My aim in this message is that God would take my words and use them to perform the miracle of Matthew 5:12 in your life: Rejoice and be glad when you are reviled and persecuted and slandered for your faithfulness to Jesus — in reliance on Jesus, in obedience to Jesus, for the glory of Jesus. I call this a miracle because it is humanly impossible. In fact, I would argue that this is the most difficult command in the Bible — namely, for Jesus’s sake to feel joy and gladness when you are reviled and persecuted and slandered.

This is not a command to do anything with your muscles; it is a command to feel, and we don’t have immediate control over our feelings. It is a command to feel a spiritual emotion — or, if you prefer, affection — that goes contrary to all natural human experience: joy and gladness when lied about, joy and gladness when verbally abused, joy and gladness when persecuted, including harsh physical treatment and even death.

Later in the chapter, we are told to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). And loving our enemies is defined in part as “pray for those who persecute you.” And in Luke, love for our enemies is defined as this: “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27–28). And I am saying that all of those — praying, doing good, blessing — are easier than feeling joy and gladness when reviled, persecuted, and slandered. It is a humanly impossible command. And my aim in this message is that you would experience the miracle — the supernatural ability to feel what we are commanded to feel.

On Christ’s Account

Jesus says that the key to this miraculous obedience is the equally miraculous treasuring of the greatness of our reward in heaven (Matthew 5:12). So, that’s where we will start. He says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” It’s the greatness of the reward in heaven that makes the miracle on earth happen, contrary to the mocking voice that says, “Pie in the sky, by and by, has no present usefulness.” Well, we are not talking about pie. Jesus teaches that if we can perceive clearly enough, and treasure highly enough, and be satisfied deeply enough with the greatness of our reward in heaven, the miracle will happen: we will rejoice and be glad when reviled and persecuted and slandered for Jesus’s sake.

And just a word of clarification about the term “for Jesus’s sake.” Or as Matthew 5:11 says, “on my account”: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” It’s the same phrase as in verse 10: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” — or, on account of righteousness.

This does not mean that the persecutor must acknowledge that their persecution is because of Jesus. In fact, few people in our society will say that they are reviling or persecuting or slandering because of Jesus. When Jesus says that we may be “persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” he does not mean that our persecutors will concede that we are acting in righteousness. No, they will be calling our righteousness wickedness. That’s how the persecution is justified. Jesus said in John 16:2, “Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.”

“What matters is that our thoughts and words and actions flow from Christ and for Christ — not whether anybody acknowledges it.”

Revilers, persecutors, and slanderers do not honor us by informing the world that we are noble martyrs for a great teacher or a great cause. No, what Jesus means when he says that we will be persecuted “for righteousness’ sake” (verse 10) or “on my account” (verse 11) is that, when our thoughts and our words and actions are conformed to his will, this will often meet with reviling, persecuting, and slandering. What matters is that our thoughts and words and actions really do flow from Christ and for Christ — not whether anybody acknowledges it.

Inestimable Treasure

Now, back to the greatness of our reward in heaven (Matthew 5:12). What is it? Staying here in the context of the Beatitudes, we see a sixfold answer. The future blessedness of the disciples of Jesus is described in six ways that are sandwiched between the summary blessing of verse 3 — “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” — and the summary blessing of verse 10 — “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Six Aspects of Our Heavenly Reward

What does it mean to live forever under the heavenly rule of God? Six immeasurable, glorious aspects of our great reward:

1. We will see God. Verse 8: “They shall see God.”
2. We will be shown mercy. Verse 7: “They shall receive mercy.”
3. We will be part of God’s family. Verse 9: “They shall be called sons of God.”
4. We will experience God’s comfort. Verse 4: “They shall be comforted.”
5. We will be co-owners of the whole world. Verse 5: “They shall inherit the earth.”
6. We will be satisfied with personal and universal righteousness. Verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

The presence of God, seen and enjoyed forever in the face of Christ, covering us with mercy because of all our sins, calling us his children, comforting us for all pain and loss in this world, bequeathing to us the universe for a familiar homeland, with everything set right in our souls, and in nature, and in the social order of the new world: this is our great reward.

God’s Miracle in Us

Jesus tells us that if we can perceive this reward clearly enough, and treasure it highly enough, and be satisfied in it deeply enough, the miracle of verse 12 will happen: we will rejoice and be glad when reviled and persecuted and slandered for our faithfulness to Jesus — because our thoughts and words and actions are from him and for him. God really has performed this miracle. He has done it in the past. He can do it today.

• Acts 5:41: The apostles “left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.” The miracle of joy for being shamed for Jesus’s sake.

• Hebrews 10:34: “You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”

• 2 Corinthians 8:1–2: “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace [the miracle!] of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.”

• Acts 16:23–25: “When they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison. . . . [The jailer] put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”

Jesus did not speak in vain when he said to his disciples,

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. (Matthew 5:11–12)

Four Obstacles to Rejoicing in Persecution

There are many obstacles to obeying this command from Jesus. Some of them are peculiar to the cultural moment in which we live. Others have always been there. I’d like to deal with four of them to see if I can help you get over them and experience the miracle of verse 12.

1. Deep sorrow mingles with joy.

The context itself presents an apparent obstacle. Matthew 5:4 says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” So, if the sadness of mourning is pronounced as blessed, where does rejoicing fit in? Paul says in Romans 12:15, “Weep with those who weep.” And he tells the Thessalonians that there is a kind of grieving that is not hopeless (1 Thessalonians 4:13). All of these texts assume that there are good reasons for tears and sorrow and mourning in the Christian life. There is real pain. And pain really hurts. And tears are inevitable and right.

So, where does rejoicing and being glad fit? The solution to this obstacle is that the Bible presents two relationships between sorrow and joy. One is that they happen sequentially; the other is that they happen simultaneously. For example,

• Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

• Psalm 126:5–6: “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!”

Weeping, then joy. Tears, then shouts of joy. Sequential: first one, then the other.

On the other hand, Paul says in Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice,” even though just a few verses earlier he had referred to his own tears over the enemies of the cross (Philippians 3:18). If we pressed him how this can be, I think he would refer us to 2 Corinthians 6:8–10 where he said, “We are treated as . . . sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich.” “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” Simultaneous.

“Whether the boulder of your joy is above the water with a shining face, or beneath the water of tears, it can be miraculously real and solid in the face of reviling and persecution.”

In other words, even though there are manifestations of sorrow and joy that don’t look like each other and are sequential, nevertheless there is also an experience of sorrow and joy in which the joy is like a great boulder on the rocky seacoast that can rise shining above the surface of the sea, or can be submerged beneath the waves of sorrow, but never ceases to be what it is: a rock of joyful confidence in the word of God, and the greatness of our reward.

Whether the boulder of your joy is above the water with a shining face (like Stephen’s just before his death in Acts 6:15), or beneath the water of tears, it can be miraculously real and solid in the face of reviling and persecution and slander — and even death.

2. Culture trends in the opposite direction.

The second obstacle to obeying the command to rejoice and be glad when we are reviled and persecuted and slandered is that the dominant cultural currents in America today are all flowing in the other direction — namely, a direction that says these words of Jesus, and words like them, discount the experience of those who are suffering mistreatment, and tolerate the verbal violence of the abusers, and so become complicit with the structures or people of power who need to be called out and punished. (For more on this, see, for example, The Coddling of the American Mind and The Rise of Victimhood Culture.)

One of the reasons this cultural tendency can easily take root in the church is that the Bible does say that there is a place for rebuke, and there is a place for discipline, when Christians speak evil of other Christians or mistreat other Christians. So, I am not saying that the fabric of relationships in the church is woven out of only one kind of material. There are strands of patience, and mercy, and endurance, and tolerance. And there are strands of accountability, and admonition, and rebuke, and discipline.

One of the ways that contemporary secular culture distorts biblical teaching and congregational life is by pulling out one or more of the biblical strands in the fabric of Christian relationships, with the result that the beauty of the symmetry and balance and proportion of the tapestry of Christian teaching and Christian life are disfigured.

What I’m suggesting is that the miracle of Matthew 5:12 is not woven proportionately into the fabric of the personal and communal life of many churches. Paul did as much rebuking as anybody in the New Testament, but the tenor of his life — the way the strands came together in the tapestry of his ministry — was this: “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:12–13). Behind that tapestry of life lay the miracle of Matthew 5:12: “Rejoice and be glad when you are reviled and slandered and persecuted.”

3. Our persecutors may be loved ones.

The people in Matthew 5:11 who “revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely” on account of Jesus are lost. They are perishing. And they may even be members of your own family. So, we are being told by Jesus to rejoice even though the occasion of our joy is the very sinfulness that could take our loved one to hell.

Jesus said this, knowing that he himself would weep over the unbelief and reviling and persecution and slander of Jerusalem. Luke 19:41–42: “When he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’”

“It is precisely the indestructible joy that we have in the great reward of the worth of Christ that glorifies the preciousness of Christ.”

The crucial insight in overcoming this obstacle is to realize that if the unbelief and reviling of people we love could destroy our joy in the great reward of Christ, we would have nothing to offer them. It is precisely the indestructible joy that we have in the great reward of the worth of Christ — the infinite, all-satisfying worth of Christ — that glorifies the preciousness of Christ. Let me say it again: Our joy in Christ, in spite of slander, is what shows the slanderer the preciousness of Christ. And this is what they need more than anything. Therefore, paradoxically, though the tears may flow when our loved one reviles the name we love, rejoicing in the face of that reviling testifies to the reality and preciousness of the one they need so badly. It is an act of love for their soul, not indifference to their lostness.

4. Rejoicing in reviling is (humanly) impossible.

Finally, the fourth obstacle to rejoicing and being glad when reviled and persecuted and slandered is that it is humanly impossible. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a fallen human to feel joy when reviled and persecuted and slandered.

Jesus faced such impossibilities head-on in his ministry. His response was this: “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). Or to put it differently, he said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7).

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. (Matthew 5:11–12)

If we have been born again, we have within us the power to see that reward clearly enough, and treasure it highly enough, and be satisfied in it deeply enough that the miracle of verse 12 will happen: we will rejoice and be glad when reviled and persecuted and slandered for our faithfulness to Jesus.