The Truth about Rejection

Ron Browning

May 2004

Every human being has suffered some form of real and/or imaginary rejection.  There is a longing in each of us for acceptance -- unconditional acceptance.  We all spend our lives, our time, money, and energy looking for this missing acceptance in every place it seems but in the truth.  And for many of us who have found the answer we still refuse to live out of that truth daily still continuing in our rejection. 

For our purposes we will define rejection as the absence of meaningful love.

Consider: Why are we truly rejected?  Yes many of us have suffered at the hand of parents, peers, so-called friends, and enemies alike.  The world around us rejects us.  But where does this rejection stem. 

Remember the Garden of Eden? It was a place of beauty and innocence.  God created the Garden and crowned His creation with man. God walked in the Garden with man in sweet fellowship. But then man sinned.  The result:  God rejected man!  Read it for yourself... 

Genesis 3 NLT
¹Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the creatures the LORD God had made. "Really?" he asked the woman. "Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden?"
²"Of course we may eat it," the woman told him. ³"It's only the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God says we must not eat it or even touch it, or we will die."
⁴"You won't die!" the serpent hissed. ⁵"God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil."
⁶The woman was convinced. The fruit looked so fresh and delicious, and it would make her so wise! So she ate some of the fruit. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her. Then he ate it, too. ⁷At that moment, their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they strung fig leaves together around their hips to cover themselves.
⁸Toward evening they heard the LORD God walking about in the garden, so they hid themselves among the trees. ⁹The LORD God called to Adam, "Where are you?"
¹⁰He replied, "I heard you, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked."
¹¹"Who told you that you were naked?" the LORD God asked. "Have you eaten the fruit I commanded you not to eat?"
¹²"Yes," Adam admitted, "but it was the woman you gave me who brought me the fruit, and I ate it."
¹³Then the LORD God asked the woman, "How could you do such a thing?"
"The serpent tricked me," she replied. "That's why I ate it."
¹⁴So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, you will be punished. You are singled out from all the domestic and wild animals of the whole earth to be cursed. You will grovel in the dust as long as you live, crawling along on your belly. ¹⁵From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
¹⁶Then he said to the woman, "You will bear children with intense pain and suffering. And though your desire will be for your husband, he will be your master."
¹⁷And to Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. ¹⁸It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. ¹⁹All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day. Then you will return to the ground from which you came. For you were made from dust, and to the dust you will return."
²⁰Then Adam named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all people everywhere. ²¹And the LORD God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.
²²Then the LORD God said, "The people have become as we are, knowing everything, both good and evil. What if they eat the fruit of the tree of life? Then they will live forever!" ²³So the LORD God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. ²⁴After banishing them from the garden, the LORD God stationed mighty angelic beings to the east of Eden. And a flaming sword flashed back and forth, guarding the way to the tree of life.

Banishment... sounds like massive rejection.  God no longer walk with man.  God rejected man because man freely chose to disobey.  The direct reason we experience rejection boils down to this one word: disobedience -- sin!  Our thoughts, feelings, and choices to reject and be rejected are the direct result of our own sin. 

Rejection can be both real and imagined but it stems from one place... we are sinners rejected by God Almighty.  Since the day God rejected us we have been searching for acceptance.  Most of us spend years... decades... a lifetime looking for some effort or experience that will finally bring acceptance, peace, and loving friendship.  We look to people who are in the same situation: rejected, thus, they too fail us leaving us rejected.   We search the world for places and things... experiences... but all is meaningless.  We still think, feel, and choose rejection. 

But there is One whom God has provided to deliver us from this mass sphere of rejection full of brokenness, suffering, and shame.  His name is Jesus. 

Most believers, who come to know Jesus as the Lord and Savior, tend to settle in knowing that Christ has saved them from the penalty of sin, i.e., Hell.  But few ever find His Life --... the Christ Life, the Grace Life -- where the believer lives trusting Christ to save them from the power of sin controlling their daily lives and enslaving their thinking, feelings, and choices to every urge of the body. Few ever find true acceptance in Jesus.  Acceptance so compelling that Jesus becomes the motive and the message of their lives, empowering them to live a powerful life of purity, integrity, and honesty; a life at peace stemming from a true and thankful heart. 

Read with me the key to acceptance. 

Philippians 3 CEV
⁷But Christ has shown me that what I once thought was valuable is worthless. ⁸Nothing is as wonderful as knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have given up everything else and count it all as garbage. All I want is Christ ⁹and to know that I belong to him. I could not make myself acceptable to God by obeying the Law of Moses.

God accepted me simply because of my faith in Christ.

¹⁰All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised him to life. I want to suffer and die as he did, ¹¹so that somehow I also may be raised to life.

Wow!  The only thing that can make me acceptable to God is faith in the One He has provided to rescue me from myself and sin.

Why is it then that after knowing that we, as believers in Jesus, have truly been accepted by the One who is our Triune God and Creator continue to live rejected?  One reason only.  We reject the means of acceptance.  By this I mean we continue to search for acceptance in other places rather than in Christ.  We are more committed to looking upon men whom we lust to be like to find acceptance and love rather than turning to the One who is love, proving His love by laying down His life. 

Herein is the key: Jesus laid down his life.  If you and I are willing to lay down our lives never to pick it up again we will never again know rejection.  We will only know the peace, the love, and the power that comes from knowing Christ. 

How can one who has died... one who is dead to himself experience rejection?  He can't.  He is dead to the self that thinks, feels, and chooses rejection.  So the question now becomes what happens when life throws rejection in our faces.  If we have laid down our lives... willing to suffer and die as Christ we see ever temptation, every trail, every suffering as an opportunity to know Christ deeper.  Read it again:

⁸Nothing is as wonderful as knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have given up everything else and count it all as garbage. All I want is Christ ⁹and to know that I belong to him. ¹⁰All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised him to life. I want to suffer and die as he did, ¹¹so that somehow I also may be raised to life.

The man who lays down his life in order to know Christ is fully accepted, fully loved, fully confident, fully assured, fully alive for the One who is Life is living this life for him.  Think of it! Christ living His life in us, through us, and for us.  My friend this is the Christ Life, the Grace Life! It is strategy for living a life ruling and reigning with our Lord over self and sin.