What To Do When Facing Adversity

What To Do When Facing Adversity

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

13 But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I BELIEVED, THEREFORE I SPOKE,” we also believe, therefore we also speak, 14 knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. 15 For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. 16 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. 17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

In the epistle 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 13, through the end of the chapter, St. Paul is telling us about the adversities that he had to suffer. People stoned him. He had to escape in a “life boat” over the wall of the city, and he had to endure other physical adversities. It was these adversities and more that landed him in Rome to meet his death, and it was not time for him. In his day, was not exactly the fun place to be. My guess is that he went through other adversities that never made it into his letters or into the book of Acts.

That being said, once he became the voice of Jesus on earth, he knew he had to complete the mission no matter what adversity was going to be before him. After he established several churches like this one in Corinth, a new adversity had arisen. The Roman Empire outlawed Christianity because it claimed that it had nothing to do with Judaism. There were two religions allowed in the Roman empire. The first one was the one that was accepted by the emperor. The second one was Judaism. Or maybe I should say the Romans tolerated Judaism. But the creation of a new religion inside the Roman Empire was going to receive persecution. In fact, for the first 300 years of Christianity, persecutors targeted those who believed in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Savior. If you became a believer in Christ, then adversity was something that you dealt with daily.

That’s the backdrop of this section of the letter. The documentation shows that many followers who faced adversity caused by the Roman government left the faith. In the Near East, changing your religion was a big deal. Of course, today that’s not a problem and nobody really cares about it, but in St. Paul’s day it was a big deal. If you lived in a village or small city, almost everybody was a kissing cousin. So if a person followed Jesus Christ and became a Christian you might have had the entire village attempting to come to what they thought was your rescue and bring you back into the fold of the religion of the town, which of course was the Roman religion or Judaism.

Being a Christian in those first 300 years was not a simple task. We should never forget how much adversity our earliest brothers and sisters went through to bring us the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think too many people just either don’t know about this or have chosen just to ignore it. Bloodshed formed the foundation of Christianity for our earliest brothers and sisters. Christians did not cause the bleeding, the Romans did. Actually, in certain parts of the world, people are so strongly opposed to Christianity that they could kill missionaries or even believers in those countries.

St. Paul was telling the people of the church back then and now that there may be adversities because you believe in Jesus Christ. In his day, that adversity ended up being death, and not in a beautiful way. Today, in the United States, the adversity is not as significant, and you may not be put to death, but friends and even relatives may socially isolate you.

I was a non-practicing Jew until I was 35 years old, when I came to know Jesus and understood him as Lord and Savior. To me, it was a choice, and no one should’ve cared about it but me. However, once the family found out, I got funny looks, and I didn’t see them as much as I used to. Then, when I was called by the Lord Jesus to go into ordained ministry and started my seminary career, there were several friends of my lovely bride and me who decided they did not want to know from us anymore. That doesn’t sound like a major adversity at first and I’m sure it doesn’t compare to being killed for knowing Jesus. However, being shunned from a community can feel like that.