COMMENTS
If you are a faithful pupil (in the school of Christ), it will not be long until you see that the perfect law of liberty, the law of Christ, is a discerner of the very thoughts and intents of the heart, and that while you must hate all sin, you cannot hate any sinner, and yet have the love of God perfected in your heart. If even so much as a bitter feeling against our traducers and maligners arise, it is to be fought, and so complete a victory gained over it that every fiber of our beings will be in sweet accord with our Great Teacher's instructions, "Love your enemies. Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Bless and injure not".
Because of their loyalty to God and His cause, God's people are made the targets of bitter upbraidings from the wicked. These they are not to meet with counter-revilings, but rather with kindly benedictions. They must endure various forms of refined and gross persecution but instead of returning evil for evil are quietly to bear the mistreatment.
Acts 23:2; 16:23; 14:19; 2 Cor. 11:23-27; 1 Tim. 4:10; Matt. 5:44; 1 Pet. 2:23; 3:9; Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60; Rom. 12:20; Acts 22:22; 24:5.
