Blessed are They Which are Persecuted for Righteousness’ Sake….

…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.  Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, by D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, Vol.2 - The Sermon on the Mount, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev

MHA: It is not incidental that the list of Beatitudes concludes with the words concerning the persecution of Jesus’ followers.

Metropolitan Hilarion offers that in these verses, Jesus directly connects Himself to righteousness, or truth.  Those persecuted for righteousness’ sake are those persecuted for Jesus’s sake.  It was the same for the prophets who came before.

MHA: Here, truth and Jesus become synonymous.

Jesus reveals Himself as the source of these Beatitudes and as the main reason His followers will be persecuted.  Again, the placement is not random: live in accord with the earlier Beatitudes and the world will persecute you.

The persecution does not gain you heaven if you are persecuted because you are objectionable, or lacking in wisdom, or foolish, or acting a jerk; fanatics and zealots don’t receive the kingdom of heaven because they have been persecuted for this behavior.  You see the kingdom of heaven if you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake – for the truth of God and His kingdom.

Metropolitan Hilarion offers further that they won’t persecute you because they see the outward you as pure in spirit or weeping or mourning.  Lloyd-Jones offers a similar thought: they won’t persecute you for being good or noble or self-sacrificing (based on whatever values the world happens to hold at the moment). 

DMLJ: [The Christian] is persecuted because he is a certain type of person and because he behaves in a certain manner.

They will persecute you because you are the certain type of person who believes in Him, are following Him, and are doing these things and acting this way in Jesus’s name.  It means being like the Lord Jesus Christ.  However, Lloyd-Jones offers a caution, and I will summarize it this way: they didn’t persecute Jesus because He was a good and wise man; it isn’t just behavior.

DMLJ: So let us be careful that our ideas about Christ are such that the natural man cannot easily admire or applaud. … If you try to imitate Christ the world will praise you; if you become Christ-like, it will hate you.

Lloyd-Jones describes the difference: the Christian – the one who becomes Christ-like – is unlike anyone who is not a Christian.  Jesus came not to send peace, but a sword – there is a distinct difference between the Christian and non-Christian.  The Christian isn’t slightly different; he is fundamentally different; the Christian divides from the world and its praise.

Further, the Christian’s life is controlled and dominated by Jesus Christ.  We are persecuted for His sake, not for ours.  We have recognized that we owe everything to Him.  Through this, we face persecution without resentment, without retaliation, without becoming depressed. 

While we rejoice in persecution because it is a sign of being Christ-like, at the same time we regret persecution because it is a sign of the sin of the world.  Finally, such persecution is a sign of our ultimate destination – to be home with God, heaven.

Moving on, here again we see the same promise as offered in the first Beatitude: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Neither author really ties this together neatly, so I offer a possibility.  In the first Beatitude, we are told that we are blessed if we are one poor in spirit.  What does this mean, to be poor in spirit? 

MHA: In the words of Macarius the Great, to be poor in spirit means to be “never thinking [oneself] to be anything, but holding [oneself] in a lowly and humble attitude as one knowing or having nothing, even though [one] does know and does have much.”

DMLJ: …look at Him, and then you will have nothing to do to yourself.  It will be done.  You cannot truly look at Him without feeling your absolute poverty and emptiness.

This is sufficient to inherit the kingdom of heaven.  Perhaps this can be considered as justification.  But it is also not to be seen as the end of our Christian journey.  There are several more Beatitudes to go, ending with persecution.  Perhaps growing through these Beatitudes can be considered sanctification – a never-ending process, it seems to me.

This also suggests that wherever we are on this journey, once we accept that we are truly poor in spirit, we inherit the kingdom.  Having gone through all of the Beatitudes, on the one hand this doesn’t seem like a huge hurdle in hindsight. 

But revisit my post on this first Beatitude; or just look at the comments above by the two authors: what does it mean to be poor in spirit?  Never think of yourself, hold yourself lowly, as knowing nothing, as having nothing…look at Jesus, truly look at Him, and consider your absolute poverty in relation to Him. 

Consider who He is and that He humbled Himself for you.  But how much does our ego and pride get in the way of all of this?  So, even the first Beatitude is not a small step, and, perhaps, even this step, which can be taken only with God’s grace, justifies us in God’s eyes.

Returning to the authors and this issue of persecution: we know of this persecution of Christians, who stood in their faith against the demands of the state; who stood on the side of right knowing that such a stand would cost them their lives.  How is it, in this clown-world that we live in, that we see very few Christians being persecuted?  (And I live in as glass a house as anybody on this, so I am not throwing stones, just asking).

In our world and in our lives, we do not see blessedness or happiness in these Beatitudes, so we do not live them.  Spiritual poverty, weeping, meekness, the search for righteousness, etc. – these things are the opposite of what our world tells us about how we should live to be happy. 

MHA: Such a view of the world unavoidably leads to conflict with the world.  Those who possess such a worldview will inevitably be outcasts in the world, where happiness is measured in the categories of material wealth, success, and well-being.

And, I will add, going along with the story we are told to embrace – a worldly, even dark and evil story, examples for which we need not search through history text books to find but which we have lived in during our recent past and are living in today.

Conclusion

As Jesus said: if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.  If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.  This persecution led Jesus to the cross:

MHA: This cross of Jesus Christ stands not only at the center of the Christian faith, but also of Christian ethics.

Because fully living Christian ethics, as described in these Beatitudes and centered on Christ, will lead us to the same cross.

MHA: The Beatitudes are sometimes interpreted as being like a ladder, requiring a gradual ascent from the lower steps to the higher ones.  But this ladder ultimately leads a person to Golgotha, and ascending this ladder makes conflict with the world unavoidable.

The one who is persecuted as a result of having ascended this ladder is the one who is blessed.

DMLJ: …I sometimes think that this is the most searching of all the Beatitudes.  Are you suffering persecution?

It strikes me that none of the other Beatitudes offer such a clear means by which to test one’s Christian life.  How short I fall….