Still a Fighter: Bishop Ron C. Hill on Winning, Rejection, and the Call to Be Holy (Food For Your Soul)

Bishop Ron C. Hill was in the streets by eleven or twelve years old, "kind of just let loose to do whatever I wanted to do when I got ready." Fights followed. Sports only sharpened the instinct. He hated losing, loved winning, and says there's something about winning that attracts his inner man.

Accepting Christ didn't take the fight out of him. It changed the opponent. 

"I am still a fighter. I love to fight, but I have stopped fighting people. And now I have put my focus on fighting sin and Satan. The only human being that I really tussle with will be my own flesh."

That shift is the whole message he brings from the pulpit of Love and Unity Church of God in Christ in Compton, California, a congregation he has pastored since 1981.

The Fight Against Self-Protection

When a young pastor tells him the people are fighting him, Bishop Hill hears the part left unsaid. "The first thing I know about that: he's fighting the people."

He's had his own share of it, people who left his church bad-mouthing him and the ministry, some who may still be doing it. His conclusion is that none of it has anything to do with him, because he doesn't belong to himself. The body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, bought with a price. "God bought me. What did He use to purchase me? The blood of His Son Jesus."

Which produces the sharpest line of the message: "My fight is against myself to prevent myself from attempting to protect myself."

Ain't nobody gonna talk to me like that. You can't treat me that way. That reflex, not other people, is the real opponent. "The only human being that can ruin my life is me."

Rejection Is Training

He learned it the hard way, and the lesson came from inside the church.

As a young minister he was the most faithful man in his congregation, so determined not to miss anything that when he heard an announcement for a sewing circle, he showed up without knowing what it was. "Hey brother, what are you doing here?" one of the mothers asked. "Oh, no. This is not for you." He thanked her and dismissed himself.

The harder rejection came later. Another young minister, far less faithful and rumored to be sleeping around with girls in the church, had a strong family in the congregation. Every time a young preacher was needed, that man was promoted and Bishop Hill was passed over.

"Did it hurt me? It infuriated me."

He was still reasoning like an athlete, where the rules were clean: outplay the other kid in practice and you get the start. He had earned starting guard on junior varsity as a freshman and varsity as a sophomore doing exactly that. Faithfulness, he assumed, would work the same way in church. "It crushed me."

But he stayed. "It was bitter, but I continued to be faithful." Years later a new pastor arrived and made him youth pastor.

He now reads that season as preparation. "When you belong to God, God Himself will oftentimes allow the devil's people to do things against you and to you for training purposes." A Christian who can't stomach rejection can't be elevated, because the first slight sends him "crying..." working the phones to get everyone angry on his behalf. Everybody gets hurt. Everybody gets lied on. "Hold on to your faith. Don't get bitter, and don't blame other people for what you're going through."

What the Fight Is For

Underneath all of it is a conviction about what conversion actually is.

"Being a Christian is more to it than saying, 'God, come into my heart and save me,' and you keep on doing what you want to do. You don't add Christ to your life. He wants to become your life."

He sees an American Christianity watered down until it looks nothing like the first-century church, where faith could cost a believer everything. Now the cost has been traded for accessories, a gold chain, a cross, a bracelet. "All that's cute. But that has really nothing to do with this Word right here." Reading from 1 Peter 1, he presses the command to stop fashioning yourself after your former lusts and to be holy because the One who called you is holy. 

The common objection is that nobody can live holy anymore. "The devil is a liar. He does not want you to hear the message of holiness, because he knows that once you start believing the message of holiness and start to walk it out, the devil can no longer control you."

He's equally hard on preaching that promises comfort instead. Prosperity teachers, he says, bent people's hearts toward what they would receive instead of what they would become, and "whatever you receive is going to get burned up, but whatever you become is going to go throughout eternity." The promise he points to in 2 Peter is not a bigger house or a jet plane but a share in the divine nature of a God who is holy and who is love. "Living a Christian life will cost you your life so you can get Christ's life."

Why It Matters

All of it, refusing to fight people, absorbing rejection, pursuing holiness — serves one end. It puts a believer in position to deliver the gospel clearly.

"So the reason why we have to win, and we have to go through all of this trouble, is because we're needed by God and we're needed by the people."

God needs you living holy so you can tell people they can be saved. People need you living holy so the message reaches them clearly enough to answer.

"Look how important we are to God."