This is the ninth and last message in a series on Jesus’ statements called “the Beatitudes” that are found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:3-11; Luke 6:17-38). I have learned a great deal while researching and writing this series and it has renewed my faith. I hope that it has done the same for you.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:10-12).

At the start of the Beatitudes, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3). Now he uses the same phrase, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” about “those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Going on, Jesus said that those who suffer persecution and slander on his account will have a great reward in heaven. What are we to make of this?

In the second message I observed that the “poor in spirit” are those who are dependent on God for their very life and know it. In the Beatitude we are considering this week, Jesus spoke of those who are willing to risk their lives and reputations in faithfulness to God.

The world is a promiscuous and fickle lover. By world, I mean humans and their material interests in power and possession. The world desires to seduce and conquer human souls and when that’s accomplished, it leaves them and moves on.

Those who resist the world’s blandishments, it desires all the more. That’s what marketing is all about.

Those who are indifferent to the world, but devoted to God in worship and faithful in their living are hated by the world because by doing so they defy its power and devalue what it thinks it possesses. The world must attack those who peacefully ignore its pomp and power and reject its products. When temptation is resisted, and conformity rejected, the world employs coercive force. If coercion doesn’t work, the world will kill the faithful because it hates them.

Jesus said that all of this would be so:

If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, “They hated me without a cause” (John 15:18-25)

This hatred is expressed in persecution — harassment, ill-treatment, oppression, exile, subjugation, or extermination because of religion, race, or social outlook. It happens a lot. According to International Christian Concern ( www.persecution.org), an organization committed to advocate against persecution of Christians and to assist victims, 200 million Christians died from persecution in the world in the last century. A recent Vatican report estimates that 75 out of every 100 deaths for religious belief are Christian. Of course, persecution is abhorrent when it occurs against adherents of any faith. God rules by Spirit, not by might or power (Zech 4:6).

Numbers this large occurring in distant places have a surreal aspect to them. It is typical of the American Christian to breathe a sigh of relief and say, “It makes me thankful for the freedom of religion that we enjoy here. I’ll make a donation to help keep it that way.”

As an attorney representing Christian ministries and institutions, I know many stories of oppression of the faith and the faithful and I can see the threats of much more to come. I am not sharing those stories here because persecution should not be reduced to a dramatic testimony, an offering and a petition. Jesus made it personal to us. “Blessed are you,” he said, when people revile you and persecute you . . . on my account.”

Jesus was talking about something direct and intimate to us, not the heat we take when we put our religious beliefs at the service of a political party or cause whether conservative or liberal. That’s democracy, not persecution, and we trivialize God when we politicize our faith.

Neither was Jesus speaking to the anger received in response to strident approaches to proclamation of the Gospel. The Apostle Peter, no stranger to the aggressive assertion of faith, wrote near the end of his life, that aggression and boldness were not the same thing when it came to witness.

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ should be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil (1 Pet 3:13-17).

When it comes to witness, we do better by asking the world a question that it can’t answer and hasn’t thought about, than we do with rude and insensitive insistence on acceptance of our answers to questions that no one is asking. Faith cannot be forced into existence. Scripture and experience tell us that it is a gift, freely offered and freely received (Gal 5:22). Religious adherence enforced by legislation, the barrel of a gun, or the scorn of the “faithful,” or peer pressure is the result of fear not faith.

Matters of style and technique aside, faithfulness to Christ is the primary spark to persecution and that is a personal challenge to the believer. The first four Beatitudes speak to human conditions — spiritual poverty, grief, conflict, and hunger for righteousness — that turn us toward God. The last four speak to attitudes and actions — mercy, purity, peacemaking, and stands of faith and conscience — to which God   must be at the center, or they can be co-opted  into monstrous instruments of manipulation and control.

The Beatitudes are merely vapid platitudes and slogans without a belief in the Christ who spoke them. Faith in Christ is foundational to making the practice of Jesus’ words a living reality. That reality is Christ-breathed and Christ-dependent. It is inevitable that human governments, institutions, and businesses attack that inspiration and dependence to try to prevent the fatal devaluation of their franchises of power, trade and possession.

In the end, it all comes down to “market share” with regard to souls, and neither God nor the world will share the market. The eternal destiny of our souls is determined by our individual choices to live by, with and for God, but it is lost by our self-interested compromises with what the world idolizes (Cf Joshua 24:14-18).

God meant it when he said, “You shall have no other gods before me . . . for I the Lord your God am a jealous God . . . ” (Ex 20:3,5). Jesus, at the height of his popularity, said “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple . . . So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (Luke 14:26-27, 33).

Christ is the righteousness and the life of the believer in truth (1 Cor 1:30; Phil 3:9; Col 3:3-4). To be persecuted for “righteousness sake” and reviled on account of Christ is “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death” (Phil 3:910).

The Beatitudes are an accurate description of the cause and effect relationships implicit in a life compelled by the love of Christ (2 Cor 5:14). Our passionate surrender to the Lover of our souls is a standing rebuke to the world that seeks to use and abuse us to fuel its ambitions. The world will inevitably try to stop the message that condemns its selfishness by eliminating the living messengers.

The Apostle Peter heard the message of the Beatitudes from the lips of Christ, served as one of those living messengers, and was crucified for it by the Emperor Nero. Peter said that we who know that we are the beloved of Christ and live in the assured confidence of that love should take great joy when the world resents and attacks us for  it. We close this series with Peter’s encouraging admonition:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief-maker. Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name. For the time has come for judgement to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God?And

“If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,

what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?”

Therefore, let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good (1 Pet 12-190.

Who are you living for? What are you willing to die for? How would anyone know?

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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