April 3, 2011
Background Scripture: 2 Timothy 2:8-15
Devotional Reading: Titus 3:1-7
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child …”

These words are from a hymn by Charles Wesley published in 1742. It is unfortunate that the first line is often used to describe a “gentle ... meek and mild” Jesus. Perhaps when Wesley wrote it, the words “meek and mild” may have had a stronger connotation.

Today, however, the synonyms for the word “meek” include, among others, “submissive,” “docile,” “compliant,” “unassertive,” “timid,” “weak-kneed” and “cowardly.” Jesus was humble, unassuming and non-violent, but none of the above. It took strength and courage to teach what he taught and to pay the price that he paid.

Furthermore, if we truly follow Jesus we should expect that we also will need strength and courage. I read this morning of a man in Pakistan who was killed because he was Christian. And there are more than a few places in the world where being Christian makes similar demands: the Middle East, the Far East, and Africa. But what about the USA? Is the Christ we purport to follow the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” or that other Jesus who paid for his gospel and ministry on a cross?

Remember Jesus!

Many of Jesus’ earliest followers paid a similar price. And the Apostle Paul wrote: “Remember Jesus Christ … as preached in my gospel, the gospel for which I am suffering and wearing fetters like a criminal” (2:8).

Do you ever wonder why it is comparatively easy in our country to be counted as Christians? Is it because our society is not hostile to the gospel, or is it because we have allowed the gospel to be housebroken?

Paul also writes: “Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect …” (2:10). Then he quotes what is believed to be an early Christian hymn: “If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us” (11,12). As American Christians, what must we endure?

But, just when we think that Christian discipleship demands something we cannot endure, Paul goes on to say: “If we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself” (13). The strength to suffer for the sake of the gospel comes, not from our strength, but from Christ himself.

Even if it seems we are failing, we must remember that: “… the word of God is not fettered” (9). We may be “fettered,” obstructed, stymied and seemingly defeated, but God’s word, as He has demonstrated again and again, is not. Like Paul, we can “endure everything,” not because we are able – but because Christ is.

‘Godless chatter’

This does not mean that we are to become militant, because that says we will be depending not upon the help of Christ, but our own bellicose nature.
In early March, the Supreme Court ruled that militant Christians may not be prevented from harassing the funerals of men and women of the armed forces in order to protest homosexuality in those forces. But Christians who claim that right damage, not enhance, the word of God.

Paul says, “... charge them before the Lord to avoid disputing about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers … Avoid such godless chatter, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will eat its way like gangrene” (v. 16,17).

What damages the gospel, is not that we are for this and against that, but in the way we go about it. Jesus did not incite a mob; he gathered disciples.
He said he could call down “twelve legions of angels” to protect him – but he did not (Mt. 26:53).

Jesus practiced non-violent resistance; eventually, so did his disciples. It was not something for just the most elite followers, but for everyone who accepted the gospel.

The temptation to “fight” for the gospel, instead of witnessing to it, is a hangover from the Church’s buying into the methods of the militant Roman Empire.

The Emperor Constantine said he had a vision in which he saw the Cross and heard these words: “In this sign conquer.” I question if it was the cross of Christ he saw.
 
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