Consider Him by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 14, 1902

“Consider Him”

By L. A. S.

The Word of God exhorts us to “consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself,” lest we be weary and faint in our minds. Heb. 12: 3. It is thus that we are to run with patience the race set before us in the Christian life.

We think it is a hard thing to be misunderstood by others,—to have our good intentions misinterpreted, our motives misjudged. But consider how God and his Son have been and are to-day misunderstood by the beings created in their image. The Father, who so loved the world that he gave to it his only begotten Son, and Jesus Christ, the Son, who so loved mankind that he consented to make in their behalf the amazing sacrifice consummated on Calvary, have been continually misjudged by those upon whom their infinite love has been bestowed. God has been represented to the world as a tyrannical being, a stern judge sitting on the throne of dominion in the heavens, watching for every shortcoming of the sinner, to lay up an account against him; a being whose chief aim is to see that strict justice is meted out to the transgressor, and whose wrath must be propitiated by the shedding of innocent blood. He who was in every way entitled to the love of his human children, and who more than an earthly parent longs for their affection, has been portrayed

as an all-powerful monster, to be thought of and considered only with emotions of fear, coupled with a desire to be as far removed as possible from his notice.

Jesus Christ, his Son, came unto his own in the world, and his own received him not. He was wounded in the house of his friends. He was despised and rejected. He was betrayed by one of his disciples, and put to death by his own people as a malefactor. Such “contradiction of sinners” has never fallen to the lot of any of his followers.

If we are misjudged for right doing, we are made partakers of the sufferings of Christ, which to the Christian is an occasion of rejoicing. We enter into fellowship with him; for fellowship with Christ is “the fellowship of his sufferings.” Without partaking of these there is no fellowship.

Jesus Christ endured all this “for the joy that was set before him.” The same joy is set before us, and with the eye of faith we may look beyond the grievances of the present hour, and be strengthened to go forward, as he did, to the end of the race. We can afford to be misjudged even by those closest to us, if we make that use of the trial which will bring us into closer fellowship with God.

L. A. S.