lay our life down.
When Jesus was before the priests, amidst the many false accusations,
amidst the lies, He remained silent. When Jesus was before Pilate,
amidst the many false accusations, amidst the lies, He remained silent.
When Jesus was before Herod, amidst the many false accusations, amidst
the lies, He remained silent. As a human being, our natural
reaction is
to defend ourselves. It is difficult to remain silent while people level
false accusations and lies against you. It is even more difficult to
remain silent while your own hypocrisy is exposed. Selfishness and pride
is quite often the immediate response in order to try to justify
ourselves.
Many ministers in ministry today do not know how to lose; they do not know how to lay their lives down; they do not know how to die. They have never been broken; they have never been crushed. They are dangerous. They will defend themselves at the drop of a hat. They do not know what it means to be silent. They do not know how divinity reacts to pressure. They will attack those who sleight them at the drop of a hat. They are unbroken, they do not know how to lose, they do not know how to die, and they are out there serving the kingdom of God with one hand and destroying God's people with the other hand. None of these ministers were ever in community long enough for the Lord to temper, adjust, break, or transform them. Some of them, when things got hot, they left, they ran away. This is not how we have learned Christ Jesus. These ministers are full of ego and full of pride, and when they are under pressure the flesh gets exposed.
Such ministers are Phil Johnson, Todd Friel, Justin Peters, Chris Rosebrough, Pulpit & Pen, James White, Barry Horner, Michael Heiser, James "Jacob" Prasch, Joshua Chavez, etc., including every false teacher I am aware of. (I could provide audio, video, and written examples to prove my case, but it is not my goal to malign these individuals. I merely want to provide some examples as to what I am addressing. You can find these examples easy enough via a Google search.) For many of the above names, their stumbling block is their education, upon which their ego and pride rests comfortably. You challenge them on anything and see how quickly their educated ego rears its ugly head. They put all their trust in their education. The above paragraph describes these men to a T. Do they turn the other cheek? No! They return evil for evil. They are not acting in the Spirit, they are acting in the flesh. They are not walking in the Spirit, they are walking in the flesh. Yes, even I have been guilty of rushing in to defend myself when I have been wronged rather than to remain silent and endure the wrong doing. The above names do it on a regular basis. It is part and parcel of their behaviour. Some of them are profoundly crass, not bearing Christian behaviour in the least.
Selfishness, pride, and hypocrisy are some of the greatest sins, and they are opposed to denying yourself and laying your life down. Jesus confronted hypocrisy quite frequently. When we call ourselves Christians, are we living it out, or is it merely words dripping from our lips with no life behind it? When people wrong us, how are we reacting? Scripture commands us to suffer wrongs. We will not be able to do so all the time, but we should be able to do most of the time. If every time someone attacks us we retaliate, there is something wrong. Scripture says we ought to suffer wrong, following after Christ our example (1 Pet. 2:13-25). Paul says it is a defeat for us, and asks, "Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?" (1 Cor. 6:7).
I know how difficult it is to remain silent in the midst of false accusations and lies. I know how desperately we desire to defend ourselves and our name. I tend not to care what others think or say about me, but sometimes I fall into this trap. I find that when we give in to the temptation of reacting and defending ourselves, it is because we are out of step with the Spirit and not walking, or living, in a manner that we ought to be, a manner consistent with the teachings of the New Testament. Only when we are lead by the Spirit, when we are walking by the Spirit, are we able to resist the temptation to react and remain silent. If people want to bad mouth you, let them. If you are in the right, if the truth is on your side, God will avenge you.
By the way, this also goes for when others take your credit or your credit is given to someone else. I do not remember exactly what was said to me many years ago concerning this, but it has been a hard lesson to follow. When I was younger, if I had presented an idea and it was credited to someone else, I was quick to speak up and take my credit back. Over the years, and even quite recently, there have been numerous times where credit due me was misplaced and I just bit my lip. Sometimes, others correct the miscredit for you. A couple times people have spoken up on my behalf and restored credit to me. Recently, I swung an idea past my boss and he rejected it. The other employee then repeated my same idea with one tiny addition (which did not change my original idea in the least, but added another step beyond my original idea), and the boss went for it. I was so tempted to say, "That's exactly what I just proposed," but bit my lip instead. What made it worse was the other employee going on and on for the rest of the day about "having great ideas." Each time, I desperately wanted to speak up and say, "But that idea wasn't even yours. That's what I suggested in the first place." It is difficult watching others take credit for your work. This is what self-denial looks like; this is what having no right to yourself looks like. More often than not, we want to stand up for our rights when someone wrongs us. But, again, that is not how we learned Christ. We have no right to ourselves. We have no rights. If someone wants to wrong us, let them. We are supposed to take up our cross and follow Jesus. It is not an easy task, and I have by no means achieved that goal yet. But I live each day and each situation as it comes, trying to remind myself of how Jesus spent His life. His words and His actions were always in tune.
