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How Jesus Relates Persecution to the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount and His Example to Us In Doing So
In what is called “the Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7, Jesus preaches salvation to a Jewish crowd of people and pulls down with supernatural wisdom and authority their unique strongholds. For instance, in the very first statement, one of the Beatitudes, He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Jews didn’t see themselves as spiritually poor, but spiritually wealthy. They were by rights, God’s chosen people. Of course, they were already “blessed” through the Abrahamic covenant, and even in their own eyes, the Mosaic covenant, according to the Deuteronomic code. None of their thinking was true on this, so Jesus eviscerated it in the Sermon.
Another Jewish thought is “the kingdom.” They would have considered themselves already the beneficiaries of the kingdom through the Davidic covenant. “Heaven” is the abode of God and they saw themselves as the children of God, so wherever God was, they would be, even as God resided in the tabernacle through the wilderness. Jesus confronts their wrong thinking when he shows the rich man is in Hell, not in heaven in Luke 16. None of this, the kingdom or heaven, was theirs, however, unless they were poor in spirit, which meant that they acquiesced to their own spiritual poverty, that they really were lacking and in dire need. They needed to do what the Apostle Paul did and count their own spirituality as loss and as dung for them to win Christ or find themselves under the reign of the Messiah in His kingdom with all its promised blessings.
The Jews already saw themselves as sadly and badly not receiving their just desserts, their appropriate reward. According to their own assessment, they were persecuted by the Romans as they had been by many other various empires previously. This would fly in the face of being a blessed people and a kingdom people. It was an unacceptable circumstance that should be turned around and would be reversed by a true Messiah. That’s not what Jesus said though.
Just like the people in the kingdom of heaven would be first poor in spirit, they would also be persecuted for righteousness sake (Matthew 5:10). Persecution is the guaranteed cost of a truly saved person and Jesus frontloads this in His gospel presentation in Matthew 5:10-12. As people enter into true salvation through Jesus Christ, they need to expect persecution. They need to count the cost. Jesus said in Luke 9:23, that if any man will come after him, let him take up his cross daily. Jesus issues that understanding right up front to those who might receive the kingdom. It’s a narrow road with few on it.
Churches today do not give their targets for attendance or membership the impression that they will suffer or be persecuted by joining up. That’s a way to shrink the numbers. However, it is the method of Jesus. He included that in His gospel presentation and more than once. Do not expect to have it easy if you’re a Christian, and that’s not why you’re receiving Christ, for what you’ll receive in time, because that’s going to be persecution. Very likely why less are truly converted today is because they do not see the Christian life as worth suffering for. They would choose a Christianity full of pleasure, but not the one with guaranteed pain, so they reject genuine Christianity for the placebo. Churches offer the placebo, because that’s what people want. Then the entire program of the church revolves around various pleasures, especially for the young people.
The Jews thought they were persecuted already, but they were were persecuted for unrighteousness. Daniel prophecies why Israel would be dominated by the Romans. He was downhearted by the lack of enthusiasm for God among the captives in Babylon, comfortable to just stay and not return to the land for true worship of God. They would keep being chastised because of their faithlessness and then they took that as persecution. Actual persecution is for righteousness and not unrighteousness. Just because the Jews of Jesus’ day were suffering didn’t mean they were persecuted and neither did it mean they had a future kingdom for them. No, that kingdom was only for those persecuted for righteousness.
People in the future kingdom do not fit into the present one, the kingdom of this world. The people under the future reign of Jesus are those who want a present reign of Jesus. People who want Him to be king in the future have got to want Him to be king in the present. Those over whom Jesus reigns will be persecuted. They will not fit in. They will be despised, reviled, and accused falsely by men. That will be the norm for those following Jesus Christ into the kingdom and He wants them to know that right up front.
Jesus isn’t going to take away persecution in the short term. He offers the future kingdom as a motivation for present rejoicing. The basis for being exceeding glad now is the reward in heaven for all eternity. There is a lack of joy in churches and in professing Christian families because of something far less than persecution. The church and family members are not getting their way and they don’t like the discomfort now. They expect to be treated better and have their rights protected. When they get hard preaching from scripture they become easily offended. When they are required to live like a Christian, they are put off and threaten to quit, if not just to find another church where they’ll be treated like they want.
Professing Christians aren’t looking for a church where they will suffer. They are looking for a place of creature comforts with lots of friends. This is not what Jesus told true believers to expect. He told them just the opposite and He included it in His gospel presentation.
The Circularity and Wholeness of the Beatitudes As a New Covenant Corollary to God’s Law
God is One and His Law Is One. One could say the Old Covenant is One. The New Covenant doesn’t differ than the Old Covenant. It is a corollary to it, so in the same way the Law is circular and whole, the Beatitudes of Jesus are.
The New Covenant assumes that man has broken the Old Covenant. Is he now hopeless? Is God’s purpose for man now permanently ruined? When God went to find Adam and Eve in the Garden, He introduced the New Covenant to them as the only pathway forward.
While Jesus’ ministered on earth, His audience tried to force the Old Covenant into something it could not do without the New Covenant. Jesus didn’t come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it through the New Covenant. He starts the Sermon on the Mount with the New Covenant enablement of Old Covenant success. Blessing can come as promised in the Old Covenant, but first, poor in spirit.
Just like the first commandment and the tenth commandment mirror each other, the first and the eighth of the Beatitudes do. The first, poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and the eighth, they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The first four and the second four come at the New Covenant from two very important different directions. The first four are the front end of the New Covenant and the second four are the back end of it.
The front end is not works, but grace alone. The back end exposes what the first four were necessary to produce. If someone starts from the back, he is led to the front. If someone starts with the front, he receives the back. If someone is not persecuted for righteousness’ sake, he is not poor in spirit. If someone is poor in spirit, he will be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. The truly persecuted are because they are poor in spirit and theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
When someone sees he’s not persecuted, not peacemaking, not pure in heart, and not merciful, he recognizes his poverty of spirit, he mourns over his sin, subjugates his will to God in meekness, and hungers and thirsts after righteousness. The Jewish teachers of Jesus’ day were justifying themselves, unlike the tax collector in Luke 18:13, who didn’t tout his own righteousness, but in poverty of spirit cried out, Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. They reasoned that they could justify themselves by ignoring the weightier matters of the law, the ones so heavy, so difficult, that they were impossible to keep. Someone could keep trying to keep them with his heart of stone, but never succeed.
You’re not saved by being merciful, but only those poor in spirit, mourn, meek, and hunger and thirst after righteousness can and will be merciful. Don’t think that you will obtain mercy without being merciful, but don’t think they you’ll be merciful until you take the path through the first four of the beatitudes of Jesus.
To receive the saving knowledge of Christ Jesus His Lord, the Apostle Paul must count all his own law keeping efforts as dung or as loss (Philippians 3). He sees, I’m not merciful, I’m not pure in heart, I’m not peacemaking, and I’m not being persecuted, but I’m a persecutor, so he becomes poor in spirit. He has no confidence in his flesh, so now he rejoices in Christ Jesus. The Old Covenant did its proper job and then the New Covenant did its. You can start at the front or the back, just like with the ten commandments. They are all interrelated, just like God Himself is one.
James said that God gives grace to the humble, those who humbly submit themselves to God. Those who do won’t be praying to consume it upon their own lust and they won’t go presumptiously into a business endeavor, ignoring the good that God wants them to do in His will. In humility they are submitting themselves to the God of grace, who enables them to pray in His will and live in His will.
When you receive the grace to be saved, you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, righteousness that you hungered and thirsted after, because you knew you were without it. You were poor. The pure in heart see God, but that comforting purity will never come to you without you mourning over the impurity, not just external impurity, but the impurity of conscience that true salvation cleanses. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded. The Apostle Paul was impressive before religious leaders before his conversion, but he knew that was not true before God. The Lord Jesus provided that for him, not righteousness obtained by works, but by the faith of Christ.
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