Opting Out of the World's Game: Understanding Persecution for Jesus's Sake

The Final Beatitude

Blessed are you whenever they revile you and persecute and speak all evil against you falsely on my behalf. Rejoice and exult because your reward is much in the heavens. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you. (Matthew 5:11-12).

Persecution Out There

Persecution is a topic that most people, including Christians, do not want to talk about. Not that we don’t talk about it, but usually only when we hear stories from places like China or Iran or recently Ukraine. 

The persecution is over there, not here.

We may hear anecdotes of persecution in the US and Canada of those deciding to stand firm on their principles, but even then, the stories are of others, “not me.”

Think Again

To think that persecution is over there and doesn’t concern me is to ignore the very thing that Jesus put front and center, with himself as the prime example. 

Persecution as a theme runs throughout Jesus’s teachings and then throughout the entire New Testament. Virtually every New Testament document explicitly or implicitly says something about persecution.

With this closing to the Beatitudes, Jesus thrusts this theme of persecution to the forefront of his teaching as the expected cost of following him.

The crowd and Jesus’s disciples may have been astonished with the beatitudes to this point because of their profound reversal of the world’s values and the implications for their lives (something I have tried to explore in all of my previous posts on the Beatitudes).

But this final beatitude is different, even with its connections to the previous one. 

The Personal Beatitude: You

All of the first eight beatitudes are in the third person plural. There is some sense of otherness in the way Jesus put them. The listeners had to intentionally put themselves into the the “those” of each beatitude. Am I poor in spirit? Am I humble? Am I a shalom-doer? 

Even the previous beatitude implied the possibility of persecution for “they” or “those.” 

This final beatitude, though, has a substantive change. Jesus turns the address directly to his audience: Blessed are you.

Whatever follows, Jesus makes the implication more personal. The “you” is plural, so he is addressing the crowd and disciples as a whole, but the contrast with the third person in the previous eight is very noticeable. In fact, Jesus uses various forms of “you” seven times in these two verses!

In this beatitude the persecution of the previous one—along with revilement and evil speech—is made explicit and made personal with “you” as the address. 

The pursuit (diōkō) in this case is clearly persecution. The bookend terms “ they revile/insult (Greek: oneidasōsin)” and “speak all evil (eipōsin pan ponēron)” demands the negative sense of the term.

With Jesus addressing them with “you,” the disciples and the crowd must now ask themselves, is this Jesus stuff for me?

Not only is what Jesus said so far the total opposite of what the world says, but now he is saying there might be, probably will be, profound suffering and pain as a result.

Jesus asserts what he knows will happen to those who follow him, to those who take to heart the characteristics of all the beatitudes he has just enumerated. This assertion is based on what has always happened to those who followed God, not the world. 

There are consequences for following Jesus that the ordinary person would consider negative, but Jesus proclaims those consequences as a means of blessing: “Blessed are you.” 

They

Since Jesus now addresses his listeners as “you,” the “they” must be different. “They” are the people who perpetrate the actions in the first part of the verse: reviling, persecuting, and evil speech.

But who are “they”?

Jesus is very ambiguous here.

As we go through the Gospels, though, we discover many “theys.” The Jewish leaders are certainly a “they.” Previously in Matthew, Herod the Great was a “they.” But as the Gospel comes to a close, not only are they the Jewish leaders (scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, the high priests) but also Judas, Pilate, the soldiers, and the people who as a mob call for Jesus to be crucified. Some in the very crowd Jesus was speaking the Sermon to would become “they,” even among the disciples (Peter almost becomes part of “they”). 

In a word, “they” is the world of humanity doing their thing without regard for God—and in some cases using “God” for their own purposes—who cannot take push-back for their godless desires and actions.

Thus, “they” were necessarily those who opposed Jesus and ultimately crucified him. They could not bear the truth of his message, so they eliminated him (or thought they did).

But Jesus is stressing here that “they” will do the same to his followers. 

Following the way of Jesus will provoke the same actions from those opposed to Jesus.

Caravaggio, The Crucifixion of St. Peter

A question (maybe the question) that comes to mind is why. Why the persecution for Jesus’s sake?

By definition, those following the beatitudes are almost invisible to the world (poor in spirit, humble, etc). 

Except that they aren’t. 

By displaying traits opposite to those of the world, the evil in the world gets highlighted.

Two games

Think of the way of the world in terms of a game. It is a game of desire to be first (or to be a god) that leads to rivalry, conflict and violence. And sometimes the world’s game of desire and oneupmanship gets so destructive that the ones playing it begin destroying one another (sometimes in families, certainly in politics, and between cultures and nations).

Jesus proposed a new game. The new creations of God present a way of living, a way of God-driven love and shalom, that is intended to create a desire for God, and thus a very different game from the world. 

Following Jesus brings opposition because we have opted out of the world’s game for God’s game. For those who love themselves and the world’s game, the new way of life that Jesus proposes arouses opposition and hate in themselves to that new way. As John puts it, they love the darkness rather than the light.

The blame game

Who’s to blame for the self-destruction inherent in the world’s game? They cannot continue to blame each other, because they are playing the same game that leads to mutual destruction.

Who better to blame than those who have opted out of the game. 

Instead of reviling, persecuting and speaking all evil to each other (the norm), “they” turn to those outside and manufacture a false narrative against those who refuse to play.

They accuse those on the outside of the very things they are doing to each other.

Jesus was never in the game, so they came after him. Those who follow Jesus have opted out, so they come after us.

I can love, I can give, I can tolerate everyone in this world because they are all God’s creations in his image, but to confess that I am a sinner for whom Jesus has died to save me from that sin and to give me new life is intolerable to the world because the world cannot accept the notion of sin (and often deny the very existence of God in consequence). I have acknowledged my complicity in the blame game (maybe a good definition of sin), repented of it, and opted out of their game by God’s forgiveness and grace.

Reviling, persecution, and evil speech for false reasons sum up their response to the opt-out. They must rid themselves of those who refuse to play. Of course, in so doing they illuminate their own evil and destructive actions (of which they too could acknowledge and repent from).

Jesus’s call to the game of life exposes the game of death for what it is.

With this beatitude (and others statements throughout the Gospels), Jesus prepares his followers for what he knows will transpire, because he knows humanity better than we know ourselves. He is outside looking in, yet he willingly chose to illustrate what happens when someone enters but does not participate in the self-destructive game humanity plays.

As followers of Jesus, we not only can expect the persecution that results, but we are blessed in it, whenever it happens.

Rejoice!

Not only are we blessed (and blessedness is a state of being)—there is more. Jesus calls us to go beyond blessedness with actions: rejoice and be glad! 

Why? 

Our reward in the heavens is much. Jesus uses “much (Greek: polus)” rather than “great.” He focuses on the quantity of the reward rather than the quality (the word for reward, misthos, is also used for pay or wages).

The actions of the world against us may leave us with nothing, but God will reward us with everything in the heavenly realms.

Opting out of the world’s game and opting in to God’s game leads to the ultimate win; suffering and persecution are insignificant in light of our present and future with God (see Romans 8:17–18). We rejoice with exultation when we ourselves focus only on God and the hope He has placed before us through Jesus, despite all that the world may throw at us.

Previous examples

Jesus closes this beatitude (and all of them) in a somewhat surprising manner. He tells his listeners that none of this persecution he speaks of is new: “for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

This is the way it has always been when people stand up for God and tell the truth to those around them. They persecuted the prophets, they will persecute Jesus, they will persecute Jesus’s followers. It has always been that way and we should expect nothing less. 

Jesus’s rejoinder is “Rejoice and be glad!” 

God help us to do just that.

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Observations on the Greek Text

μακάριοί ἐστε ὅταν ὀνειδίσωσιν ὑμᾶς καὶ διώξωσιν καὶ εἴπωσιν πᾶν πονηρὸν καθ’ ὑμῶν ψευδόμενοι ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ. χαίρετε καὶ ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, ὅτι ὁ μισθὸς ὑμῶν πολὺς ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς· οὕτως γὰρ ἐδίωξαν τοὺς προφήτας τοὺς πρὸ ὑμῶν.

These two verses present some interesting characteristics we have not seen previously. 

First, this is the only beatitude with the subjunctive mood.