NOT RETALIATING

20. NOT RETALIATING

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

"When they hurled their insults at Him — He did not retaliate; when He suffered — He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly!" — 1 Peter 2:23 .

What a common dictate of the fallen and unregenerate heart — to resent and recriminate! How alien to natural feeling — to answer cutting taunts, and meet unmerited wrong, with the Divine method the Gospel prescribes, "Overcome evil with good!" It was in the closing scenes of the Savior's humiliation, when silent, and unresenting, He stood "silent before His shearers," that this beautiful feature in his character was most wondrously manifested; but it beams forth also for our imitation in the ordinary and less prominent incidents of His pilgrimage.

When He met Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, He found him clinging to an unreasonable prejudice — "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" The severe remark is allowed to pass unnoticed. Overlooking the unkind insinuation, the Savior fixes on the favorable feature of his character, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!"

After His resurrection, He appears to His disciples. They were cowering in shame, half afraid to confront the glance of injured goodness . He breathes on them, and says, "Peace be unto you!" — Peter was the one of all the rest who had most reason to dread estranged looks and upbraiding words; but a special message is sent to reassure that trembling disciple, that there was no alienation in the unresentful Heart he had secretly wounded — "Go and tell the disciples — and Peter!"

Even when Judas first unveiled himself to his Lord as the betrayer , we believe it was not in bitter irony or rebuke — but in the fullness of pitying tenderness, that Jesus addressed him, "Friend , why have you come?"

Tears and prayers were His only revenge on Jerusalem — the city and scene of His murder. "Beginning at Jerusalem," was the closing illustration of a spirit "not of this world" — a significant parting testimony that in the bosom that uttered it — retaliation had no place.

More than one of the disciples seem to have imbibed much of this "mind" of their Lord. "They stoned Stephen . Then he fell on his knees and cried out — Lord, do not hold this sin against them!"

Take another example — The great Apostle of the Gentiles felt himself under a painful necessity faithfully to rebuke Peter in presence of the whole Church. He had recorded that rebuke, too, in one of his epistles. It was thus to be handed down to every age as a permanent and humiliating evidence of the wavering inconstancy of his fellow-laborer. Peter, doubtless, must have felt acutely the severity of the chastisement. Does he resent it? He, too, puts on record, long after, in one of his own epistles, a sentence regarding his rebuker — but it is this — "Our beloved brother Paul!"

Reader! when tempted to utter the harsh word, or give the cutting or hasty answer — seek to check yourself with the question, "Is this the reply my Savior would have given?" If your fellow-men should prove unkind, inconsiderate, ungrateful — be it yours to refer the cause to God. Speak of the faults of others only in prayer; manifesting more sorrow for their sin — than for the evil inflicted by them on yourselves. Retaliate! No such word should have a place in the Christian's vocabulary. Retaliate! If I cherish such a spirit towards my brother — how can I meet that brother in heaven? "But you have not so learned Christ."

"Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind."

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