Ridicule and rebuke will come to us for Christ's sake. We will be sneered at, misrepresented, and avoided. You will have to face a perpetual jeering in the workplace, the cold shoulder, innuendoes, avoidances of your company, snide remarks, dark hints, enduring the world's hiss and whispers. Only grace can enable us to take up the cross of difficulty. Many are afraid to be thought of as one of those vulgar, backward people who trust and follow Jesus. Human nature doesn't want to lose the respect of the ungodly world. Christians must expect to bear the opposition, persecution and ridicule of worldly men; it has always been so, and it always will be so. When you turn away from the world, and accuse them of being wrong and lost, the world will resent you for it. Your motives will be misrepresented by people who ought to support you.
If you publicly and decidedly come out on the Lord's side and become a follower of the Crucified, you will suffer shame and be shunned in respectable society. Nothing may actually be said to you, but there will be a very clear indication that your company is not preferred. They will begin to look down upon you with disdain. Your witnessing for Christ may be met with profanity and threats. The world hates to be told frankly and plainly that they are sinners deserving hell, and that they in need of the Blood Atonement of Jesus Christ. The simple utterance of the Gospel stirs up the ungodly, and they will have nothing further to do with you. You will lose face with the world as you follow in Savior's footsteps. *Matthew 16:24-25* The worldling will attack you with harmful abuse and lying detraction and slander. Your beliefs will be misrepresented, and your words will be twisted. All these things are needful so we may know more of the Lord Jesus, and become more like Him.
The world cannot tolerate a thoroughly earnest Christian who endeavors to propagate his faith and disseminate the Gospel, who will not leave sinners to perish, who bothers lost souls, and steadily witnesses for the Truth. Many will despise you if you seek to spread the good news of Christ crucified for sinners. Christ was despised of men here on earth, and now He is still despised in us. Do not expect the world to understand you, for it did not understand your Savior. Your actions and words will be misrepresented, and your motives will be ridiculed. *John 15:19* If you belonged to this world, its dogs would not growl and bark at you. The religious hypocrite cannot live without the world's smile, approval and fellowship. Mixing in loose company, lewd things, anything that has to do with the gratification of vile passions of the carnal nature - these things must be given up, come out from it, give it all up, cast it behind you. Shun vice, seek virtue. Human nature loves ease of body, indulgence of tastes, the joy of being seen and admired, being significant, and grasping at power and position. This world has no use for the real Jesus Christ of the Bible. When you live for Jesus Christ, you will be wronged, you will lose the friendship of some you esteemed. You will have to sacrifice some connections and give up some standing or position which you once coveted.
After we are born again, sin begins to vex and plague us. Satan begins to tempt and inject blasphemous thoughts, and urges us to doubt the existence of God and His faithfulness, goodness and mercy. Worldly friends begin to annoy and tempt you to continue to run with them. Old companions give you the cold shoulder, because they begin to see something strange and different about you that doesn't suit their tastes. They will ridicule you and say your Christian conduct is fanaticism, hypocrisy and pride. The world jests at true virtue and jeers at sincere piety. There are some parents that have no liking for the things of God and their children which are converted will have a hard time of it. Some Christians are cut out of their family's wills and ostracized. Be a follower of Christ, give up all that you are and all you have, to be forever His. Have faith in God. The moment you clear come out for Jesus Christ, the world will blacklist you from that day on.
The world thinks a Christian is a worthless and strange person. Your old companions will laugh at you; they think their sinful activity will last forever, and that their sin will go unpunished. But mark it down, God will get the last laugh. *Psalm 2:4; Psalm 37:13; Proverbs 1:26* Leave your old, worldly associations behind, and come over to the Lord's side. The world is accustomed to vent their sharpest jokes upon the Bible, Christ, and Christians. A disciple of Christ is a learner, he sits at Jesus' feet and learns of Him in the Scriptures. The disciple is also a follower of Christ who desires to be like Jesus in thought, word, and deed. A disciple is a man who is willing to bear reproach, to be scoffed at, to be ridiculed, and taunted for righteousness' sake. A disciple is one who is willing rather that men sneer at him as a hypocrite, and braves the cold shoulder of the company he would otherwise have enjoyed, and all because he must and will follow the mind of Christ and the direction and leading of God's Spirit. A disciple seeks God's smile, not man's.
The world dismisses the Gospel with a sneer. Get ready, when you bring up Jesus Christ, it is like turning a light on in a dark room. The light of the Gospel upsets men who are enjoying the darkness of their sin. Take courage, take up your cross daily, and follow Christ. When you publicly confess Jesus Christ, the world will turn their back on you, and you will turn your back on the world, and live nearer to Jesus. The friendship of the world is enmity to God. Some in your workshop may meet you with loud laughter and bitter scorn. A Christian is a marked man. The moment a man becomes a Christian, the world points him out in the workshop; they jeer at him morning to night. They swear as much as they like, use filthy talk, and blaspheme God's name, till you feel sick at the language you hear, but if a fellow workman chooses to live clean, and behave himself decently, then he is the laughter of the workshop. Christians often keep their faith a secret, in order to escape a few sneers and win the world's vain smiles. Thin-skinned professors faint when society gives them the cold shoulder.
Your past friends may abhor you, people may frown at you, and falsely accuse you, and spread rumors about you. The world laughs and sneers at the Gospel as an absurdity. Worldly men will bring against you false and malicious statements designed to injure your reputation and testimony. Rejoice in the fact that you are ridiculed and reviled for Christ's name. The world will try to magnify and hold up your imperfections to ridicule you. About the best thing that happens to a Christian is when worldlings cut his acquaintance. The world does a good thing for the child of God when it casts him out. Outside of the world's house is the safest place for the Christian. We must go forth unto Christ without the camp, bearing His reproach. Sins must be given up, evil practices and habits must be forsaken, and we must endeavor to follow the pattern of the Savior's holiness and humility.
The world's shafts, stabs and slanders will always come at the witnessing Christian. Jesus asks us to patiently endure the scoff and hiss of the world, the laughter and taunts of the infidel, and the scorn and reviling of the atheist. The world's laughter at the Bible cannot alter the divine absolute truth of the Scriptures, and their jests cannot avert their inevitable doom in the Lake of Fire. A smiling world is worse than a frowning one. Care little for the world's praise or flattery. The early Christians were treated as the offscouring of the world, and the very scum of mankind. Separations take place between close friends because of Christ. A Christian man's foes are often them of his own household. You will be neglected by your old friends, threatened by your parents, and forsaken by who once counted you to be good. Christianity requires dying to self, and self doesn't just lie down and die.
Reproach for Christ's sake is the greatest honor that can possibly happen to a Christian. Disgrace for Jesus shall be your honor, and scorn and shame for the Gospel's sake shall be your highest glory, write them not down for loss, but for gain. We must be willing to suffer for Jesus' sake earthly loss, scoffing, the cold shoulder, cutting jests, sarcasm and sneers. Worldly gain, comfort, and honor will be lost if you are a soul-dier of the Cross. The genuine Christian will often be the object of hatred to those who loved him before. You are everybody when you think the world's way, but you will be a nobody in the world's eyes, when you begin to think and live Jesus' way. As long as you will buy them a drink, you are cool, but as soon as you have done with their ways, they will have nothing for you but curses and kicks. You will be despised and shunned. Your old friends will become your foes and forsake you. They will begin to hate you more than they loved you before. When you joined in their partying and drinking you were a fine fellow, but now they rate you as a fool and slander your character. Their dislike of you is a badge of your discipleship to Jesus. Some folks will point the finger of scorn at you on the street, they will point you out in order to try and cut you out in order to try and get you to forsake your walk with Christ. The world does all of this because a Christians clean testimony and sincere witness condemns and convicts and makes them very uneasy in their sinful and doomed state.
Your cross may be to forsake an evil occupation, a loss of income, to break off with worldly companions, or to leave some sinful habit. Taking up your cross is sometimes facing your family, friends and old companions with the Gospel. Be prepared - you may suffer loss of friendships. If you have to lose anything, in any way, for Christ's sake, in order to be His conscientious disciple, that is your cross. To give up some pleasure or habit which is not pleasing to the Lord is taking up your cross. For some their cross is loneliness, slander, persecution, disgrace, criticism, insults, scorn, sneers, frowns, losses, opposition, grinding poverty, or a sickly body prone to pain. A cross could be an ungodly spouse or an unthankful child. There is a skeleton in every household, and a crook in every lot.
Taking up our cross is mortifying the deeds of the body through the Spirit, putting off the old man, making no provision for the flesh, abstaining from the appearance of evil, and seeking to walk in the Spirit, and not to grieve Him. People will cut your acquaintance, and worldlings will scowl at you for bringing up Jesus, and sin, and Hell around them. Taking up our cross is a humble acquiescing to God's will, a yielding to our lot in life, and a patient willingness and submission to divine Providence. Taking up our cross is being satisfied with God and finding our significance in surrendering to Him in our daily lives.
