Meditation May 12, 2020
Matthew 5:10
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
We come to the last of the beatitudes. The eight represent to us the characteristics of blessed people, the graces of a Christian. Having these graces, including being persecuted, are evidence that one is in an enviable relationship with God. We should not be surprised if the world looks at these graces and then looks on us as if we are bereft of our senses. They seem to be a collection of paradoxes. Blessed are meek, low in spirit mourners, hungering and thirsting, longing for that which they do not have while being persecuted? The world not only does not understand but cannot understand. “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1 Cor. 2:14)
The world likes to assume that it is well disposed to God’s kingdom and will greet His children with open arms. Many in the world will even presume themselves to be citizens of the kingdom of God until they run abreast of the real deal. Until the world is confronted with the demands of God it likes to assume its arms are open, if not to the gospel itself, at least to those who embrace the gospel and certainly open for God to embrace them. But confronted with the real deal, the world bucks and kicks and speak evil of believers and say the God they serve is no such god. That is just the way it is and the way it will be. Thus, Jesus gives us this check, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness…” by which we may judge of ourselves whether or not we are being the genuine article or if there is that which we yet need to surrender to Him as Lord.
With this the beatitudes come with bookends as it were. They open with the meek who own the kingdom of heaven and they close with the meek, humble before the King and willing to suffer persecution for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I once read somewhere that this beginning and ending of the beatitudes with the blessing of heaven is a literary device, it has a name I can’t recall, that means the material contained between the bookends , a unit, a totality and the various characteristics, although they may vary in degree in believers are nonetheless characteristics which belong to every believer. They describe different facets of the same gem. That being the case, we are obliged to seek to maximize each in ourselves as the grace of God empowers us.
We are told in this beatitude, that following Christ as we ought, we will be persecuted. The term was properly used of game, wild animal pursued by hunters. If we look at ourselves and this stings a bit because we have some difficulty pointing to a time when we, because we stood for the truth of God, found ourselves persecuted, we should take that to heart. It is not just a streak of luck we have never been persecuted; rather it is an indication we have been slack in taking a stand. First, we should be thankful for the sting for the dead feel no such sting. If we feel the sting, we are by the grace of God, alive to his chastening. Then we should take a hard look at why we feel more sting from this than from the venom of a persecuting world. It is a sad fact we must all face that in the current state of the church, when we take a stand as the real deal, when we begin to live Christlike lives, we will as often find persecution from the tongues of those who are supposedly God’s people as we do from the world. Nothing is more threatening to a coat-tail believer than a follower of Christ. Sincere loyalty to Christ causes chafing in the hearts of those who pay only lip service to the Savior. Stand for the truth and you will be persecuted, ostracized, labeled a zealot, called a radical and avoided. The former begets the latter. That is the way it is in the world.
Peter put the teaching of this beatitude this way: It is commendable before God if you endure suffering for good because this is what Christ who suffered for you has called you to. (1 Peter 2:19-21)
But let us well take heed that it is of those who suffer for righteousness sake that it is said the “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It is not the reward of the contentious, the obnoxious, the troublemaker. To be righteous is to be like God, to embrace that which God embraces, to approve that which God approves. To be righteous is not only to confess with our tongues that all God’s commandments are righteousness (Psa. 119:172) but to have our lives in conformity with that which we confess. Righteousness is to love the Lord with all your heart mind and sour and you neighbor as yourself; it is conformity of your life to divine law. Righteousness is to suffer persecution without reviling those who persecute. It is to follow the example of Jesus who, when he was reviled, did not refile in retaliation nor threaten those who persecuted Him but left that to God who has said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” (1 Peter 2:23) (Ro. 12:19)
By living righteously, we set ourselves apart from the world. That is what it means to be sanctified; i.e. to be set apart. By righteous living we profess to the world that we are not of them; we do not belong to their worldview, we do not accept their religion, we profess there is but one name under heaven by which a man may be saved. That reproves the world; it condemns their lives, their practices and their religion and it stirs their anger against us and puts them in one way or another to persecuting us. It matters not that we speak truth or even that they know in the depths of their hearts that we speak truth. They will not hear truth from us. They are like Ahab who said of Macaiah, “there is still one prophet who can inquire of the LORD (and tell me what God says) but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good”; i.e. he always tells me the truth. Well, by word and life that is what the Christian does, that is righteousness and for that comes persecution. It puts us at odds with the world and the world at odds with us. It forces us to choose. It is told that a man came to Tertullian with this very problem. He was having business difficulties because of his stand for righteousness. “What can I do?” the man asked, I must live.” To that Tertullian replied, “Must you?” I have a friend in CA. I haven’t seen him for many years. I remember well when he was confronted with this same problem. He worked for an insurance company. They had promised him, because he told them at the outset of his opposition to abortion, that he would not be required to offer that. Later he learned the insurance package he offered contained abortion coverage. When Steve confronted them about this, he was given a choice between continuing to offer the insurance or finding another job. A real Christian never hesitates to choose loyalty to the LORD. So, though he had a wife and two children at home, Steve chose loyalty.
Those who live righteously and proclaim righteousness are salt in an open wound and we may rest assured it will cause smarting. If we find we never cause others to smart, we should take heed to Jesus warning, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you….”
Persecution is evidence by which we may judge we are living righteously and that we have found favor with God. It is not the means thereto but that by which we may judge that we belong to the Kingdom of Heaven. Sinclair Ferguson put it this way: “…conflict becomes the very assurance that our salvation is genuine. And so we can rejoice now as well as later in heaven.”
May God forgive us our moments of weakness and grant us the grace always to choose loyalty to Him.
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