“Better is open rebuke than hidden love.” (Proverbs 27:5, ESV)

It is natural to withdraw when hurt. I know I do sometimes. Rather than just addressing the other person openly and honestly, we can silently punish them by hiding our love. Its sin.

Yet how many of us imagine God does this very thing? We think that seasons when we are not sensitive to some sense of His love, that He in fact has withdrawn it. We all know that pain. We know the confusion and helplessness of it. But is a human invention, not a divine one.

Look at Israel’s history. God sent prophet after prophet to rebuke them openly about their sin. After long periods of unrepentance, He at times chastened them very severely. But we never read of His love waning. His chastening was always the rod of love itself – seeking to drive them away form their estrangement and back to Him. They plugged their ears – as we plug ours. But His Word never fails to faithfully both rebuke our sin, and sing of His glorious love.

Oh may we learn to love as He has loved us. Better to hear the rebukes, or to give them. Better to talk it all out – than to hide our love from one another, and be the silent judge, jury and executioner for other’s wounds against us. Let us love bravely and straightforwardly as He did. Not like cowardly infants who only seek a less overt way to hit back.

“From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” Matthew 16:21–23 (ESV)

This is all it takes – indeed it is the essence of what it means – to be God’s adversary: To be more concerned about ANYTHING than we are about God’s plan and purposes in this world.

This then bids us ask ourselves – Do we know what God’s agenda is? And secondly, are we about it?

One way to check ourselves, is to examine our prayer lives. Do they revolve around God helping us fulfill our agendas – or helping us fulfill His?

Remember too, this was Peter Jesus spoke to this way. Oh how He still loves, even when we prove to be His very adversaries for a time. What a God is this!

“The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all.” (Proverbs 22:2, ESV)

All are creatures, but God.

All must be sustained, but God.

All must die, but God.

All are sinners, but God.

All need redemption, but God.

All are lost apart from His loving and sovereign intervention, but God.

All stand to be judged, but God.

None then, are essentially above any other.

Let our external circumstances be what they may – in these, we are all equal. And in more.

Where then is pride?

How is it we look down our noses at any other human being?

How is it our hearts do not melt for those still lost, when none-the-more deserving, we have received Christ by pure grace?

Where then is prejudice?

Who dare discount or exalt any other person in deference to another?

Whence comes the exercise of my personal “rights” at the expense of any other?

Where then is preeminence?

Why is my subjective opinion so important?

Why are my personal preferences binding on others?

We will all stand before Him.

We will not be judged in comparison to one another – but to Christ.

Tremble.