That is a very good question! The Bible speaks in many places about Jesus being rejected of men. It was prophesied in Isaiah 53:3, “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” Other Old Testament prophets spoke in detail of what the Lord Jesus would experience from those who hated Him. “But I am a worm, and no man; a REPROACH OF MEN, and DESPISED BY THE PEOPLE…. Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head…Because for Your sake I have borne REPROACH; SHAME has covered My face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, and an alien to my mother’s children; because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, and the REPROACHES of those who reproach You have fallen on Me. When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that became MY REPROACHE. I also made sackcloth my garment; I became a byword to them. Those who sit it the gate speak against Me, and I am the song of the drunkards” (Psalms 22:6; 69:4, 7-12). His greatest rejection in summed up in John 1:11, “He came to His own, and His own DID NOT RECEIVE HIM.” We see in these passages that He was rejected by His own family, by everyone in society (from the leaders in the gate to the drunk in the gutter), and by the nation of Israel as a whole.

I believe Satan uses Christ’s rejection primarily to INTIMIDATE believers. Jesus told His disciples (in John 15:18-21) why He was being persecuted and that they would be persecuted too. He did this to forewarn us and to prepare us to suffer from men. We read of this in John 15:18-21, “If the world hates you, you now that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own, yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘a servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” None of us enjoy being rejected by our family, friends, and neighbors, for we naturally want people to like us. Satan loves to see these people make fun of us just like those who persecuted Christ. He knows that we may indeed be INTIMIDATED by this and he hopes this will keep us from witnessing to others of our faith in Christ and how they too can be saved by putting their faith in Christ for the salvation of their souls. The Lord knows that this is one of Satan’s greatest ploys and in love for us He spoke those words to prepare us to suffer. But Satan knows that by reading of Christ’s sufferings and rejection, we may become timid and shrink from identifying ourselves with Christ which will certainly result in persecution. He hopes that Christ’s warning to us will fall on deaf ears and that we’ll focus instead on how horrible it must be to be teased, laughed at, cut off from those around us, and possibly even harmed physically. The Lord Jesus hopes that His words of FOREWARNING will FOREARM US, so that we will have the strength (His strength, that is…see 2nd Corinthians 12:9-10 and Philippians 4:13) to suffer for His Name’s sake. Let us remember the words of the apostle Paul, “For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Philippians 1:29). When we take these words to heart, we will be willing to suffer rejection with Christ as Paul expressed for himself in Philippians 3:10, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS, being conformed to His death.” Paul was not only willing to suffer persecution, he was NOT ASHAMED to do so and he exhorts us not to be ashamed as well. “Therefore, DO NOT BE ASHAMED of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but SHARE WITH ME IN THE SUFFERINGS OF THE GOSPEL according to the power of God” (2nd Timothy 1:8). May we be faithful, dear fellow-believers! May the love of our blessed Savior cause us to obey His words in Matthew 16:24, “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up His cross, and follow Me.”  (DO)