“The Christian must not retaliate….he must also not feel resentment. That is much more difficult. The first thing you do is to control your actions, the actual reply. But our Lord is not content with that, because to be truly Christian is not simply to live in a state of repression. You have to go beyond that; you have to get into the state in which you do not even resent persecution. I think you all know from experience the difference between the these two things. We may have come to see long ago that to lose our temper over a thing or to manifest annoyance, is dishonoring to our Lord. But we still may feel it, and fell it intensely, and be hurt about it and resent it. Now the Christian teaching is that we must go beyond that. We see in Philippians 1 how the apostle Paul had done so. He was a very sensitive man – his Epistles make that plain – and he could be grievously hurt and wounded. His feelings had been hurt, as he shows quite clearly, by Corinthians, the Galatians and others; and yet, he has now come to the state in which he really is no longer affected by these things. He says he does not even judge his own self; he has committed to the judgement of God.
But we must go further…When you are persecuted and people are saying all manner of evil against you falsely, you ‘rejoice’ and are exceedingly glad.’”
Witkowski Blog 