Enduring Grief When You Suffer Wrongfully

Enduring Grief When You Suffer Wrongfully

A common expression in the world is, that you cannot stand this or that, that you cannot accept all kinds of things, or that you cannot put up with all kinds of things.

This is the very crux of the matter, and this is where people go wrong. This is the reason for so much sin and so much trouble everywhere.

Yet this matter of enduring is commendable [finds grace] before God. 1 Pet. 2:19-20. And to this we have been called, because these are Christ’s steps! V. 21.

In verse 19 it says, “Because of conscience toward God.” People usually get a bad conscience when they steal something. Yet having a bad conscience for not enduring gross unrighteousness is far from commonplace! I cannot remember having heard anything like that!

The conscience is the light we have. In spite of all enlightenment, there must be an extreme lack of true, personal light. Here the conscience is in need of a powerful push, which will significantly increase peaceableness and the grace that each person finds with God. We could even find use for the word “conscience revival.”

In this light, Paul’s statement that he always strove to have a conscience without offense [undamaged] toward God and men, is of particular significance. We suffer from a damaged conscience when we do not submit to our difficult and unreasonable superiors in all fear, when we do not endure in suffering unrighteousness, when we do not patiently accept and endure bad treatment for the good we have done, when we do not entrust the judgment and retribution to Him who judges righteously!!!

What can be the reason for not having a bad conscience in these things? The reason is that people have not paused at these words in Peter’s epistle. They have not read sufficiently in the Scriptures, and they have not meditated sufficiently on what they have read. Their hearts have been too hard to be willing to receive this light so that they, because of conscience toward God, could endure the grief that is brought about by all this difficulty and unrighteousness.

Doing what is right is one half of Christianity. Suffering injustice patiently and meekly, with longsuffering, is the other part.

If I take away half of Christianity, then all of Christianity has thereby disappeared.

May it never disappear as far as you are concerned, dear brother and sister!