In recent months a series of
various commercials have been aired featuring lawyer representatives discussing
the merits of their businesses. Each of them focused on a particular word:
Deserve. If you use this law firm, you will get what you deserve. Generally the
commercials were describing personal injury cases. They promised these lawyers
would give their clients what they deserve.
What do these people deserve
who have been injured on the job, on the highway, or just simply on the way
through life? The court settlements about which we all hear are financial and
in the millions of dollars. Someone is declared negligent and has to pay a huge
sum of money because a court has decided the injury could have been avoided if
proper care had been shown. No one chose to have the accident. No one wanted to
have an accident. Everyone regrets that it happened, but the injured person
deserves to have a huge cash settlement anyway.
When do we decide we ought to
get what we deserve? Usually we only want what we deserve when we will benefit.
We rarely want what we deserve when we were the ones in the wrong. The last
thing we want to have happen is get what we deserve when we deserve to suffer a
little pain. I don’t want what I deserve when a traffic officer pulls me over
for doing ten miles per hour over the posted speed limit. I don’t want what I
deserve when I sit on the couch and unconsciously eat an entire half gallon of
ice cream.
When it comes to our
relationship with God, we never want what we deserve when it comes to his
judgment of our sin-filled lives. The Apostle Paul tells us about our
unrighteous condition before God.
Rom 3:23 “everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving
presence.”
Such a condition does not
leave us in a good position before a holy and righteous God who will have the
final word on our eternal destiny. If we got what we deserved based upon the
fact God cannot and will not tolerate sin in his presence, we would have no
hope.
Thankfully we serve a
merciful God who has decided to spare us.
Rom 5:8 “But God has shown us how much he loves us---it was while we
were still sinners that Christ died for us!
Rom 10:9 “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God
raised him from death, you will be saved.”
We don’t get what we deserve
in our relationship with God and our destiny with eternity because God sent his
Son Jesus Christ to die for us.
Do we deserve to be
persecuted as Christians? If you are a committed Christian living in a non
Christian world, you do. Our Lord and Savior was condemned by the religious and
civil authorities of his day. Because he refused to acknowledge their authority
to determine man’s relationship with God, he was killed as a criminal against
the state. He told his followers they should expect nothing less.
As long as followers of
Christ represent a moral code that threatens the power of civil and other
religious authorities, they will be persecuted. As long as Christians follow an
authority beyond this world that threatens the authorities of this world, they
will be persecuted. As long as Christians refuse to compromise with the
patterns of this world, they can expect and even deserve to be persecuted by a
world that refuses to see its own sinful condition.
