Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
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One of the greatest earthly obstacles to walking in the Spirit is the thing called "reputation". It matters none at all whether that reputation is good or bad; if you have a reputation, you will become its slave unless Jesus rescues you by his mighty power. If you can be chained to a reputation, you can be manipulated. The flesh knows this, even if people "in the flesh" do not. It is in order to maintain a sense of control that the flesh incessantly categorizes things and people.
In his famous Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock, the English poet W. H. Auden described the feeling that comes with being categorized and labeled as a feeling of being "pinned and wriggling on the wall". The flesh is intimidated by you unless it can treat you like some specimen of insect that it has captured for its collection and now has safely pinned to the wall, along with other specimens, as part of an exhibit.
A reputation is a tyrant; it demands that it be fed and followed. But the challenge to the saints is not so much to fight against the reputations and labels that men will try desperately to attach to you, but to learn to ignore them completely and listen to God. Our heavenly Father, the true God, cannot be categorized, and when we obey His Spirit, neither can we be.
We are told that Jesus "made himself of no reputation." This is no small accomplishment. What it means is that he listened to His Father and obeyed Him so perfectly that carnal men could not put Jesus into a category. Jesus could not be analyzed. He frightened men because they had no label that would stick to him. If they thought he was good, the Spirit would lead him to do something they thought was evil; if men thought he was evil, the Spirit of God would lead Jesus to do something they thought was good. Nobody has ever frustrated man's obsession to comfort himself by labeling things as much as Jesus did. In the end, the only thing men could think of to do to him was to kill him.
If men cannot label you, they will both fear and hate you. If men cannot enslave you to one of their reputations, they will want to kill you.
Men seem to think that if they can label something, then they have some measure of control over it. Diseases don't seem quite so frightening to men when they have been given a name. It is very important to the flesh to be able to categorize and label everything, for anything that defies being labeled testifies to men, "You are not in control". An unlabeled person, or disease, or anything else, is fearful evidence to man that he does not command God's universe.
Very often, the way men fight off conviction from God is to throw a label at the work of God. When the power of God falls on a group of His saints, shaking their temples, causing them to cry out ecstatic praises to Him, or to dance, or to fall down, or to roll across the floor, or to weep in His awesome presence, or to speak in tongues, or to prophesy, or to do any such thing, men in the flesh feverishly heap labels upon it, hoping to comfort one another in their sin. They call it "emotionalism", or "fanaticism", or (from a seminary professor) "adolescent religion", or any number of other labels. This is one of the chief ways the flesh resists God's effort to love and to save people; it labels His power as foolishness and then swaggers away as if it has analyzed and understood what has happened.
Child of God, if you are foolish, you will fear being labeled and will quench the Spirit in order to please men and avoid being categorized by them. Moses was willing to suffer the bad reputation that he knew would follow if he cast in his lot with the enslaved people of God, "esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt" (Heb. 11:26). King David had no fear of labels. When laughed at and called disgraceful by his own wife for dancing "with all his might" before the Lord, he told that foolish woman, "I'll be more vile than that!" In other words, "Honey, you ain't seen nothin' yet!" David was just getting warmed up.
When Jesus gathers his people together and presents them to the Father, there will be such shouting and dancing that no one has ever dreamed possible. What David had done was not disgraceful, and he knew it. And to rejoice with all your heart before the Lord, to submit to His power and have it move your temple, is not "emotionalism", though wonderful emotions are felt; and it is not "fanaticism", for we cannot love God too much. What it is, is something that godless men can neither analyze, categorize, nor label, and they hate it with all their heart.
The power of the holy Ghost, especially when it moves on God's people, frightens men because the power of God is a threat to every religious institution and tradition on earth. Men who ordain other men fear and hate the men who are ordained by God because men ordained by God do not qualify for one of their labels. Their authority is invisible but "mighty, to the pulling down of strongholds." The strongest of all men's "holds", of course, is their exalted religious creeds and ceremonies. Oh, how the flesh loves religion without the power of God! But according to Jesus, "That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God" (Lk. 16:15). The power of God is what religious men talk about but do not possess, and when it shows up, it exposes pride, blindness, and every man's desperate need of God's mercy and truth.
The power of God cannot be analyzed and labeled; on the contrary, it destroys reputations and labels when it comes, for it sets men free to obey God! A reputation is one "yoke" that the anointing of God destroys. The power of God erases the very thoughts of man from his own heart, so that he can see himself as possibly being different from what he thinks about himself. You will never be made free as long as you think you must be as you always have been. Thinking like that is you, giving a reputation to yourself! Pray that Jesus will set you free from your own opinions and believe in his power and his love for you. And never impose a reputation on others by refusing to believe they can be different from what they are. When we speak of others as if they will always have the faults or weaknesses that they presently have, we are denying the power of God to heal them and pressuring them to do the same.
When men develop their own religions, what they are really trying to do is categorize God. Some try very hard to make God out to be nothing but a God of love, hoping in vain that He has no wrath for them to face. Such men will not believe that God has ever destroyed human life on a massive scale, despite what God Himself has revealed in the Bible. The Flood caused great pain to many a small child; what does that tell us about God that we do not now believe? When men try to force God into a mold they have made, they are forced to deny some things He has done in order to make Him fit in it. This is how Jesus "became of no reputation". He ignored what men said about him and his Father and just obeyed his Father's voice. There was no mold into which men could force Jesus. He was free to obey God all the time, without consideration of the rumors about him that were rampant.
Young people, if you belong to Christ Jesus, then do as he did. Walk humbly on this earth with your Father and refuse to be enslaved by men. "Be ye not the servants of men." If you are Christ's, then "You have been bought with a price", and you are not your own. You need not rebel against one of the reputations men want to attach to your name; just ignore them. To do that, you have no power. But Jesus does, and he will give you all you need to keep your mind on God. That is where you want to be, for "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee."
The battle in your heart is between liberty and a reputation. Both are available. Which do you want?