To Encourage You

John 15:25 “They hated me without a cause.”

Do you realize that your reaction to Christ and his words has a lot more to say about you than it says with Him?  In other words, there is absolutely no reason in heaven or earth for Christ to be hated by anyone.  He is without sin, without flaw, perfectly holy, virtuous, truthful, and pure in every way.  He never did anything that was “hate-worthy,” so to speak.  Every good gift and every perfect gift that any one of us has ever received came from him (James 1:17).  He created each and every one of us and He sustains our lives (Colossians 1:16-17).   We could not even breathe if He didn’t give us the air and keep our lungs functioning.  He came into this world for the sole purpose of saving our lives.  There is no reason at all either inherent in Him or because of anything He has ever said or done to either reject Him, ignore Him, or hate Him.  

Yet many do hate Him, hate his followers (which is exactly the same as hating Him – Matthew 25:40-45) and in particular hate the things that He and they have said in the past or are saying in the present.  The reason for this rejection is always, at its foundation, the result of the sin in the lives of the unbeliever. 

Rejection of Christ is not because He doesn’t make sense, His message is hard to understand, He has told us something that isn’t the truth, He doesn’t love us, He has hurt us in some way, or because of anything else.  There are no excuses.  Darkness hates the light, pure and simple.

So what about you?  Is there anything in the Bible, “the Word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), that you don’t agree with? Anything that you find fault with, or dislike, or even hate?  If so, it’s time to take a good hard look at your own heart, because the problem doesn’t lie with Jesus or his Word. It lies in you. 

Don’t you just hate it when someone says something like that?