The Fruit of the Spirit 11: Dealing with Unfruitful, Unkind People

It seems like every time I make a fresh commitment to love people like Jesus, someone just out of nowhere starts being mean and unloving to me. I mean making vile, deceitful videos about me, lying about me, just plain aggressive, it could be anything. And then the hardest part of love becomes what Paul told the church in Corinth that we should “pay no attention to a suffered wrong” (1 Corinthians 13.5).

Before you think that advice is impossible, why not pause a minute and think of the man who wrote that. The worst I have had to deal with in my life is people rolling their eyes at me, making spiteful posts about me on social media, and so on. Occasionally, as happened last year, someone raises their fists at me and threatens me, but that’s really not common. For Paul it was – he was beaten with sticks, he was stoned, he was locked up in prison for things he never did. Nobody deserved what Paul went through, and Paul certainly didn’t – all Paul is doing is going around the nations telling them the good news about a God who loved them so much He had a plan in place to make them right with Him. He was teaching kingdom principles and healing the sick. Yet, most nations and cities treated him like the worst kind of criminal.

Did Paul get mad? Did he get into self-pity? Did he get into envy? Did he ever step out of love? It doesn’t seem like it from Scripture. He is in prison, not murmuring and muttering about his captors and his treatment, but rather writing Philippians! If Paul couldn’t handle mean people, our Bibles would all be a lot thinner!

And Paul wasn’t in some modern prison with Netflix and Amazon and a nice comfy bed. No – he was in a dungeon, no natural light, chained to a wall, sleeping virtually standing up, with the bugs and rats. But he kept in love. He kept his prayer life up, he kept his fire. And this was not a one-off for Paul, he ended up in prison loads. His mission was still love the Christians and love the non-Christians. Build up the church and reach the lost. He did that so well, you and I have both been built up by him more than maybe any other preacher! He’s been in heaven for centuries and we are still getting people saved and healed and discipled by his writings!

I heard Gloria Copeland say once “they could put Paul in prison, but they couldn’t put prison in Paul”. That’s a very powerful quote. Spend some time thinking about that today. Whatever they do to you, they cannot put it in you. Keep walking in love no matter how mean they are to you!