“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
- Matthew 11:18-19
“You
can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people
some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time,” said
Abraham Lincoln. Given his circumstances—presiding over a nation that split in two
barely a month after his inauguration as president—few could understand this
principle better than he. Whether fighting off generals who disagreed with his
military strategy, a Congress determined to exert its authority, challengers in
his own party, or the actual enemy to the south, this much was certain: there
was no such thing as a slam dunk decision for Abraham Lincoln. Any move he made
was going to be met with skepticism, backbiting, and even open hostility from
some corner or another. If he’d made his decisions by waiting for universal
acclaim, he’d never have accomplished a thing.
Similarly,
being faithful to God means ignoring the desire to please everyone all of the time.
Even Jesus couldn’t do that! In Matthew 11, he was criticized by some for
associating with society’s undesirables—tax collectors, prostitutes, and
lepers, just to name a few. Instead of preaching at them, as the religious teachers might have liked him to do, from
a spiritual distance, Jesus preached among
them, sharing bread, wine, stories, and laughs with them over a table of
fellowship.
But
when called out for his behavior, Jesus noted the hypocrisy of their criticism.
When his prophetic forerunner, John the Baptist, had been alive, he had
ministered in exactly the manner they were demanding Jesus adopt—abstaining from
social interaction with sinners and from the indulgences of their food and
drink. And when John had done this, Jesus reminded them, they’d had a problem
with him! You can’t have it both
ways, Jesus tells them; you can’t criticize John’s separatist ministry and my incarnational ministry.
Ultimately,
Jesus says, “wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” Put another way, Jesus’s
approach to ministry (and John’s, for that matter) would be borne out by the
lives changed, not by approval ratings. His ministry goal was not for the
gospel to be deemed acceptable by all, but for it to save some.
For
the disciple of Jesus, there is a hard lesson there: success as a witness for Christ
is not determined by how you are personally viewed, but by how the gospel bears
fruit through you. Bearing witness to Jesus is not always going to be good for
your reputation. Sometimes it will mean mockery from unbelievers who declare
you holier-than-thou, prudish, and close-minded. Other times it will mean
condescension from modern-day Pharisees in the church, who will see your
compassion for sinners and call it weakness. What you must remember in both
cases is that your responsibility is not to be popular, but faithful, that you
are not called to please people but to glorify God.
There
will be a day when you will ultimately answer for your ministry, and your judge
will not be to today’s critics. So may your ministry to your neighbors be
guided not by the whims of today’s naysayers, but by the call given to you by
the eternal, unchanging God. Pleasing everybody is a Sisyphean exercise…so why
not aim to please Him instead?
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