Oct 12
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Persecution or repentance? The choice is yours!
ChristianGovernance eletter – October 2, 2012
Many times I have heard it said that persecution can be very important for building the Church. “The Church is built on the blood of the martyrs,” people will say. Sometimes I think this view is held as an attempt to find something good in the growing hostility North American Christians are facing in our society. Hopefully God will use this persecution and misery to strengthen the Church and to fuel evangelism, people will say. I used to say this too.
But it’s not true. Where does it teach this in Scripture.
Scripture teaches that an environment of social peace is optimum for spreading the Gospel.
Look at Acts 9:31, commentary on a period of time following persecution and the conversion of the apostle Paul: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.”
And note the kind of prayer that the apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to pray in 1 Timothy 2:1-4, and the rationale for this directive:
“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
The reason given for why we are to pray for those in authority is that we might lead peaceful and quiet lives – Why? So we can watch TV and play golf all day? No! To facilitate the spread of the Gospel: because “God … desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
We should not desire persecution or be ambivalent about it because of a false notion that it will produce growth in God’s Church.
Persecution has cause the Church to spread geographically as Christians have fled to different places. Acts 8:1 reads: “And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” But such passages don’t teach that the Church grew because of this persecution.
But persecution purifies the Church, we are fond of saying. Does it? Persecution on the Church should be seen as God’s punishment or discipline on a backslidden Church. But the persecution is to produce repentance out of which flows the reformation and revival. The reformation and revival of the Church comes out of repentance, a return to our First Love, and renewed obedience to God’s law.
Nothing is to be gained by glamourizing, justifying or rationalizing persecution against Christ’s Church. If we lived perfect lives, we wouldn’t need discipline and God would be unjust in using it on us. God will bring good out of persecution, but persecution is a testimony to our sinfulness, to the backslidden condition of the Church.
In every way, and from every perspective, we should want less of it, not more. And the way to get less of it is to REPENT.
As 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “[if] my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”