05.09. Martyrs and Prophets
IX MARTYRS AND PROPHETS
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness" sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," etc.-- Matthew 5:10-12. THIS beatitude completes the octave, but there is no special reason why our Lord should not have finished with the seventh, because the eighth is altogether so different to the foregoing. They rather deal with character, this with condition; they with the internal quality of the Christian soul, this with its external relation. So far as we understand the first seven, they might be developed in the spirit, apart from all the world beside, immured in some secluded not to apart from the world; but this indicates that our Lord’s conception for His Church was that it would be constantly in the midst of the world; not of it, but in it; and therefore in perpetual collision and antagonism with its evil.
He seems to have been sketching His own life. These beatitudes tell the story of our Saviour’s personal life, as, indeed, it is the story of His life as developed step by step in the believer’s heart. They are therefore objectively and subjectively historical. They are objectively historical, for we know that our Lord Jesus was poor in spirit, emptied Himself, mourned and wept for the sin of man; was meek; hungered and thirsted for righteousness; was merciful and pure in heart; and that He came to make peace. All these qualities in our Saviour’s experience brought Him to the Cross--brought Him into collision with the evil of the world, and in three years to Calvary. Thus the beatitudes afford a true history of the progress of our Saviour’s life from the emptying of the incarnation to the laying down of His life for men.
They are also true of each one of us. We begin by being poor in spirit, broken in heart, and lowly in mind. We pass through phase after phase of added knowledge of God and of His truth; and as we do so we approximate always more and more to the climax of the Cross, and just in proportion as we are like Christ in the attainment of these lovely qualities, we become like Him also in our suffering and sorrow even to death.
How clearly our Lord Jesus Christ predicts the effect which these qualities will have upon the world. It is as if He said, " It is impossible for you to be thus and thus without incurring a very avalanche of hate, but in the midst of it all, you may retain the blessed placidity and rest which I have promised. There is no need that the benedictions which I have already uttered to those who are merciful and meek and pure in heart, should forsake you when you stand at the stake or are nailed to the Cross, for the blessed life is altogether independent of outward circumstances; it may be deeply seated and rooted in the soul when all without is in turmoil and war."
One of the Scotch martyrs, when they were putting the faggots at his feet, said, " Methinks they are casting roses before me." Another of the martyrs, when he was about to die, said, " I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." And it is said of the great Argyle, that when his physician felt his pulse, as he laid his head upon the block, he could detect no fluttering, but the quiet steady beat of health and peace. Since, then, the qualities our Saviour characterized in the beatitudes were inevitably driving Him and all His followers into collision with the world, it was very delightful and beautiful of Him to say, " In the midst of all this you may be blessed; yea, you may rejoice, your heart may leap and bound with exceeding joy." And the more we think about it, the more sure it seems that all those who died for the faith had some special grace given which enabled them to be more than conquerors, and it will come still to those who are accounted worthy to suffer for Christ amongst men.
Let us notice, first, why we are persecuted; secondly, the manner of the persecution; thirdly, the blessedness which is possible amidst it all.
I. THE CAUSE OF PERSECUTION.
It is twofold. First we are " Persecuted for righteousness’ sake," and then He says, " And shall persecute you for My sake." Evidently men must feel that His cause was righteousness; that He was the righteous Servant of God, and that righteousness was no longer an abstraction or sentiment, because He had embodied it. This is a great distinction, and makes it so much easier to suffer for Him. It is well enough to suffer for a cause, the cause of justice, truth, and righteousness, but how much better to think of suffering for Him! It is an inspiration to realize that righteousness is Christ, and that whenever men suffer for righteousness they do really suffer for Him who is the Prince of Righteousness and the King of Truth? Wherever there is right in the world for which men suffer, the cause of Jesus Christ is somehow implicated in it. But how wonderful that Jesus, at the very beginning of His ministry, a Nazarene peasant, standing amid a number of peasants on the Mount of Beatitudes, should identify the cause of righteousness with Himself in this marvellous combination. " For My sake," He said.
Now why is it that the world hates and persecutes us for His sake? There are just these reasons. First, that the more there is of Christ in us, the more we condemn the world, and there is nothing the ungodly man so dislikes as to have the search-light of unsullied purity flashed in upon the workings of his heart and life. Jesus Christ is to the ungodly what the sun at noontide is to the diseased eye; what the bounding joyousness of the child is to the weakened nerve. And hence it is in proportion as we are living in the power of Jesus Christ, and are bringing to bear the influence of our character and life upon other men that they wince beneath the impinging ray; they shrink from it; it causes them pain, and they turn naturally in indignant hatred on those who have thus inflicted upon them suffering.
Secondly, the more there is of Christ in us, the more we offend the pride of men and women around, who desire to have the admiration which we have, or which true godliness has, but which they are not able to win, through their inability to pay the price for it. Hence jealousy and envy immediately begin to work. Remember how Aristides was hated, because he was always called " The Just." Men who were notoriously unjust envied him the love of his fellow-citizens. And so there will always be a great jealousy on the part of the ungodly toward those who love Christ.
Thirdly, the Christ-spirit in any one of us is always aggressive, and compels us to attack the vested interests of wrong-doing. The Lord Jesus never contemplated that His children should go quietly through the world exerting only a negative influence. He expected that there would be a constant positive effect proceeding from His Church, that, like salt, it would sting. But when the craft is in danger, when the receipts fall off, we naturally rouse the indignation of those who suffer in consequence. The search-light brought to bear upon the diseased conscience, the constant feeling that the Christian possesses a character which the ungodly cannot emulate, and which wins an admiration they cannot receive, together with the fear that worldly position and possessions are threatened by the progress of the Christ-spirit--all these things tend to make men. And yet the source of hatred really lies deeper than all this. It seems as if there is a malignancy of hatred in evil against the good which cannot be perfectly explained by any of these reasons, and which must be attributed to that eternal war and hatred which exist between Satan and all his legions, and Jesus Christ and the armies of heaven. There is a great war in the universe, a fire raging beyond the range of our sight, and we may be pretty sure the signs of it will break out whenever we manifest on earth something of the purity and beauty of Jesus Christ our Lord. These are the causes of persecution.
II. THE FORMS WHICH THIS PERSECUTION TAKES. Our Lord characterizes it in three distinct ways --first, in word; secondly, in act; and thirdly, in imputation of evil. In word men reproach us; in act they persecute us; in imputation of evil they " say all manner of evil against us falsely for His sake." We need hardly dwell upon this. We know something of the hiss of the serpent. We have all suffered more or less from the unkind word. We know what it is for stories to pass round and round, for we ourselves have been only too prone to take them upon our lips and pass them forward. The word and the act, how many have suffered, how many are suffering? Think of the eight hundred Quakers--to take one of the smallest religious sects--who in the reign of Charles II. suffered for their religion, and the one million pounds exacted from that body in payment of fines for conscience’ sake, and of all the countless numbers who have suffered for the cause of Christ. And then as to the imputation of evil. I do not think any of us should shrink from it. We are very anxious about our character, but if we live close to Christ, men will impute to us all manner of evil. They will impugn our motives, misrepresent our actions, and circulate malicious stories about us. The nearer we live to Christ the more certain it is it will be so; that if they called Him Beelzebub they will call us the same. My belief is that we should be very careless about these things, and that the only time when we should defend our character should be when aspersions on it may injure the cause of Christ; that as far as we are concerned we should be content to lose our character and be counted the offscouring of all things. When these reports are circulating, and these stories being told, and these unkind words being hurled from lip to lip, we should immediately turn to our Master and tell Him we are content to suffer with and for Him. Ask Him to intercede for and to vindicate us, if it is His will we should be vindicated, and if not, to give us grace to suffer patiently and wait. We are so eager to stand well; we are so sorry if the least thing is said against us; we are so irritated if we are misunderstood and misrepresented; we are so anxious to write the explanatory letter to the paper or the private individual. It is a profound mistake. We should be content to trust God with the aspersion, to leave to Him our vindication, and meanwhile to plod on, doing our work quietly day by day, as in His sight, only being more tender and thoughtful and careful of those who have done us wrong. That is the true Christian spirit.
III. THE BEATITUDE.
Why is it that we are blessed, and how does the blessedness come? The Master says that they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake have the kingdom, and that was the very promise with which He commenced this series of Beatitudes, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It would almost seem, therefore, as if we had come back to where we started, but it is not quite so. It is quite true that the poor in spirit have the kingdom, and that those who are persecuted have the kingdom, but we must remember that just as steps in the spiral staircase always come back upon their starting-point, but upon a higher level, so we come back to the kingdom, but upon a higher level than we were when we started with the poor in spirit, and it may be that this series is constantly repeating itself in higher rounds. It may be that we shall begin to-day, by poverty of spirit, to climb up the spiral staircase toward this eighth beatitude, and then starting again from this eighth beatitude we shall pass, so to speak, through a higher series, passing through the same notes but in another key. We shall never get away from mourning, only we shall mourn for deeper reasons. We shall never cease to be learning the lesson of meekness, but it will be a deeper down meekness than ever before, one that dyes our very heart fibre. We shall always be seeking purity, but we shall have new conceptions of purity, and as we know these things in a more perfect degree we shall be persecuted more, and so every time we will come back and back and back to where we started, but higher up. Persecuted for righteousness’ sake and yet possessing the kingdom. Our Lord Jesus Christ was looking over the wall of time; there were patent to Him things which none but He knew of. In the tenth verse He speaks in the past tense, but in the present tense in the eleventh verse. " Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," as if at that moment He saw all the spiritual witnesses to the truth of God who had suffered from the time of Abel, and He says, "I see them, and they have already entered upon the royalties of the eternal world, and sit on thrones and judge;" and then turning to His disciples He said, " Blessed are ye when men shall revile you: for your reward is great in heaven." In future, when we are persecuted, I think it will help us if we seek to look into the future, as Jesus did, and realize the greatness of our reward, for every reward that we receive in heaven will carry with it greater opportunity of blessing in the ages that are yet to be. That was why the Lord spoke about thrones. The thrones on which we are to sit imply that we shall be able more widely to help those needing help; to serve God more efficiently; to minister before Him, and carry His blessed gospel, perhaps to regions of the universe where it has never been heard. We shall indeed be blessed if the persecution of this world shall make us more fit to serve and minister in the next.
Notice how the Lord Jesus puts the martyr upon the same footing as the prophet. He said, " So persecuted they the prophets," as if the martyr were a prophet. It is a profound thought, but a very true and deep one. The prophet stood among his fellows witnessing to the unseen and eternal; the martyr or the sufferer does the same. So that the fagots on which the martyrs of Christ have been burnt have lighted up the souls of men almost as much as the words of prophets have done, and have cast a glow upon the centuries. Prophets witness to the unseen and eternal by their words, sufferers do it by their agonies. If we, day by day, are willing to suffer for Christ in the workshop or in the home, we are drawing aside the veil of the unseen and eternal, through our fiery trials people are catching a glimpse of the faith and heroism and strength of Christianity, and we are witnessing to the reality of things unseen by ordinary vision, but which animate us to endure. To Thee, my God, I flee, to hide from the rebuke and hate of men, who daily pursues, oppresses, and wrest my words; hide me in the secret of thy pavilion, I entreat Thee, from the strife of tongues.