When Jesus gave the Beatitudes, He spoke of one that seems to be a little shocking, since nowadays we are told of blessing after blessing, that God does not want us to experience pain and suffering, but rather that God’s plan is that nothing and no one can touch us in this life. Although this type of message seems very beautiful, the Bible tells us something very different and this in a beatitude, we will see below exactly what Jesus said on this subject in the Beatitudes.
The Bible says:
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Matthew 5:11-12
Jesus was saying something He knew that His disciples would later go through things like vituperation and persecution, and He was training them for when that moment came they would realize that it was not that God did not feel compassion for them, but the opposite, that it was something for which they had to feel blessed.
There are times when we pass certain trials with other people, we see them rise up against us because of preaching the gospel, and many times we feel dejected, but it should not be so, we should feel blessed, because we have the privilege of suffer for the sake of the gospel of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ, to Him be all glory and power.
Jesus ends by telling us the following words: “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” And that is why in the book of Acts we see that when the apostles suffered for this cause, they enjoyed and were happy to have been taken into account.
Let’s rejoice and be happy to be partakers of this glorious gospel.
