Beatitudes – Other People Oppose You
God blesses you when other people attack
you
This is the result of the beatitudes in Matthew 5.
Why other people oppose Christians
If we behave in God's way, other people will oppose us. They might even attack us. All these beatitudes show qualities which are different from those of other people. If we live like this, people will notice us. They will not like us, and they will hate us. Jesus himself warned that this would happen. He said it many times. Not long after Jesus returned to be with God, men killed Stephen (Acts 7). He was the first person to die because he was a Christian.
Often people think that a Christian is nice, popular, and will never offend anyone. If we think that, we are wrong. We have no idea at all what a Christian is.
When other people attack you because you please God
Notice what these words say. They do not say: ’God blesses you when other people attack you for an idea‘. They do not say: "when other people attack you for political reasons." They say this: "when other people attack you because you please God." You have a desire to tell other people the good news about Jesus. You want to tell them about the Kingdom of God. In Luke‘s Gospel it says clearly that the attack is because of the Son of Man [that is, Jesus] (Luke 6:22). This is what causes the attack.
Tests in the Sermon on the Mountain
This sermon on the mountain has several tests for us. This is perhaps the most difficult test. We should ask ourselves these questions:
- Do our lives cause people to oppose us, because we behave in God's way?
- Are we just nice citizens of our world, who do not upset the Devil at all?
- Or are we really obeying Christ and his Kingdom?
God's promise to people who suffer because of Christ
God makes a wonderful promise when other people attack us, because of Christ. He promises that we will belong to the Kingdom of God. In that Kingdom there is no pain, no tears and no death. There we will be glad that we will always be with God. But we can have some of this experience now. The Kingdom of God is already with us. God already blesses us in many ways.
