⁴¹So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. ⁴²And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.

For “good measure” the Council had Peter and John whipped as a final warning to heed their command to not preach Christ. Nothing is said in Luke’s narrative here of the apostles limping away to lick their wounds. Surely the whipping must have been extremely painful, leaving their backs ripped to shreds similar to the flogging Jesus received before His crucifixion.  On the contrary, the apostles’ response to it was nothing short of astounding. They went away, “rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.” Rejoicing? Yes. They were living out in real time what Paul, who himself experienced flogging on numerous occasions (2 Cor. 11:24-25), later wrote:

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:16–18)

They rejoiced despite going through what is described as a shameful experience. They were stripped down and publicly brought to shame. This verse and the following use three different Greek words for “shame” that describe a dishonorable, humiliating experience. God hated that they were treated that way, as did Jesus:

[Fix] our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:2)

But God will be vindicated; their rejoicing at being counted worthy of persecution will result in that very shame falling back on their persecutors, and that before a much wider audience: “[K]eep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame” (1 Peter 3:16). Encouraged by God’s approval, they went back to preaching “Jesus as the Christ,” as worthy proclaimers of the truth.

Lord, I commit to accepting the shame of being known as a Christian.