#93 The real cross
From Meditations on the Epistles of John, by Samuel Froehlich
For as soon as Christ is in us and we are in Him, the world fails to recognize us any longer and persecutes us for His sake. It is always Christ Who has to suffer and what we suffer for Him for the sake of righteousness and truth (without cause), is the real cross that we shall bear for Him in order to be His disciples and followers. For just as the name of Christ is misused in the world, so is each and every kind of suffering of man unrightly called a cross. Surely they do not suffer for Christ’s sake but on their own account; not for the sake of righteousness, but on account of sin.
In the world the cross of Christ is the greatest reproach, but before God it is the greatest honor (so entirely different is the mind of the world from the mind of God); and as suffering for Christ depends upon His life being in us, so, again, does the future glory depend upon the suffering being for Christ’s sake. Just as one is ashamed of Christ who will not share His suffering with Him in this world, so another will deny Christ before men who does not have His life in him and proves it by his entire walk.
Under these circumstances, in the future world we shall be greatly surprised at the revelation of the children of God when we see the (supposed) children of the kingdom cast out (those who for a certainty had counted upon the inheritance) and on the other hand only the despised and rejected cross-bearers of this world sit at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God (those who had not at all been regarded as the right believers but as fools and irrational people); for Christ divides the kingdom among us as the Father has allotted it to Him, i.e., if we have endured with Him in His temptations in this world.
(Luke 22:28 ff.) Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
(Matthew 8:11 ff.) And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For cowards, with all their appearance of godliness, are not any better before God than the revealed adulterers and liars.
(Revelation 2:8 ff.) And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.