Suffering for Righteousness' Sake

A friend and I will be picking up our study at 1 Peter 3:8 and considering this passage on suffering.

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.  (1 Peter 3:13-17)

Now it so happens that I was reading a bit more from Arnobius and was struck by the following observations made concerning Christians in his day.

 

What say you, O ignorant ones, for whom we might well weep and be sad? . . . Do not even these proofs at least give you faith to believe, viz., that already, in so short and brief a time, the oaths of this vast army have spread abroad over all the earth? that already there is no nation so rude and fierce that it has not, changed by His love, subdued its fierceness, and with tranquility hitherto unknown, become mild in disposition? that men endowed with so great abilities—orators, critics, rhetoricians, lawyers, and physicians, those, too, who pry into the mysteries of philosophy—seek to learn these things, despising those in which but now they trusted? that slaves choose to be tortured by their masters as they please, wives to be divorced, children to be disinherited by their parents, rather than be unfaithful to Christ and cast off the oaths of the warfare of salvation? that although so terrible punishments have been denounced by you against those who follow the precepts of this religion, it increases even more, and a great host strives more boldly against all threats and the terrors which would keep it back, and is roused to zealous faith by the very attempt to hinder it? Do you indeed believe that these things happen idly and at random? that these feelings are adopted on being met with by chance? Is not this, then, sacred and divine? Or do you believe that, without God’s grace, their minds are so changed, that although murderous hooks and other tortures without number threaten, as we said, those who shall believe, they receive the grounds of faith with which they have become acquainted, as if carried away by some charm, and by an eager longing for all the virtues, and prefer the friendship of Christ to all that is in the world?

The Case Against the Pagans, Book II, cap. 5