Passion Sunday
There is a surprising freedom that comes with being hated. I don't mean to say that being hated is a good thing but ...
Suppose I go to meet some friends and Alice, whom I don't know particularly well, is there and it becomes obvious from the moment I walk in that she does not like me. We've met before and have gotten along just fine. This time, she is clearly displeased with something about me.
How do I respond? Well, I know from past experience that I will try to make things right. I may even get a little frantic about it. I want to know what she thinks I have done and I want to convince her, show her that she should not hold this thing against me or, if I really have done something shameful, I want to make it right again somehow.
But suppose she has no interest in reaching any accommodation with me. She has decided that I am irredeemable and she hates me. Well, now I don't need to reach any accommodation either. Her very inflexibility has set me free. I can even embrace the thing that caused the tension more freely than before. If she is upset, for example, because she has discovered I am friends with someone she disapproves of—and someone I was maybe a little ashamed of being friends with myself—I can now embrace that friendship more freely because the price for my shame has been paid.
Christ paid the price for my shame. If the world refuses to accept Him, doesn't that just make me free of it?
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