"Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:10-12 (NASB)
The third command of our Lord Jesus Christ is that when we are persecuted for the Lord's sake, we should rejoice. That is a very tall order, but nonetheless it is a command of our Lord. It can also be a bit disillusioning for those who are just starting out in earnestly walking after the Lord Jesus Christ. For the most part when we first come to the Lord we are enamored with our newly found discovery of God's love and empowerment from our Lord Jesus Christ. We feel so good that it's hard to imagine that everyone doesn't really want to feel this good. We are so blessed to be forgiven we want everyone to experience that as well. After all, we serve a God who sent His one and only begotten son to pay the penalty for our sins so that we wouldn't have to perish! Why aren't people lined up down the street four abreast around the block to partake of this glorious gift? We serve the Lord that willingly laid down his life for us so that we can have a more abundant life (John 10:1-18). We we're so happy to be loved, wanted, redeemed and accepted by God, we can't imagine such great news would make anyone unhappy, let alone angry. Ironically, that's exactly what it does. Why is that the case?
Taking things from the godly and biblical perspective, there are basically only two types of people in the world. These might be called redeemed and unredeemed. Another word would be righteous or unrighteous; or regenerated versus unregenerate persons. Basically the saved, righteous regenerated person is one who has committed their lives to God and Jesus Christ and has requested God's free gift of salvation. This person is being transformed gradually day by day from the inside-out until their thoughts, motives, attitudes, desires, emotions, choices and behaviors come into complete agreement with God and Jesus Christ. The other group of people; those that Scripture refers to as "the world" or unregenerate, sinful, or unrighteous are those people who have not yet understood or actively accepted the love of God or His gift of salvation into their lives. Scripture overtly states that these people have their mind controlled by their sinful nature and what their sinful nature desires. They are hostile against God. Those who have their minds set and controlled by the sinful nature both refuse to, and cannot bring themselves under subjection to God's Law and Commandments. They live to satisfy their own sinful passions, the ideologies and thinking patterns of the world system that is hostile to God and driven by sinful human nature. They cannot please God, nor indeed do they desire to do so. For as it is written:
Romans 8:5-8 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. [6] For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, [7] because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, [8] and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (NASB)
When we understand the dynamics of how the sinful world thinks and functions, then the sinful world's persecution of the righteous, while not excusable by any means, is logically understandable:
1. The sinful world with its false political and religious system has its thinking controlled by their sinful nature. They are hostile against God. They both refuse, and cannot subject themselves to God's Law or His Commandments, and the enemy (the devil) blinds their minds so that they cannot see the truth of their sinful nature and their very real desperate need for the Savior (see 2 Corinthians 4:4). One of the chief characteristics of this is that they suppress the truth with their wickedness (Romans 1:18).
2. The sinful world desperately wants to believe that people are "basically good," that humanity doesn't really NEED the Savior, and if by chance we do need saving, they want to believe that we don't really need to bring ourselves under subjection to Almighty God and Jesus Christ, because they want to believe that their own man made-up philosophies and man-made religious traditions will be sufficient to get the job done. At the root of it is a powerful desire to deny that Yahweh Almighty God is God, then He is in charge, that God will judge all of humankind according to His Righteous Standards, and that we are all indeed answerable to Him for all of our thoughts, desires, motives, choices, words and actions. The sinful world desperately wants to deny that we will in fact answer to the One True Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth for these areas of our lives. Jesus describes the general attitude of the wicked (John 3:18-20; cf. Romans 1:18-32; 2 Timothy 3:1-7).
3. By contrast, the person who has been born again, who has come to saving faith in Almighty God and the Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) Whom God has sent (John 17:3); that person loves God and has been transformed an renewed by God (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ezekiel 36:25-27). The person who has been regenerated by God, loves God, and as such, they want to please God and obey His Commandments (John 14:21; John 15:14; Matthew 12:48-50). When such people discover that they are coming short of what pleases God it grieves and bothers them, and they want to repent and return quickly to God's ways. Moreover, the born-again, regenerated God follower is commanded to be salt and light and to demonstrate God's ways by their lifestyle and with testimonies and declarations.
4. When the sinful world with its mindset on the sinful nature encounters a believer who is transformed, and who is subjecting himself or herself to the Law of God, the sinful world has a real problem, because the God follower is living proof that one can repent, and one can walk with God, one can obey God, and one can live a life of love and self-sacrifice if they allow God to change them. The God follower is living proof to the sinful world, that God IS, and that He changes lives if people let Him. So in effect, the effective Christian demonstrates to the sinful world that they have no real excuse for continuing to rebel against God. So the sinner is left with two choices. He can either repent, turn to God, and be saved, or he can dig his heels in, try to ignore, or try to oppress the message of the Gospel out of existence, so that he does not have to deal with it. Sadly, many sinners and sinful world systems choose the second option instead of the first. That's why persecution of the righteous by the wicked happens so frequently in our world.
It's important to recognize that a person cannot truly be able to obey God or His Commandments until God renews our nature from our sinful human nature into a new godly one. The command Jesus gave in Matthew 5:11-12 was given at the end of a portion of Scripture called the Beatitudes. These passages describe the attitudes that we will see beginning to develop in our lives if we are truly born-again or regenerated. Clearly a godly person has different attitudes and desires than an ungodly person has. The godly or regenerated person will have the desire for what God says is good. The worldly sinful and un-regenerated person may have some of the same basic needs and wants, but will try to satisfy them using their own methods or ungodly means.
For example, in the world system with its self-satisfying ideologies you will usually hear that you will be blessed, happy or in an enviable position when you have the right job, the better newer possessions; (the new house, car, electronic toy), if you make a lot of money, have the most gorgeous partner, the best sex life, the right waist size or whatever else. What's more, they will tell you that you can usually have that stuff for several easy payments of $__.
Jesus the Messiah says that the way to really be blessed is to develop an appetite; a hunger and thirst after righteousness. If we let God develop this in our lives, He will satisfy our deepest longings. "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied" (Matthew 5:6). Do you see the difference? Messiah says that we are blessed when we mourn (Mathew 5:4), not because He wants us miserable but because He knows that God is the source of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3; Psalm 34:18, Psalm 147:3) and He wants to comfort us rather than our having to cover our pains and comfort ourselves with artificial and temporary substitutes that will never really satisfy our deepest longings anyway.
As we read in the passage of Romans above, those that are controlled by their sinful nature are very hostile to God and will also be very hostile to those who love God and want to live life according to God's precepts. The world with its ideologies teaches and wants us to believe that humanity is basically good. They desperately want us to believe that we can be good without God or that we don't need Him. This is a total lie, but that's what the world ideologies want us to accept. The truth is that there is One True God. He will in fact eventually judge the entire world past, present and future. The fact is we are not basically good. We are basically sinful, wicked, self-willed, and we need God to change our nature from the inside out with his love and righteousness otherwise we have no chance of pleasing God and we are doomed. Jesus Christ the Son of God died on the cross to pay the penalty our sins deserve and to intercede for us before God so that he would not have to judge us according to what our sins deserve. The world doesn't want to look at it this way, because it wants to believe other things that are completely hostile to the truth. Godly people don't think like the world (Romans 12:1-2). We are not to try to achieve our aims or chase after the same things that the world chases. As a result the world with its sinful ideologies is not going to like us. It's a fact, and one that we should probably understand from the very beginning. Jesus the Messiah said it Himself:
John 3:16-21 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. [17] "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. [18] "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. [19] "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. [20] "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. [21] "But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." (NASB emphasis added)
John 15:18-20 "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. [19] "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. [20] "Remember the word that I said to you, 'A slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. (NASB)
So we know that people who are driven by their sinful natures will be hostile to God, they will hate the light because it exposes their deeds for the evil that they are. We know that those of us who want to live according to God's precepts are not going to be loved and accepted by the ungodly, nor should we expect to be. With these dynamics being the reality of the sinful world in which we live, persecution comes with the territory. As it is written:
2 Timothy 3:12 Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (NASB)Since it is part of the fallen sinful world that we live in, we need to build our faith and character muscles so that when it happens we can keep and exhibit the right attitude. Keeping the right attitude is both a choice and a way of thinking. If you want to learn more about developing godly thinking, I recommend that you prayerfully read the book of Philippians in your Bible.
Obeying Christ's Third Command Successfully
So then how can we obey Christ's third command to rejoice when we are persecuted for the sake of righteousness? Well, the details may manifest in your life in slightly different ways, but there are some basic elements that we all need to keep in mind that will help us.(a) First, remember that the way I think and feel really is my decision. I can choose how I am going to think and feel. So make a conscious choice to rejoice. Along with this, make a decision that you are going to pursue those things that are of eternal value ahead of your comfort. God absolutely will comfort and encourage you along the way, but comfort cannot be your goal.
(b) Expect the challenges to come because they will. You will either face internal struggles whether you are fighting your own sinful desires from rising up, or you will face an external difficulties brought on by other people or external situations. Either way the key is to respond correctly to bring about the best results. We can't always control other people or situations, but we can learn to control how we respond. Learning to respond in godly ways no matter what the situation we encounter is imperative to successful Christian living.
When facing a trial, your attitude should always be something like: "I'm facing a challenge with X person or situation. It doesn't feel good and I'm definitely not enjoying it. Lord help me to seek and to correctly perceive and follow your direction, so that this will bring about the best results for my life and character. Please help me to persevere with you in this season until your best results are achieved in my life."
(c) Remember that you are not alone even when it feels like you are. Every other single person who has ever truly sought to live a life pleasing to God has faced some of the same internal and external challenges you are facing. Moses and the prophets who spoke for God were persecuted, Jesus was persecuted, the apostles were persecuted etc.. The fact is that every single believer faces internal and external challenges when they are seeking to live godly lives. God saw each one of them through their difficulties and he will bring you safely home as well.
(d) Remember that if you submit to God and rejoice in Him through whatever situation you find yourself, you are trials will end up making you, instead of destroying you. (See James 1:2; Romans 5:1-5). We have real-life examples of this found in the book of Genesis when we read about Joseph the patriarch, or when we read about the life of Daniel, or the life of David King of Israel before he became king. Each of these people face various trials and persecutions. They submitted to God and countless generations were blessed because of them. In fact, there life examples are an encouragement to us to this day.
Closing Prayer: Almighty God, Lord Jesus and gracious Holy Spirit; have mercy upon me. Save me by your gracious and unfailing love. I won't lie. I don't enjoy thinking and preparing for the prospect of being persecuted, but I want to live a godly life that pleases and honors You, so that means that some manner of persecution comes with the territory. I'm making the choice to rejoice. Lord, help me to make continuous choices and actions that are consistent with my choice to rejoice. Please help me not to fall into any internal or external sin when I am undergoing trial. Please help me to persevere in loving, trusting, and obeying you in whatever circumstances I encounter. Mercifully preserve me in Your love comfort and salvation to the very end.
I ask that you would also grant these blessings to every single believer who is undergoing any degree of challenge or persecution for their faith. Grant them overcoming love, overcoming faith and overcoming obedience in You. Mercifully comfort them and bring them to total victory by Your grace. In Christ's name, amen.
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