(Jeremiah 11:18-20; Matthew 5:10, 1 Peter 3:13-17)
Back in January, I argued that this first section of the Sermon on the Mount is composed of eight beatitudes, rather than nine, and ends here in verse 10. For one thing, while verses 11-12 are certainly a pronouncement of blessing, they are a very different one, moving in a different direction for a different purpose. We’ll get into that next week. My other main reason for this conclusion is that this beatitude and the first share the same promise statement: “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” As I noted then, this is a simple form of parallelism called an inclusio, which is designed to frame a passage, to put it into a particular context. These references to the kingdom of heaven—Matthew’s language for the kingdom of God—frame the Beatitudes, and we need to understand them in that context: these are statements about the life of the kingdom of heaven. As God transforms us with his life, this is how we come to live.
As I said when we looked at the first beatitude, this promise goes with “Blessed are the poor in spirit” because being poor in spirit is the essential characteristic of the citizens of the kingdom of God: if it comes down to a choice between God on the one hand, and on the other, your earthly riches, ambitions, desires, and accomplishments, which are you going to choose? This is the dividing line between those who bow before Christ in love as Lord, and those who will bow in the end, but only because they must. Here, we have the other end of the process, as you might say: if yours is the kingdom of heaven, this is how the kingdoms of earth are probably going to treat you. As Curtis Mayfield would say, “people get ready.”
Why do I say that? Well, remember the context. Those who are persecuted for the sake of God’s righteousness are those who hunger and thirst for his righteousness; and if you hunger and thirst for his righteousness, if you live for his righteousness, if you pursue his righteousness above all other things, what are you not doing? You are not hungering and thirsting for the products this world wants to sell you; you are not living for its applause and its approval; you are not pursuing its agenda or its approved goals. This means you are not under its thumb, you are not under its influence, it has no lever on you—and that makes you a threat to be neutralized or eliminated. If you are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, sooner or later, the world is going to rise up and try to change that fact, by any means necessary.
Now, at this point, we must be clear about two things. First, this verse doesn’t just apply to people who get their heads chopped off by Muslims in Iran or Hindus in India or Communists in North Korea. Obviously, if you stand up to preach the gospel in someplace as hostile as Iran or North Korea, you can expect obvious, direct and severe persecution; but that’s not the only kind the world has to offer. Those who pursue the righteousness of God will find that persecution may come anywhere—it’s just more subtle in some places than others.
And I do mean anywhere; as the Holy Spirit reminded me while I was praying about this text, we can’t assume that the church is not the world. We ought to be able to, but we can’t; there are plenty of people building earthly kingdoms in the church, running the church by worldly methods, for worldly reasons. Persecution for righteousness’ sake happens surprisingly often within the church—though it shouldn’t really be surprising if we think about Jesus. He was certainly killed for righteousness’ sake, after all, and it was the religious folk who killed him.
Second, this verse does not in any way imply that persecution is evidence of righteousness. Jesus does not say, “Blessed are those who are persecuted and claim to be righteous.” I expect we’ve all known people who claimed they were being persecuted for righteousness’ sake, when actually they were being persecuted because they were jerks. If you’re an insensitive lout, the fact that you’re quoting Bible verses rather than Howard Stern or Bill Maher doesn’t change the fact that you’re being persecuted for being an insensitive lout, not for being righteous. Being a victim is not proof of moral superiority, however much our world might think otherwise.
That said, if we are seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness with any sort of seriousness, we will be offensive to many people, and we will be perceived as a threat by some. By our very way of life, by the goals we set, by the things we say and don’t say, by the things we don’t laugh at and the joy in our laugh when we do, in the pleasures we pursue and those from which we turn aside, we will challenge people around us and call their lives into question, without ever trying to. We will make some of them uncomfortable enough that they’ll lash out against us in an effort to break us down or expose us as frauds.
When that happens, our instinct is to react—we’ve been talking about this lately, it’s fight or flight: we run, we back down, we compromise ourselves, or else we counterattack. Why? Because our gut-level assumptions go back to early childhood, where the practical definition of right and wrong is what makes our parents happy vs. what makes them mad, and the expectation is that if we behave, nobody will be mad at us. Obviously, some people grow up in badly fouled-up homes that don’t work that way at all—but that doesn’t change those subconscious presuppositions. When someone gets mad at us, our first flash is, “Oh, no, I did something wrong”; that may be followed immediately by, “No, I didn’t—how dare you!” Either way, it’s rooted in the assumption that if we’re doing what’s right, people will be happy with us.
Jesus here is saying, no—don’t expect the world to applaud you for seeking his righteousness, and don’t take it as a bad thing if you’re attacked for it. Take it as a challenge to examine your heart, first: is this because I’m being faithful to Jesus, is it a reaction to his righteousness in me, or is there sin here in my life that I’m not seeing? If I’m being persecuted, is it for the right reason? And if it is, take it as evidence of his blessing in your life. It is because yours is the kingdom of God that persecution has come; and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.