Serving God in a Hostile Environment. The Example of Daniel and His Friendsనమూనా

Being faithful and faultless

Darius the Mede had become the new king by killing the previous one, and he appointed Daniel as one of three high officials. He even considered setting him over the whole kingdom, “because an excellent spirit was in him”. That made the other high officials really jealous, and they sought to find grounds for complaint against Daniel. But verse 4 tells us they could not find anything!

These verses are echoed in Matthew 26, where the chief priests and the Jewish council tried to find an accusation against Jesus Christ. They had already decided that He should be put to death, but they couldn’t find any legal reason! Like Daniel, Jesus was faithful, and no error or fault was found in Him. In the end, Jesus was accused of blasphemy because He claimed to be the Son of God (which was true of course, but the priests didn’t want to believe it).

In 1 Peter 3, we are exhorted to be “zealous for what is good” and to “have a good conscience”. This won’t always protect us from being falsely accused or even sentenced to death, as Jesus’ example shows. (And Daniel’s too, as we will see tomorrow.) But “it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil” (1 Peter 3:16-17). Our lives should never give cause for mocking the Word of God, but should honor Him instead.

If people would like to complain about you, would they easily find grounds for that?