Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:11-12).
At the end of what has come to be called the Beatitudes, in what we have come to call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that we are blessed when we are reviled and persecuted for His name’s sake. We should be glad and rejoice when we are so treated, because we are in the company of the prophets and Apostles, who were persecuted and martyred for the name of Christ before us.
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| Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS in 2015 for their faith. |
Jesus spends a lot of time talking about how the world will hate Him, His Word, and those who confess it. Jesus says: If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.[1] He tells His disciples that there will come a time that whoever kills them will think that he offers God a service.[2] All of the Apostles, except for John, saw that time and were martyred for the name of Jesus. The continued persecution of Christians, and their gruesome beheading at the hands of men shouting “god is great”, testifies that we are still in that time. It shall remain so until Christ returns to judge the living and the dead.
So, how can we rejoice in the face of such a dismal prognosis? Peter tells us: Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.[3] Our reproach is to Christ’s glory. We must understand, as those who have gone before us certainly did, that here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one that is to come.[4] Remembering this we can, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews directs, continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name, not forgetting to do good.[5]
The Beatitudes are not a quid pro quo that we must do in order to get the blessings Jesus describes. We understand, rather, that the blessings Jesus describes belong to His disciples already through faith in him, according to our new nature. We were washed, we were sanctified, we were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.[6] This is how we can rejoice in the face of suffering, persecution, and death because of the name of Jesus that we bear through our Baptism. We have as our present possession, through faith in Christ, the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. And we have for our examples in that faith all those brothers and sisters in Christ who have endured persecution and suffering to the end, and have fallen asleep in Jesus. And, if Our Lord should tarry, we will also go to our rest in Christ to await the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting in the new heavens and the new earth.
Despised and scorned, they sojourned here;
But now, how glorious they appear!
Those martyrs stand a priestly band,
God’s throne forever near.
So oft, in troubled days gone by,
In anguish they would weep and sigh.
At home above the God of Love
For aye their tears shall dry.
They now enjoy their Sabbath rest,
The paschal banquet of the blest;
The Lamb, their Lord, at festal board
Himself is Host and Guest.[7]
