SAFEGUARDS AGAINST SCHMUCKS

Recognize. Regard. Respect.

Let me ask you something: have you ever known someone whose behavior was so outrageous that if you tried to invent it, nobody would believe you?

In 1989, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a unanimous decision in a mail fraud case. And I want you to notice the name of the case, because I promise you, I am not making this up — Schmuck v. United States.¹ For fifteen years, a man named Wayne Schmuck ran a used-car dealership in Illinois. His scheme was simple and dishonest: he rolled back odometers — sometimes by 18,000 miles or more — and then sold those cars to unsuspecting dealers at inflated prices. When federal investigators finally traced it back to him, a jury convicted him on twelve counts of fraud. Friend, that man's own name became the legal term for the crime.

I share that story not to make light of federal fraud, but because it hands us something we've all felt and rarely had a word precise enough for. Somewhere along the way, you and I have met a schmuck. Maybe more than one. Someone who lied to your face, undercut you at work, turned your own friends against you, or hurt someone you love — and walked away without so much as a backward glance. You don't need a law degree to recognize one. You just need to have lived long enough.

And if that describes your life right now, I have good news and hard news for you today — and they come wrapped in the very same verse of Scripture.

The Schmucks Jesus Faced — and the Ones You'll Face Too

Here's the hard news first: you're not exempt. Jesus Himself was reviled (Mark 15:32), spat upon and beaten (Matthew 26:67), and "despised and rejected" by His own people (Isaiah 53:3). He told His disciples plainly:

"If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you… If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." (John 15:18, 20, NASB)

Now here's the good news, folded inside that same hard truth: you are in excellent company. If you are hated, if people don't like you and can't quite explain why, if people treat you harshly, demean you, or drag your name through the mud — friend, it may well be because you carry within your bosom the very Babe of Bethlehem. You need to settle this from the outset: you will endure trials. You will experience opposition. You will be misunderstood, even by close family, friends, and coworkers. You will — because Jesus was.

The apostle Paul described his own experience in one breathless sentence: "hard-pressed on every side, … perplexed, … persecuted, … struck down" (2 Corinthians 4:8–9, NASB). Peter warned believers to expect "fiery ordeals" (1 Peter 4:12). None of this is the fine print of the Christian life — it is the main text. If this is happening to you, take heart. You are in great company.

There's an old story about a pastor who asked his congregation to raise a hand if they had enemies. Nearly every hand went up. He narrowed the question — a few enemies, one or two — and the hands thinned with each round. Finally he asked if anyone had no enemies at all, and a 98-year-old man in the back row raised his hand. Delighted, the pastor invited him forward and asked his secret. The old man grinned: "All the old buzzards finally died."²

Most of us don't have that luxury. The schmucks are still very much alive, and Jesus never promised us a life without them. In fact, He said something far more sobering: "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way" (Luke 6:26, NASB). If everyone likes you, that might not be a compliment, friend — it might be an indictment.

We Shall Overcome

But facing adversaries is not the same as being defeated by them. Paul's full sentence to the Corinthians doesn't end where I stopped it above — it turns a corner: "hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4:8–9, NASB). Jesus said it even more simply: "In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NASB).

We overcome — not by outmaneuvering our opponents in our own strength, but by opening God's Word and, through the power of His Spirit, applying the strategies He has lovingly given us. I've found twelve of them tucked through Scripture, and — because I couldn't resist — every single one starts with the letter R. If you have adversaries on every side today, take heart. This can be your day of victory. Let's look at the first three together.

I. Recognize the True Culprit

There is a war raging right now — every single day, all around you — and it is not the kind of war you see on the evening news, although that war is real too. No, the war I'm talking about is fought on another battlefield entirely: the spiritual realm. The first safeguard shifts our eyes from the human stage to the invisible one: the person opposing you is not the ultimate source of the opposition.

A. Invisible Entities. Paul pulls back the curtain in Ephesians 6:12 (NASB):

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."

If you treat your human opponent as the real enemy, you'll fight with human weapons — anger, retaliation, bitterness — and you will lose every time. Your spouse, your boss, your difficult relative, your critical neighbor: none of them is the true culprit. They are flesh and blood, being used by an invisible enemy who delights in turning image-bearers against one another.

B. A Perfect Example. We only need to look at one man to see this played out — Peter. Good old Peter, the disciple we can always count on for a dose of reality. Jesus tells the disciples He is going to the cross, and Peter, meaning well, pulls Him aside to correct Him. Incredible!  Jesus' response stops us cold: "Get behind Me, satan!" (Matthew 16:23). satan? That was Peter talking — but Peter, in that moment, was being used by an evil power he never saw coming. If it can happen to Peter, it can happen to your boss, your spouse, your child, your best friend. They may be genuinely born again — or not — and still, in a given moment, say something that is simply not from God.

C. Our Spiritual Exercise. When you realize the person standing in front of you may be, in that moment, under the influence of the enemy, your hostility can soften into holy discernment. You stop firing arrows at a prisoner of satan and aim your weapons at the one holding him captive instead. Jesus put it starkly to the religious leaders of His day:

"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father… he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44, NASB)

Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 10:4 (NASB) that "the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses." You don't fight spiritual darkness with human revenge. You fight it on your knees, shielded by faith, armed with the Word. And you fight it with authority Jesus Himself handed you: "Behold, I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall injure you" (Luke 10:19, NASB). All authority — over all the power of the enemy. Next time a schmuck rears his or her head, remember: they’re speaking from behind prison bars. Pity them. Pray for them. Ask God to loose them from their captivity — the way Someone once did for you and me.

II. Regard Your Own Capability

The second safeguard is humbling, but it's exactly the medicine our souls need: before you catalog everything your opposition has done to you, take an honest look at what you are capable of, apart from the grace of God.

Scripture grants none of us self-righteous immunity. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23, NASB). The Greek word behind "fall short" is hystereō (hoos-ter-EH-oh),³ meaning to come up short of the mark entirely — to miss God's perfect standard completely. John goes further, writing to believers: "If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves" (1 John 1:8, GWT). Thinking you're above reproach is not maturity — it's hypocrisy dressed in its Sunday best. The capacity for the very things your schmuck did to you lives inside every one of us; the only difference between you and him, on our best day, is the restraining grace of God and presence of the Holy Spirit.

In Matthew 7:3–5, Jesus addresses fault-finders with surgical precision: "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not notice the beam in your own eye?… Hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" (TLV). The late Greek scholar Dr. Kenneth Wuest unpacked this picture beautifully.⁴ The speck (karphos, kar-FOS)⁵ is not even a splinter of wood — it's a speck of chaff, a microscopic irritant. The beam (dokos, do-KOS)⁶ is a massive load-bearing timber, the kind that holds up an entire roof. Jesus is asking: why are you squinting at a piece of sawdust in someone else's eye while a two-by-four sticks out of your own?

And that word "hypocrite" — hypokritēs (hoo-po-kree-TEES)⁷ — was, in ancient Greece, simply the word for a stage actor. Someone wearing a mask, playing a part that wasn't his true self. When we rush to play spiritual eye surgeon on someone else while ignoring the timber in our own eye, we've become actors — pretending we're clean while we're blind to our own mess.

None of us stands on ground high enough to play the critic. Remember the example our Savior left us — He who, being in the form of God, laid all of it aside and became a Servant, who stripped Himself of glory to strap on an old rugged cross. "He who was rich became poor, so that we through His poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). Walk humbly before God, and He will exalt you in due time. Amen?

III. Respect the Creator's Image

The third safeguard that keeps an adversary's attack from knocking you off your spiritual footing is simply this: remember who made him.

In Genesis 1, God declared, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" (Genesis 1:26, NASB). Think of it this way: a coin stamped with a king's face doesn't stop being that coin just because it's been dropped in the mud. Scrape off the grime, and the king's image is still pressed into the metal underneath. That's what every human being carries — sinner and saint alike. James makes this connection with startling clarity:

"With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God." (James 3:9, NASB)

The Greek word behind "likeness" is homoiōsis (ho-moy-OH-sis),⁸ carrying the idea of a deep, fundamental resemblance. No matter how hostile or destructive someone's behavior may be, the original blueprint God stamped on them has not been erased. Theologian John Piper has said it well: when humanity fell in Genesis 3, the image of God in man was not destroyed — it was defaced.⁹ Being a sinner doesn't mean a person has stopped being made in God's image; it means the image has been smudged, not scrubbed out.

So here's what we can't afford to miss: the moment you or I strip a person of their dignity as God's image-bearer — even quietly, in the privacy of our own thoughts — we give ourselves permission to treat them as less than human. When we deface them in our hearts, we're forgetting who fashioned them.

Consider the schmucks Jesus rubbed shoulders with. He didn't discard them. He walked with them, talked with them, brought them into His presence. He saw something in loud, impulsive Simon that transformed him into Peter. He saw the imprint of His own image in Judas, even while Judas walked a path toward betrayal. He waited patiently for both of them to turn to Him — the same way He once waited for you and me. And friend, God saw His reflection in you — so much so that He was willing to lay down His life so that His life could be planted in your heart and soul forever.

The apostle Jude, who met his share of schmucks, put it this way: "Have mercy on those who are wavering — save them by snatching them out of the fire; but on others have mercy with fear" (Jude 1:22–23, TLV). Do what Jesus did: seek and save. Snatch them out of the fire. Have mercy on their poor, pathetic, schmucky souls — because that image, buried under the mud, still needs to be made whole.

This Week's Challenge

The next time a schmuck crosses your path — and one will — try this before you say a single word: recognize the real enemy behind the attack, regard what you yourself are capable of apart from grace, and respect the God-stamped image still pressed into that person's soul, however buried it may be. It won't change them overnight. But I promise you, it will change you — and that's often where God starts.

Next time, we'll look at three more safeguards: how to read the Canon of God's Word for His promises, how to respond correctly, and how to rely on the Comforter. Until then, walk in grace, friend — you'll need it, and so will they.

Endnotes

1. Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705 (1989).

2. A widely circulated pulpit illustration of uncertain original authorship, retold in various forms across preaching collections.

3. Hystereō — see standard Greek lexicons (e.g., Thayer's, Strong's) on Romans 3:23.

4. Kenneth S. Wuest, Wuest's Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, commentary on Matthew 7:3–5.

5. Karphos — Wuest, ibid.

6. Dokos — Wuest, ibid.

7. Hypokritēs — Wuest, ibid.; see also standard Greek lexicons on Matthew 7:5.

8. Homoiōsis — see standard Greek lexicons (e.g., Strong's, Vine's) on James 3:9.

9. John Piper, on the doctrine of the imago Dei in a fallen world — themes developed across his writing and preaching ministry.