All men will hate you because of me,
but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. Matthew 10:22
There is a plain and evident fact in
genuine Christianity that is often overlooked by eager evangelists bent on
getting results: that to accept Christ it is necessary that we reject whatever
is contrary to Him!
Let
us not be shocked by the suggestion that there are disadvantages to the life in
Christ. Everyone who has lived for Christ in a Christless world has suffered
some losses and endured some pains that he could have avoided by the simple
expedient of laying down his cross.
The
contemporary moral climate does not favor a faith as tough and fibrous as that
taught by our Lord and His apostles. The delicate, brittle saints being
produced in our religious hothouses today are hardly to be compared with the
committed, expendable believers who once gave their witness among men. And the
fault lies with our leaders. They are too timid to tell the people all the
truth. They are now asking men to give to God that which costs them nothing!
When
will Christians learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin?
that to accept Christ it is necessary to reject self? that to follow the good
way we must flee from evil? that a friend of the world is an enemy of God? that
God allows no twilight zone between two altogethers where the fearful and the
doubting may take refuge at once from hell to come and the rigors of present
discipline?
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