“If I must boast, I would rather boast about the things that show how weak I am. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, who is worthy of eternal praise, knows I am not lying. When I was in Damascus, the governor under King Aretas kept guards at the city gates to catch me. I had to be lowered in a basket through a window in the city wall to escape from him.”
2 Corinthians 11:30-33 NLT
An extraordinary tale from Paul, having to escape from the civil authorities in that way, but it provides yet another indication of how difficult it was in those days to be a Christian and preach the Gospel. If any believer has any doubts today about their faith, they must consider what others have gone through to protect it. If the story of Jesus, His ministry, His trial, death, burial, and subsequent resurrection is disbelieved by our fellow Christians, then perhaps the people involved should think about how many people have suffered so much to protect their faith in God. Lies never prevail over truth.
Are Christians generally weak, as Paul said he was? Surely that can’t be true, because we read verses such as “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13). We also have Psalm 18:29, “In your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall”. And another favourite of mine, Isaiah 40:29-31, “He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint”. Reading the verses, we can perhaps discover that, through God, we are, in fact, invincible and even indestructible. But we pause, and on reflection understand that all these things are in God’s strength, not in our own. Humans are frail beings, and ever since Jesus walked the highways and byways of Palestine, Christians have suffered greatly for their faith, their strength in God failing to materialise into a physical and human strength able to overcome the beatings, stonings, torture and other abuse that have been their lot under hostile and misguided regimes. And such is still the case today in some parts of the world.
Christians take the long view because the time spent in this world is infinitesimally short compared to an eternity spent in God’s company. A different spirit was present when Peter and John were punished for speaking about Jesus. They were arrested to stand trial before the Sanhedrin, and we read their punishment in Acts 5:40-41, “The others accepted his advice. They called in the apostles and had them flogged. Then they ordered them never again to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go. The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus”. Because Jesus suffered so much, Peter and John rejoiced that they too were suffering, and all because they could see what was coming their way. Perhaps they remembered what Jesus had said to them right back at the beginning, “But beware! For you will be handed over to the courts and will be flogged with whips in the synagogues” (Matthew 10:17). Later in the same discourse, Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). However, in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Paul wrote, “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever”. The early Apostles, in all their distress, stayed the course because they knew what was coming one day soon.
We pilgrims here in the West have little to fear from the authorities for our faith. We will not receive a beating for sharing our faith, well, not yet anyway. But we will suffer more subtle forms of abuse, through being ostracised, or marginalised, in our society that only favours those who do not challenge the sin and evil that prevail. But as Paul said, what we suffer now is of no consequence from the perspective of eternity. We have a loving Heavenly Father who one day will call us home.
Dear Father God. Thank You for all that You have done for us and will continue to do until the day of glory that will come before we know it. Thank You for Jesus, who has made it all possible. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 