Despised and Rejected

“Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  He grew up before him like a tender shoot,  and like a root out of dry ground.
 He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
 nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by mankind,
 a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
 Like one from whom people hide their faces
 he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
 yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions,  he was crushed for our iniquities;
 the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
 and  by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way;
 and the Lord has laid on him
 the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:1-6 NIV)

Over the years, I have had my share of encounters with people who despised Jesus. There was the time as a college freshman in a Psychology 101 class that my professor mocked Jesus and told us that anyone believing in the resurrection was a fool. There was also the time in my senior year when a professor overseeing placement of social work interns threatened to not place me because of her concerns regarding how my Christian faith would influence my interaction with clients. Under no circumstances, she said, was I to talk about my faith in Jesus. And not many years ago, I reported a student to the Dean’s office who wrote me a vitriolic email mocking the Christian faith and me as a believer, after he had received information about our campus ministry, which he had requested.

While Jesus is often hailed as a great teacher, many, particularly among university professors, administrators, and students, have long despised him. There is no doubt that some of this hatred is the result of the ways of the institutional church, which, to them, represents Jesus.  They see hypocrisy, bigotry, and greed, and vent their anger toward the one they see as a symbol for it.  

Yet, this isn’t the main reason Jesus is so despised.  He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.  His rule is supreme and He claims absolute authority.  It is this that rubs people the wrong way.  In the West, people naturally resist authority.  We don’t like people in our business.  In the East, there are other gods or prophets, whose followers resent the claims of Jesus.  There are also those who believe there is no God, and so heap ridicule on anyone claiming to be God or knowing God.  

The prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled 2000 years ago, but it still rings true for today.  Jesus is still despised and rejected by men and women. Many of those who faithfully follow Him are subjected to the same treatment as their Lord.  They are ridiculed, mistreated, jailed, and even put to death because they make the great confession: Jesus is Lord.

Today, understand that claiming Jesus is Lord opens you up to ridicule and rejection.  But that is the path of a Jesus-follower, the same path the Lord took long ago.  But know that path leads to an eternity in His wonderful presence, enjoying the rewards of a life lived faithfully for Him.

© Jim Musser 2018