DON’T BE AFRAID OF MIXED REACTIONS AS LONG AS YOUR CHARACTER IS NOT MIXED-UP!
Let me ask you a few questions before we go any further: Is Jesus perfect? Did Jesus ever lie?
Hopefully, your answers are “yes” and then “no.” Jesus is God, and so He is perfect and cannot lie. Even so, check out the following passages of Scripture (taken from John 4:39-40; 5:16, 18; 6:15; 7:12, and 7:43-44, respectively):
• From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him . . . they were asking Him to stay with them . . .
• For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, . . .
• For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, . . .
• So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, . . .
• There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, “He is a good man”; others were saying, “No, on the contrary, he leads the people astray.”
• So a division occurred in the crowd because of Him.
Astonishingly, people had very mixed reactions to Jesus. Though Jesus is completely perfect and unchanging in unblemished character; we have some believing, some persecuting, some seeking to kill, and some wanting to make Him king. Generally, people were divided and displayed a wide array of emotions when it came to Jesus.
The variance of reaction is amazing, because the Person to whom everyone was reacting never varies. What do we learn from this? Even when we are acting within the will of God and reflecting His unchanging character, people may very well have mixed reactions to us! As human beings, our sole responsibility is to live abandoned to the will of God. As we remain undividedly accountable to Him, let the chips fall where they may. Every person has individual reasons for reacting to God and others in the way that he does, and those reasons are dependent on the status of his own heart. We cannot control how people to respond.
If Jesus Christ – the perfect Son of God – encountered mixed reaction, what should we expect?
The thing on which we ought to focus is our own character. If people react badly to us because of our own wavering character, it is our fault. However, if people react badly to us because of the reflection of God’s character within us, we must leave the consequences in the hands of God.