REJOICE AND BE GLAD?

“Blessed are you when people insult you, 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 5:11, 12

The Beatitudes are remarkably simple statements that are both transformative and profoundly challenging in their application. Most of them feel like contradictions—which demonstrates how counterintuitive the kingdom of God is to most of what we are taught and assume from the culture around us. This is why the Beatitudes are so important to life as a follower of Jesus. Throughout the Beatitudes, Jesus taught that avoiding those threats and experiences that we most fear and most want to avoid is not the highest priority in the kingdom of God. Rather, in the midst of persecution, misunderstandings, and false accusations, we are to rejoice. It seems a strange and difficult command. It reminds us that a faithful life can sometimes appear unsuccessful, even tenuous, in this broken world. But there are two important provisos. First, persecution is “blessed” when it is “because of me [Jesus].” This does not give us license to be rude, loud, mean, or aggressive in our lives or even our faith. If people dislike or exclude us because of our offensive attitudes or insensitivity, all the pushback in the world does not prove us right. But persecution because of Jesus will come despite our faithful actions in the spirit of Jesus. Second, the call is not to rejoice because we are being persecuted.

That would be a perversion of Christ’s point.

But we are to rejoice in the larger reality into which Jesus is inviting us.

In the kingdom of God, our lives are measured by something other than our current circumstances, success, social acceptance, or safety.

That is why we can rejoice and be glad even amid days that seem like our worst.