Guilt by association is a concept that says that we tend to hang with people who do the same things and enjoy the same things as us. It is an implication that has caused many people problems in life. Sometimes rightfully so, but many times people are wrongfully judged just because they know someone.
For the follower of Christ, our association with Jesus is more than an implication or inference. When we come to faith in Christ, we become a new creature. We are born again by the Holy Spirit who comes to live inside of us. We are joined in spirit with God the Father, through the work of Jesus.
Citizens of Heaven in a World That Resists
Being born again, as Jesus said we must be in John 3:5-8, results in us becoming citizens of heaven. We are no longer of the world, though we continue to live in the world. Jesus said that the world hates Him, so the world will hate us as well because we are now in Him. It is no wonder then that as the Holy Spirit works in our lives to cause us to reflect the character of Christ, the more the world will oppose us.
In Ephesians 6:12, Paul explains that we are engaged in a spiritual conflict. We are battling a spiritual hierarchy that is opposed to God and anyone who is committed to following Him. Before we came to Christ, we offered little to no concern for those spiritual forces. But Satan and those who follow him, both human and demonic, hate anything associated with our Creator and His Son, Jesus. That hatred manifests itself in everything from subtle resistance and ostracization to outright violence. We see the full range of these reactions to followers of Jesus around the globe today. It is not hard to find areas where coming to faith in Christ results in land being confiscated, businesses being closed, rejection by family members, and even being put to death just for making the decision to follow Christ.
Western culture, once deeply rooted in a Christian worldview, has steadily left behind that way of thinking. Western culture has abandoned its roots in favor of all kinds of philosophies and pagan celebrations. By embracing opposing worldviews, the cultures around us have become increasingly hostile toward those who embrace faith in Jesus. Where there used to be tolerance of faith in Christ, there is growing hostility to anything centered in Christ.
It is no wonder that in our day, it can be easy to feel like an outsider at work, in culture, and even within our families. The distinction is likely to become more pronounced as the day of Christ’s return gets closer. Understanding the life of a believer in Jesus in the first century can help us understand that this is nothing new for those who name Jesus as Lord and Savior.
A Long Line of Pilgrims and Sojourners
The idea that those who believe in our Creator are distinct from the culture around them is not new at all. The author of Hebrews pointed out in chapter eleven that the Old Testament characters such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah saw themselves as pilgrims and sojourners on earth. They longed for a country they never saw and never could see, in this life. In longing for a better country, one that could not be found here, they demonstrated that they were strangers on earth.
As Jesus prayed for His disciples the night He was arrested, He stated that they were not of the world just as He is not of the world (John 17:14-16). Because Jesus is who He is and lived life as a human on earth, the fallen world hated Him. The Jewish religious and political system feared His influence. Their hatred did not end with Jesus’ death. The hatred extended into the church era and spread as the message of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was shared throughout the Roman world and beyond.
When the term, “Christian” was first used of the believers in Antioch (Acts 11:26), it was used as a derogatory or mocking term by non-believers. The mocking use of the term continued into the second century when believers began to adopt the term with honor. In Western culture today, there are many characteristics and ideas around the term that have nothing to do with a biblical, “Christian” worldview.
Followers of Christ being viewed as outcasts by society is due to the genuine transformation of our hearts and minds through the inner working of God’s Spirit. Therefore, it makes sense that a culture in rebellion against the Creator is not going to warmly embrace those who through faith in Christ have been reborn into relationship with Him.
The Culture’s Idols and the Enemy’s Strategy
Roman culture was not unlike our modern, Western culture. While we do not have temples for idols or the demand for emperor worship, which was common in the first century, we do have our idols. Money, prosperity, success, pleasure, comfort, excess, and prioritizing self-promotion, can all be idols in American, Western culture.
Satan plays a role in the ostracization of believers in society. He preys on those who rebel against God’s design and shut their ears to His truth. Without the inner working of God’s Spirit in their lives, they are easy marks for Satan’s influence. He gleefully leads individuals, political systems, and whole cultures to hostility to everything that aligns itself with God’s truth. He is hard at work to frustrate the lives of those who believe in Jesus. He wants to silence the message and keep the world in darkness.
This quote from page 41 in The Stranger’s Conflict sums up Satan’s influence and purpose.
“Satan deceived the first man and the first woman into disobeying God through lying and appealing to human vulnerabilities. He is working to do the same in our lives today. Satan has been deceiving humans for a long time, and he is incredibly good at subtly and persistently working to draw us away from our designed place in relationship with our Creator. He will use the culture around us and our own pride and insecurities against us. He will fabricate evidence, and he will threaten us with ridicule and ostracization. He can appear as an angel of light, meaning he can appear to be good, but his intent is always, not sometimes, but always, malicious. He hates all humanity, every individual. And he celebrates the corruption of our personal lives, our politics, our media, and everything around us. His sole purpose is to deceive and decimate humanity as much as he can. In his twisted sense of reality, he is showing God that he, Satan, is superior. To him, human beings are nothing more than pawns to be used and abused for his perverse aggrandizement.”
Truly, we do not fight against the flesh and blood of other humans. Our fight is a spiritual one as we engage those fallen beings who oppose the work of Christ in and through our lives (see Ephesians 6:12).
Perseverance With Eternal Reward
Let us not succumb to the idea that all this resistance makes sharing our faith a futile effort. In the seven letters to churches in Asia Minor in Revelation chapters 2-3, Jesus ended each letter with a phrase that included the idea that those individuals who persevere to the end will receive a reward.
So if you are feeling out of place at any point of your life because of your faith in Jesus, take heart. You are not alone. We all feel that at times. We may even feel that all the time in certain areas of our lives such as at work or in our families. But we have hope of eternal life that those who reject God’s truth and reject us because of our faith do not have. God’s promises are true, and He is faithful to fulfill each of them in His time and His way.
I will close this post with two scriptures that give us hope of the eternal value of our perseverance and enduring earthly rejection. In 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 CSB, Paul writes, “For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
The author of Hebrews writes, “So don’t throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you need endurance, so that after you have done God’s will, you may receive what was promised,” Hebrews 10:35-36 CSB. The reward of an eternity with God is what makes the trials of this life well worth the temporary pain.
This post is adapted from themes I dive into in my book, The Stranger’s Conflict. If you want to go deeper into what it means to persevere as a stranger in today’s world, click here to grab your copy today.