Jesus tells us to expect persecution. This is something I attempted to prove in an article a couple of days ago when I showed that at both the beginning and the ending of his ministry he warned that there would be a cost to following him. Yet Jesus knows that not everything that may look like persecution is actually persecution. And so he tells us that, when we come to times of suffering, we need to evaluate it to see if we are truly being persecuted.
There are times when Christians are put in prison because they refuse to follow the unjust dictates of an unjust government; but there are also times when Christians are put in prison because they break good and necessary laws that the rightful authorities have put in place. Sometimes Christians are shunned by family members because they refuse to bow down to the family’s idols; but sometimes Christians are shunned because they fail to honor their parents, or because they treat family members badly, or because they act like sanctimonious, entitled brats.
In the opening sentences of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says his people are blessed when
To continue...read the full-length post originally published on this site.
