Standing Up For What Is Right
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way, they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:10-12)
In his fourth beatitude, Jesus promises blessings for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In this final beatitude, he tells us that that seeking righteousness is costly but worth it.
I want to remind you, once again, of the deep meaning found in the word blessed. To be blessed is to experience the fullness of life that Jesus promises. And the path to that fulfilled life lies in swimming against the current of the world’s way to happiness. “You have heard it said” is Jesus’ way of contrasting these two very different ways.
This final beatitude is the longest. It has three verses compared to the one verse found in all the others, and for good reason: I don’t know anyone who likes to be insulted, lied about, or otherwise attacked. But that is the inevitable path we must take to experience the abundant life Jesus promises.
What we find here is the narrow path that Jesus tells us leads to life. Few will choose that path, says Jesus. Most will take the broad path, the path that leads to destruction or ruin. I used to think of these two paths as referring to our ultimate destination in life - heaven or hell. But that’s not what Jesus says.
The longer I live and grow in my knowledge of God’s ways and God’s kingdom, the more I realize how much the good news is about life here and now as opposed to pie in the sky, bye, and bye. I’ve lived long enough now to have seen the ruin that comes to those who are caught up in the world’s way of living. In my book, Masterpiece in the Making, I describe the successful misery of so many who experience so-called success but whose lives are coming apart at the seams.
There’s an important phrase in this verse - “the prophets who were before you.” Now, you may not consider yourself a prophet. At least not compared to the prophets of the Old Testament or those called prophets in the New Testament church. But there is a sense in which all followers of Jesus are indeed prophets. Maybe not in the same way we think of prophets in the pages of our Bible, but prophets nonetheless. Let me explain.
A word used often for the prophets in the Bible is seer. This word speaks of the ability of those who are prophets to see beyond the surface of things. There is a spiritual intuitiveness in their lives that allows them to see the world around them through a different set of eyes than others. I think this is how Jesus uses the word prophets in this beatitude. As we trust Christ and enter into God’s kingdom through repentance (a word which literally means to change how we think, to gain a new perspective on our lives and our world) we see the world around us differently. This different perspective often puts us at odds with and diametrically opposed to the world’s way of thinking. Persecution naturally follows.
In Prophets of Patriots: How Evangelicals are Giving to Caesar What Belongs to God, I describe this very thing in the lives of those Old Testament prophets who were always in the minority and who suffered intense ridicule and persecution from their own religious community led by those ambitious nationalistic prophets and priests who led Israel to ruin. The same thing happened to Jesus, whose crucifixion came at the hands of religious leaders whose worldly nationalistic perspective placed them at odds with the ways of God’s kingdom.
Standing in the temple, just days before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus addressed these misguided religious leaders saying, “And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!”
And complete it they did! Standing in the courtyard of Pilate, Caesar’s representative in Palestine, they rejected God’s King, their promised Messiah, saying, “We have no king but Caesar.”
As followers of King Jesus and citizens in God’s kingdom (or in today’s language, nation), we, of all people, should recognize the broken and failing worldly institutions, political ideologies, and misguided ambition of those who we so often passionately and blindly follow. This is what distinguishes God’s prophets. This is the mark of the disciples of Christ.
Something else. The one thing that all prophets have in common is a passion for justice. You may remember from an earlier post that the Greek word for justice is the same as the word for righteousness. Righteousness and justice go together hand in hand. And if there is one thing that characterizes those who are living in the light of God’s kingdom, it is their ability to not only see and grieve over the injustices in our world, but to speak and live in such a way that makes it clear that they will neither ignore, downplay, or become participants in these injustices.
This makes us different. It makes us outsiders. Like Jesus, we are shedding light on darkness. The result is those refusing to come to the light will, in the words of Jesus, insult, persecute, and say all kinds of evil against us. That’s because the light in which we choose to walk reveals the darkness they refuse to acknowledge.
There is a lot more to say about this, and I will do that in my next post as I conclude our study of The Beatitudes.
In Christ,
Dan
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