Jesus did not quit meeting with His disciples because Judas was a thief, nor because Peter was fickle at times. He didn’t quit preaching and living right because some of His brethren were unforgiving and unkind. He did not quit His post of leadership because He had in His presence the adulterous woman, a gang of Pharisees, or narrow-minded demon-worshipers. Jesus did not quit.
Have you quit? What is the reason for it? Any reason you might name, Jesus could have given the same. He had every reason to be discouraged. His own disciples were so slow to learn. His enemies were bent on His destruction. But He did not quit. He said: “Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). And when the end of His earthly life was in sight, Jesus said to His Father, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). He did not quit. He finished His task.
When you come to the end of life will you say, “I finished the work God has given me to do?” Or, will you be compelled to say: “I started, but quit!” Will you stand before the judgment bar of God and admit that you were a quitter? Eternal life is promised to those who endure to the end (Matt. 10:22). There will be no consolation in the judgment day to point back to your baptism unless you can also point back to a life of faithful endurance.
Quit wasn’t in Jesus’ vocabulary; neither should it be in ours. We need to be like Paul who, in his imitation of Christ (1 Cor. 11:1), said: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:12-14).
Raymond C. Kelcy (1916-1986)
via Harrisburg church of Christ
Harrisburg, IL