Are You Sticking Up for Your Family?

When someone falsely discredits our loved ones, we should be quick to defend them. The same is true for our most important loved ones, the family of God.

The unsaved world is quick to criticize Christians as judgmental, hypocritical, or unloving. But the world's definitions of love, judgment, and hypocrisy are not God's definitions. 

We shouldn't be surprised by unjust criticism because our Lord was called demonic, crazy, and impure (Mark 3:20-35). In John 6 Jesus was criticized and abandoned by the crowds He'd just fed and by those who had previously identified as His disciples.

There are rare examples of unloving people who profess to be Christians, but they aren't the norm. With all of our flaws, the family of God is far more caring, humble, and unselfish than the unsaved world.

However, because the unsaved world is blinded by Satan's lies (2 Corinthians 4:4), people are more apt to criticize Christians than violent Muslim groups or atheistic communist governments.

I've lived all over the U.S. and in two European countries, and the majority of Bible-believing Christians I've met are good people. Not perfect, but far more loving than the non-Christians I've known. So when someone discredits our family, the family of God, let's set them straight.

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See The Remnant, the Unfaithful, and the Lost. Encourage yourself each morning with 8 Statements Christians Should Make Each Day.

The passages below help us understand why Christians should not be surprised by this bigotry.

John 7:5-7: “His own brothers did not believe in him. Therefore Jesus told them, ‘My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.’”

Matthew 10:22: “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”

John 15:18-22: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.”

2 Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

 

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