Paul speaks of the people who belong to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ (1:1). Have you thought much about belonging to God? In Jesus Christ, we are people who belong to God. We no longer belong to anyone, to anything else: the world or a political party, be it red or blue. We now bear God’s name. Remember the beginning of that old hymn, “Precious Name”? “Take the name of Jesus with you.” Let that name be evident on us, in us.

To have that name with us, upon us, in us, is to have that grace and peace that Paul wishes for those who belong to God (1:2). Grace. Peace. How so many lack these! No peace. They are not at peace, and they don’t know how to get the peace for which they so deeply yearn. Oh, they’ve tried one way and another, one person and another, one substance or another, and it hasn’t gotten them where they want to get. They’ve heard about Jesus, and they smirk or shrug. They have no peace. They have blessing from God. Everybody is blessed by God, if you think it’s a blessing to exist, to have food, clothing, to have some health, work, to be able to use your body, to breathe: these are all blessings. Every one of these blessings comes from God alone. People take all this for granted, and give no praise to the Giver, so they have no grace because they have no relationship with God, nor do they want one. No grace, no peace.

Paul knows God is blessing those who belong to Him because Paul knows the love that the faithful have for one another is becoming greater and their faith is growing. Growing faith and greater love are sure signs.[1]

When does faith grow? When does love become greater? How does the body become stronger? When it is put under stress. When we exercise, when we use weights, for example, we damage our muscle fibers—intentionally! The body responds by making more muscle fibers, stronger fibers. I don’t know if we can make it a general law, but there is some truth in saying that nothing grows without challenge: challenge is the environment for growth.

The early days of the church were days of challenge; it’s hard for us to know what that was like. Much of what Paul writes is to encourage the churches as they faced great challenges, within as well as from outside. Paul writes trying to help the faithful make sense of what is happening. We don’t like suffering. We accept challenge, up to a point, but past that point the challenge becomes trial, becomes suffering, and we don’t much like that. We don’t understand why things are so difficult. We know hard things happen, but why do they have to happen to us? And why are they happening, anyway?

          One response Paul gives—you may like it or you may not care for it much, it may make sense to you or it may just leave you more confused—one response Paul gives is that the growth of faith and love in an environment of persecution and affliction is a sure sign of the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord is at work among the faithful to ensure that we shall by no means lose our reward. God is at work for us! Our perseverance now is preparation for the glory to come. This was true for Jesus. It is true for those who belong to Jesus.

On their missionary journey, Paul and his companion Barnabas tell the faithful that “We all have to experience many hardships before we enter the kingdom of God” (Ac 14:22). We’d rather not. To be an avowed follower of Jesus Christ, though, is to expect challenge. When challenge comes, we persevere—stumbling, groaning, and persevering—or we fall away. The world will keep pushing, pressing, demanding that we throw off our faith in Christ, that we adopt the faith of the world, faith in the world, faith in humanity, faith in progress, faith in the Party, faith in History. The world knows how to be persuasive. The world offers us so much, now, that so strongly draws us, whets all our appetites, and makes glittering promises of such soothing for all our hurts and fears. And we’ve, many times, tried the balms the world has offered, and found, each time, to our shame and guilt, that it was all lies, pretty masks for self-destruction.

Christians are persecuted for their faith today. North Korea is a terrible place to be alive, especially if you are a living Christian. Different organizations report from fifty to seventy thousand Christians in North Korean prisons. How bad is a North Korean prison? It’s increasingly harder for Christians in India, squeezed between Islamic extremists and Hindu fundamentalists.[2] It’s no easy thing to be a Christian in Iraq and Syria. Antioch, in Syria, was where believers were first called Christians (Ac 11:26)! A few years back, Open Doors USA reported that “More than 70 percent of Christians have fled Iraq since 2003, and more than 700,000 Christians have left Syria since the civil war began in 2011.”[3] Christianity, growing rapidly in Africa, is rapidly meeting persecution.

In 2014, the British newspaper The Independent featured a story claiming that Christians are the world’s most persecuted people. What do you think? We don’t hear a lot about persecution of Muslims, except here in the US, this hotbed of radical anti-Islam. We don’t hear much about persecution of Hindus or Buddhists. Not to say that doesn’t happen, but it does seem as if, globally, Christians may well be the most persecuted for their faith, with Jews coming a close second.

Under persecution, believers become “more secretive about their faith.”[4] That covers our own country, too. Oh, it’s still, so far, alright to be Christian, so long as you keep it to yourself, don’t stand up for your beliefs, especially when those who aim to shape society and culture in their image come rumbling by on their steamroller. By their definition, Christians can’t suffer in America, because it is only Christians—well, Christians of a certain sort, you know—who are the cause of suffering. Persecutors fit the persecution to the society they inhabit.

The consequence is the same: we are continually challenged to live according to what Jesus teaches us. Just try to live according to God’s Word, and see if living that way steers you clear of conflict with the world. To have faith in Christ is to be in conflict with the world!

Paul knew personally that the way for the faithful in this world was continued faith and perseverance. This perseverance is not passive. We don’t simply lie there, smiling weakly, while the world throws stones at us. The perseverance Paul commends is expectant, hopeful—growing in faith and having and giving greater love. The only way something can grow when it is under stress is if it is also at the same time receiving help, help greater than the force of the assault, greater than the damage being done, the hurt being inflicted. Grace, beloved. What is greater than the grace of God? What is stronger?

Paul suggests something that might well shock us, but he probably knows what he is talking about. Paul says God’s judgment is just (1:5). That is, this suffering that comes upon the faithful because of their faith comes from God. But our suffering comes from the world, surely? Yes, and it has been prepared by God, who allows those who hate Him to vent their hate upon us; God, who sets limits to how the world vents its hate of Him upon us. Why? Why, God? How is this good? How is this helpful? How is this grace?

Beloved, growth requires pressure. Growth is the response to challenge. Never exert your muscles and see what happens. Grass doesn’t grow just because it receives water and light, but also the better to shade and cool its roots, so that it can continue to live, continue to grow. Unchallenged faith and untested love don’t grow, don’t mature, don’t become resilient and strong. God sends the trials, God sends the grace, and we grow in faith and our love becomes stronger because the Spirit of God is with us, among us, in us, rebuilding us for life with God forever.

We hear about God’s judgment and quickly think of punishment, wrath: judgment upon the wicked. Paul does speak about this (1:8-9), and this is part of God’s judgment, but it isn’t all of God’s judgment. God’s judgment is what God deems best, knowing what God knows. We are all subject to God’s judgment: His arrangement of all things for the revelation of His glory. God will be glorified. He has invited us to join Him in this noble, wonderful, beautiful, holy project. He has enabled us to accept the invitation, because we belong to Him. We didn’t know that until He made it known to us. And once the world knows it, the world sets itself against us. This, also, is from God, because God will use the world’s resistance and rejection of Him to glorify Himself, and He will use us to glorify Himself through the resistance and rejection that comes upon us for His sake.

Paul says that our perseverance here is like a process through which we will become worthy of the kingdom (1:5). The suffering, adversity, and rejection we endure from those who hate God, who loathe us because we do not hate God with them—this is not the means by which we become worthy of the kingdom. Faith is the means; Christ is the means; grace is the means—the love of God is the means by which we are made worthy. The perseverance is the process by which we obtain the promised reward.

The world will not make the way smooth! We should never be surprised by disdain, suspicion, or misunderstanding when it gets out that we have faith in Jesus, that we are his followers. You already know this: try to talk with your co-workers, your neighbors, or even your facebook friends about Jesus for a week, daily. Try talking with fellow students and your teachers about Jesus, each day, for a week. Try with the person in line with you at the grocery store. We already know. Yet Jesus tells us to go and tell. What shall we do?

There is a very consistent note in what Paul writes about the things we must expect and endure in this life, whether because we are known to be Christians or because our world is a fallen world and fallen things happen. The consistent note is this: just as there is suffering, there is also consolation.[5] Just as there is challenge there is also the power of God.

We need the power of God: how we hunger, how we thirst for that power to sustain us, to comfort and console us, that hope, that love, that grace and peace. Where, how shall we obtain it; how shall it come to us? Beloved, each time we pray, each time we open the Bible and read with attention and devotion, each time we hear the Word proclaimed, God gives grace and peace: the power of God comes upon us. Is it what you expected, what you imagined? Each time we receive from this table this bread and this juice, this body broken for us, this blood shed for us, God gives grace and peace. As we receive with faith, the power of God comes upon us. Is it what you expected, what you imagined?

When you receive in faith, you glorify the name. We will receive glory as we glorify God’s name (1:12), as we make the wonder and beauty and power and love of God known, as we make much of God, among ourselves and out there where we are sure to face resistance because we belong to God. Take the name of Jesus with you; glorify the name of the Lord. How? By grace, by daily acts, simple acts, done in faith: by living God’s way, not the world’s way.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

               [1] About which Paul also spoke in his letter to the faithful in Colossae.

               [2] https://www.opendoorsusa.org/take-action/pray/persecution-of-christians-reaches-historic-levels-conditions-suggest-worst-is-yet-to-come/

               [3] See above.

               [4] See above.

               [5] See, for example, Rom 5:2-5, 8:18, 2 Tim 1:8; this message of consolation is also one of the main messages of 2 Corinthians.