Seeing your life through the eyes of Jesus!

John 15:18-21

18"If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me. 19 If you lived on the world's terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God's terms and no longer on the world's terms, the world is going to hate you. 20"When that happens, remember this: Servants don't get better treatment than their masters. If they beat on me, they will certainly beat on you. If they did what I told them, they will do what you tell them. 21"They are going to do all these things to you because of the way they treated me, because they don't know the One who sent me.

Food for thought!

Like Christ like Christians! This affirmation is consoling because it means that Jesus identifies himself with us; what befell to him befalls to us; his is our destiny; ours is his destiny. It means that Jesus continues to live, to love, to suffer in his Christians, your suffering is Jesus' suffering; your joy is his joy; your concern is his concern.

This is what Jesus told Saul, when this man was once persecuting Christians: Acts 9:3-6

Saul (Paul) set off. When he got to the outskirts of Damascus, he was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. 4 As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" He said,"Who are you, Master?""I am Jesus, the One you're hunting down."

What Jesus told Saul (or Paul) that day, and Paul did not know yet, was that persecuting Christians is tantamount to persecuting Christ himself.

«Servants don't get better treatment than their masters. If they beat on me, they will certainly beat on you.» This means that we can and should look at our lives through the eyes of Jesus. And when we do this, we see that all that happened to Jesus is by and large happening to us. Christ continues to live in this world in you and me. So let us face life and its challenges in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Jesus warned us further that the world (society) will hate us. Why all this hatred? Well, we know from experience that people will always treat anybody that is different with suspicion, and sometimes with hate-rage. Anyone who is different, who wears different clothes, who has different ideas, who lives a different life, is automatically suspect. He may be regarded as an eccentric or a madman or a danger to others. This is what they did with Jesus. 

The world acutely dislikes people whose lives are a condemnation of it. It is in fact dangerous to be good. It is dangerous to practise a higher standard of living than the standard of the rest of the people. To put it at its widest, the world always suspects nonconformity. It likes a pattern; it likes to be able to label a person and to put him in a pigeon-hole. Anyone who does not conform to the pattern will certainly meet trouble. It is even said that if a hen with different markings is put among hens that are all alike, the others will peck her to death.

The basic demand on every Christian is to have the courage to be different. To be different will be dangerous, but no wo/man can be a Christian unless s/he accepts that risk, for there must be a difference between the wo/man of the world and the wo/man of Christ. If there is no difference between you and non believers or non-Christians, then you have not even started being a Christian.