August 19

Read: Galatians 2:11-14

Despise not the chastening of the Lord… for whom the Lord loveth he correcteth (Proverbs 3:11-12).

When I Have Been Criticized

In our scripture for today “Peter had failed to be true to his vision, and Paul administered rebuke. That Peter received his reproof in the right spirit may be inferred from his second epistle. Here Peter refers to Paul’s epistles ‘in which are some things hard to be understood? Peter’s loyalty to the brother who talks over his head is clearly evident when he says of these same difficult writings that the ‘unlearned and unstable wrest [them], as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.’ There is not a trace here of bitterness for a past rebuke.

“Brothers in the faith ought to hold one another up to their best. For this the word of reproof given in love and meekness is necessary. With it goes the necessity of a deep identification with Christ that will enable us to take a rebuke with patience, meekness, and without bitterness.

“But what if the rebuke is unjust or given with censoriousness? First of all, remember that we never have anything to lose by making such a thrust the occasion of deep heart-searching. If it is false we have lost nothing. If there is any truth in it and we mend the matter, we have gained. If we either vocally or in our minds fly instantly to defense and marshal arguments against a rebuke, we lose great benefit. Let the searching take place first. And mark you, let it be a searching of heart for things needing to be made right rather than a searching for bits of goodness with which to offset the rebuke or to prove it unjust, and certainly rather than a searching for evil in the person who administered the rebuke so that we can justify ourselves ‘tit for tat.’ Rebuke is the occasion for one of the deepest testings of the reality of our surrender. To learn to take it is to grow in grace” (The Spirit Of Holiness, Everett Lewis Cattell).