June 4, 2025
Cost of Discipleship - Part 3
John 16:1-2
06/04/2025
1 I have said all these things to you to keep you
from falling away.
2 They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed,
the hour is coming when whoever kills you will
think he is offering service to God. (ESV)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the twentieth century Lutheran
theologian who was executed for his opposition to the German
government during World War II, once wrote, ``When Christ calls a
man, he bids him come and die.''[1] Because the Christian witness
concerning salvation by God's grace and love alone for the sake
of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone does not
conform to the world's teaching, Christians can expect to be
prosecuted for their faith.
Jesus told His disciples:
I have said all these things to you to keep you from
falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues.
Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will
think he is offering service to God.
If you are looking for acceptance in this world, if you are
looking for popularity, being a confessing Christian is not the
way to win worldly friends. If you are looking for the comfort
of knowing your sins are forgiven, that you can face the
realities of pain, suffering, and death knowing that you have the
hope of eternal life for the sake of Christ, the rejection of
this world is easier to take.
You have the comfort of the Gospel, that you have died to
sin through the work of the Holy Spirit, and have risen to new
life in Christ Jesus. You see beyond the immediate suffering in
this world to glimpse the glory of the mansions of God, of being
with the Father for all of eternity. The Holy Spirit gives you
the comfort of salvation by grace through faith for the sake of
Christ.
May our Lord strengthen your faith, that when you suffer in
this world you have the assurance of life everlasting. Amen.