Understand Persecution? – Romans 12v14 Devotion

real persecution?

Today we continue our series on Romans 12 with verse 14. We are looking at the following verse:

 

Rom 12:14  Bless those who persecute you; bless, and do not curse.

 

The image I have used from the Simpsons to illustrate the point which I intend to make may seem a little crude to a few of you, but I just had a feeling when researching into today’s verse that very few of us actually understand persecution. Persecution is not just someone mocking us, scoffing at us, sidelining our views in society, although ultimately these things can be part of persecution in a larger scale. Rather, persecution is the systematic mistreatment of a person/persons. This could involve, arrest, imprisonment, beating, torture or in extreme cases execution. And yes, this still happens, but fortunately not to us. So, how then, do we understand persecution in our contexts? My initial response to my own question would be that we do not fully. However, we must attempt to understand this concept as comprehensively as we can. Therefore, we must look forwards, backwards as well as examining our present circumstances in order to gain an answer.

 

Here are the following three parts I feel would help us understand persecution and this verse:

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Romans 12v11 – our call to be zealous servers.

Romans twelve (specifically 12:11 today) is one of the few chapters in the bible which deals extensively with the attitudes and characteristics of our Christian life. The idea behind this, and one which I personally strongly adhere to, is that these should be carefully outworked by us in our lives rather than just ‘believed’. Today we will deal with the only one verse in chapter 12 and if you missed the first part on “Worship, Loving and Devotion” then you can check it out here. There will be more to come. Please feel free to share with me what you think on these verses.

Rom 12:11 Don’t be lazy in showing your devotion. Use your energy to serve the Lord.

The Apostle Paul writes so many times about “Zeal” throughout his many letters, and as the Christian Church (I refer to this without denomination, of course!!) it is important that we begin to take heed of these words. He has spoken about the dangers of Zeal previously, in that we must be careful that our zealousness is for good (Gal 4:18) and that also we must avoid zealous Hypocrites, i.e people who looks only for others to enlarge their own ranks and nor the ranks of Christ. It is in this that this very in the book of Romans tells us its true purpose. Therefore zeal should only be used with the sole perspective of serving Christ the Lord.

Check out part 1, part 2 and part 3 of this study here, and check back for completion of the series.

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