Why does being a follower of Jesus sometimes make life harder rather than better?
If God loves us so much and the Bible tells us he wants to bless us, shouldn’t we expect
our lives to be easy, comfortable, and safe? But for many Christians, this is not the case.
The church at Rome was very familiar with the difficulties associated with being a
follower of Jesus. In AD 49, the Emperor Claudius believed the Jews of the city were
rioting over whether or not Jesus should be called the Jewish Messiah.
Some Jews were convinced he was, having heard the Spirit-filled witness of the disciples
in Jerusalem at the festival of Pentecost. But when they brought the good news home to Rome,
not all their compatriots agreed, which led to intense infighting in the Jewish community.
To restore order to the city, Claudius decreed all the Jews exiled from the city,
not distinguishing between those who identified with Christ and those who rejected him. Their
expulsion was accompanied by public shaming, imprisonments, and the plundering of property.
The expelled Christians endured this injustice with joy, confident that
their heavenly inheritance was far better and more enduring than any earthly possession.
They knew that they were simply following in the footsteps of Jesus himself,
who was also unjustly accused, abused, and shamed.
In AD 54, Claudius died and Nero became Rome’s next emperor.
Nero did not continue to enforce the edict of expulsion,
and many Jews—both Christian and not—returned to the city. But hard times were not over.
In AD 64, a fire destroyed a large part of Rome. Rumor spread that Emperor Nero himself
had instigated the fire. Since Christians were a minority group with little power, he easily
shifted the blame. He ordered some to be arrested and made examples of them by sending them to the
arena to be torn by dogs, crucified, or burned alive to serve as night lamps in his gardens.
For most believers, things had not yet gotten this bad.
But it was not a good time to be Christian in Rome.
Many persevered in the midst of the uncertainty of the times, but many others struggled. Jewish
Christians, in particular, faced a tempting option…to deny Jesus, go back to the law,
and stick to the faith of their forefathers, since it was specifically Christians who became Nero’s
scapegoats. Some ethnically Jewish Christians were so enticed by this option that they began to
withdraw from other Christian communities. Having endured the persecution under Claudius with joy,
they now shrunk back, fearing suffering and death. They forgot the basic principles of God’s word
and that followers of Jesus should expect to suffer like he did. They rationalized their
decision…thinking that they weren’t really abandoning their God. They reasoned that
if the Old Covenant with its levitical priesthood and animal sacrifices allowed
them to connect with God before Jesus, surely they could just go back to those old ways.
The letter to these Christian Hebrews, which is more a sermon of encouragement,
urged the struggling believers to hold fast to Jesus and the confession of their faith.
The unknown author was a highly educated Greek-speaking Jew,
trained in the art of rhetoric and thoroughly immersed in the Old Testament Scriptures. He loved
these house churches and believed in the Spirit’s ability to help them persevere through this time.
But he sternly warned them that only Jesus’ sacrifice of himself could atone for sin,
and that looking to any other system would only bring condemnation.
He outlined for them all the ways Jesus is better than the old covenant system
and that he finally and irrevocably changed the way humanity accesses God.
The first readers of Hebrews were asked to live by faith in God and His promises, even if they could
not see them in the present. Faith would help them draw near to God rather than shrink back from him.
It would also lead them to imitate the faith of the heroes from earlier generations, who had
suffered for the sake of righteousness and also had not seen the full manifestation of their hope.
Sometimes being a follower of Jesus will seem to make life harder rather than better. But
that’s only in the short-term. In Christ, we focus on the Kingdom that we are receiving;
a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, and an inheritance that can never be destroyed. When
we maintain faith in this promise, through the help of the Spirit, we imitate the Hebrews effect.