By Keith R. Keyser
Identification with the Lord Jesus Christ in this sin-afflicted world is dangerous. Sinners gave Him a cross; therefore, His followers should expect similar treatment. From the beginning, varied persecution has assailed His church. No one knew this better than the believers in Smyrna, who were poor and persecuted by false religionists. Their security came from the immortal Son of God, whose resources stretch from age to age yet who knows what it is like to suffer in time and space. Together, Christ’s eternality and incarnation outfit Him for the sustenance of His beleaguered church.
Before and after the adversaries
This world’s persecutors—emperors, dictators, and religious zealots, among others—seem formidable for a time. Yet the Lord Jesus addresses Himself as “the First and the Last.” The church’s enemies are temporal; Christ is eternal. His power, wisdom, and glory exceed, precede, and outlast His opponents’. In the end, they will give an account to Him and fall before His judgment.
Triumphing over suffering
The Lord also describes Himself as the One “who became dead and lived.”5 Although He is eternal, He entered a timebound world as a perfect man. He then died the sacrificial death on the cross and rose again on the third day. His substitutionary death showed He was the prophesied “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Because He suffered to an incomparable degree, the Lord is perfectly suited to be an empathetic, faithful high priest, who can unfailingly console, comfort, and intercede for His afflicted people.8 But this is not the end of His credentials.
The Weymouth translation of the New Testament renders the second phrase in Revelation 2:8 as “returned to life again.” His resurrection gave Him victory over death and His spiritual and temporal enemies. Because of this triumph, believers “are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”9 As the Lord Jesus said, “Because I live, you will live also.”10
In the second century, Tertullian noted that Christians’ martyrdom led to others being converted; he described the martyrs’ blood as the church’s seed. A modern author, Derek Tidball, agrees: “The supreme strategy of Christians against all the powers of evil is not to spill their enemies’ blood but to point to their Savior’s, and by extension, to shed their own if called upon to do so.” Service and witness for God in this world involves laying down our lives—either daily or in martyrdom.
Glory for and with the Savior
Hudson Taylor knew the challenges of service in a fallen world: “The work of a true missionary is work indeed, often very monotonous, apparently not very successful, and carried on
through great and varied but unceasing difficulties.”
God’s love for the lost motivates believers today, as it did in all centuries, for sacrificial service on the mission field. The Lord’s command to “go into all the world” impels them to spend their lives preaching Christ. They endure suffering because they believe in a glorious future in heaven.
Like Paul, they assert: “We do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. . . . For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Keith Keyser is a commended worker based in Pennsylvania.
Originally published in Missions magazine, February 2023. For more content, sign up for a free subscription (US) to Missions at CMML.us/magazine/subscribe.
