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OCTOBER: Walking with God

October 27

HATED BY THE WORLD

Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.
1 John 3:13

Let me put this as a historical fact. This is one of the great principles that we find in the Bible from the beginning. There are many people who have difficulty with this verse. If this is true of you, you have somehow failed to understand the first great essential divisions of the Bible. The difference between Cain and Abel was in Cain, not in Abel. Cain (the world) hates Abel (the Christian). Look at Joseph and his brethren. Look at David and Saul; read the story of how King Saul treated David and tried to get rid of him—the jealousy, envy, and malice. Look at the treatment that was meted out to the prophets, those men of God who were trying to save the nation. It is there everywhere.

Look at the supreme example of our Lord Himself. Here is the Son of God incarnate; here is the eternal life in the flesh. Look at the world sneering at Him, how they picked up stones to cast at Him, how they shouted, “Crucify Him, away with Him!” The world crucified the very Son of God who had come to save it! “Marvel not, my friends, if the world hate you.” The world does not hate you because you are hateful people; the case of Cain and Abel proves that. Cain did not hate his brother because there was something hateful about him. There was nothing hateful in Abel, but Cain hated him in spite of that.

Neither does the world hate us because we are good. Let us be quite clear about that. The world does not hate good people; the world only hates Christian people. That is the subtle, vital distinction. If you are just a good person, the world, far from hating you, will admire you; it will cheer you. And what is true of the individual is true of the whole Church. The world, we are told, hates Christians, not because they are hateful, not because they are good, not because they do good, but specifically because they are Christians, because they are of God, because they have Christ within them.

A Thought to Ponder
The world does not hate good people; the world only hates Christian people.

From Children of God, pp. 101-102.





Today’s devo is taken from Walking with God Day by Day © 2003 by Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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Walking with God Archive

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