If…Then

If…Then

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord.  If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

John 15:20

Christ is logical and factual as He presents truth to us.  As He was preparing His disciples for the trials that lay ahead for them, He set forth the simple truth in a most logical manner.  He says, ‘If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.’  This is an ‘if/then’ statement.  If the basic premise is true, then the consequence logically follows and is true as well.  It may not be comfortable for us to contemplate or to face, but that does not change the fact.  As his own execution drew near, the Apostle Paul wrote that all that ‘all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’  This persecution will come from the same sources from which it has always come.  Christ died at the hands of the secular authority, egged on by the ardently religious.  The fanatical religionists opposed Christ during His life and ministry.  Those who had turned religion into a business engineered His mockery of a trial, and delivered Him over to the secular arm of government.  The secular arm then carried out His execution.  If it was so of Christ and we are His, then, according to Him, it will be so for us.  If we understand this, then we will be better prepared to face it. As we have looked to Christ to bear us up in all other circumstances, so we will look to Him to bear us up in that hour.

Our Wise and Holy God,
we rejoice that You have put us in Christ,
and that we are His forever.
We praise You that we receive the same treatment that He has received,
because of our association of Him.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning