Should we expect persecution?

Question 11099

Should we expect persecution, or is that something that happens to Christians in other countries and other centuries? It is a fair question for a believer in Britain, where nobody is arresting us and the worst most of us face is an awkward silence in the staff room. Yet the New Testament speaks about it so constantly that we cannot simply file it under history.

The short answer is yes, and the longer answer requires us to be careful about what the word means, because Christians in comfortable countries have a bad habit of borrowing the language of martyrdom to describe being disagreed with on social media.

Jesus said to expect persecution

He could hardly have been clearer. In John 15 he tells the disciples that if the world hates them, they should know it hated him first, and that a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. That is not a warning about a possibility. It is a statement about how things are.

The Beatitudes include it as a blessing. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and then Jesus adds the personal form: blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. He tells them to rejoice and be glad, which is a startling instruction and not one we hear often.

Paul is equally direct in 2 Timothy 3:12: all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. The Greek verb dioko means to pursue or to chase, and it carries the picture of hostility that follows you rather than hostility you happen to bump into. So yes, we should expect persecution, and a Christianity that never provokes anything at all should make us wonder what we are actually saying.

Why the world reacts this way

Jesus gave the reason in the same conversation. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, therefore the world hates you. The hostility is not chiefly about our manners or our politics. It is about allegiance.

Underneath that sits the offence of the message itself. The gospel tells people that they are guilty, that they cannot fix it, and that the only remedy is a crucified Jewish carpenter. Every part of that is an insult to human pride, and pride does not take insults quietly. Paul called the cross a stumbling block and folly, and he was not being pessimistic.

This means the reason we expect persecution is not that Christians are annoying, though some of us manage it. It is that the message itself is unwelcome to the human heart until the Spirit changes it. Take away the offensive parts and the hostility subsides, which is precisely why a church that has stopped being disliked should examine what it has stopped saying.

What we should expect persecution to look like

Here I want to be careful, because sloppiness on this point is both dishonest and insulting to believers elsewhere. In many parts of the world Christians face imprisonment, confiscation of property, violence against their families and death. Open Doors and similar organisations document it year after year, and the numbers are not small.

What most British believers encounter is milder and still real: mockery, being passed over, exclusion from conversations, awkwardness with family, occasional professional difficulty over convictions about marriage or the beginning of life. Jesus explicitly included reviling and false accusation in his list, so this counts. It is on the same spectrum even though it is at the gentle end of it.

What does not count is being contradicted, losing an argument, or discovering that a country which was never Christian at heart no longer defers to Christian assumptions. Losing cultural privilege is not the same as being persecuted, and confusing the two makes us look self-pitying at exactly the moment we need to look credible.

Make sure it is for the right reason

Peter adds a caution that we should not skip. Let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler, he writes, but if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed. We should expect persecution for Jesus, not for ourselves. There is such a thing as suffering that we brought on ourselves by being rude, tactless or interfering, and dressing that up as faithfulness fools nobody.

I have met Christians who were disliked at work and assumed it was for the gospel when it was actually for being unreliable. That is worth checking honestly before reaching for the martyr’s crown. The apostolic instruction is to live such good lives among the pagans that any accusation against us is visibly false.

So when we expect persecution, we should expect it as a consequence of Jesus rather than as a consequence of our personalities. If the hostility disappears the moment we behave decently, it was never about him.

How to respond when it comes

Bless those who persecute you, says Romans 12. Bless and do not curse. That is the apostolic instruction and it runs against every instinct. The early Christians did not organise resistance, they kept meeting, kept giving, kept caring for the sick during plagues when everyone else fled, and the empire eventually could not explain them.

Practically, that means answering with gentleness and respect rather than with grievance, refusing to return contempt for contempt, and continuing to do good to people who have made life difficult. It also means not going looking for trouble. Jesus told the disciples that when they were persecuted in one town they should flee to the next, which is permission most of us did not know we had.

And it means holding on to the timescale. Whatever we face now, the church is not appointed to the wrath of the Tribulation that Scripture describes falling on a Christ-rejecting world. Our hope is the imminent return of the Lord for his people, and that steadies the nerves considerably. See my answer on how doctrine helps in times of suffering.

Preparing a congregation without alarming it

There is a way of teaching this subject that leaves people frightened and bunkered, forever expecting the knock at the door, and I want no part of it. Fear is a poor motive and an exhausting way to live. The apostles told believers to expect persecution in the same breath as they told them to rejoice, which suggests the two were meant to sit together rather than cancel each other out.

What we can do is remove the surprise. Peter says not to be surprised at the fiery trial as though something strange were happening, and surprise is half of what makes suffering unbearable. A believer who has been told plainly that opposition is normal will handle it far better than one who assumed following Jesus came with social advantages.

So teach it early, teach it calmly, and teach it alongside the promises. Young Christians in particular should hear from the outset that they may lose friends over this, and that the Lord who asks it of them has been there ahead of them.

The strange blessing attached

The apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name. That reaction is only intelligible if they genuinely believed what they said about the value of Jesus and the length of eternity. They were not pretending to be pleased.

Persecution also clarifies things. Those who expect persecution and receive it often find it strips out nominal attachment quickly, it drives believers to prayer and to one another, and historically it has spread the gospel rather than contained it. The church scattered by the persecution in Acts 8 went everywhere preaching the word, which was not the outcome the persecutors had in mind.

None of that makes it pleasant, and I would not want anyone to romanticise it. But when we expect persecution and it arrives, we can meet it knowing it has been factored in from the beginning. My answer on why Christians suffer sets this in the wider picture, and how we comfort those who suffer deals with the practical side.

So, now what?

Two practical steps for those who now expect persecution to be part of normal discipleship. Pray regularly and by name for believers in places where the cost is severe, because they are your family and most of them are known to nobody outside their village. Organisations exist to give you the information, and it takes five minutes a week.

Then ask yourself the uncomfortable question. If it became genuinely costly here, is my faith the sort that would hold? The way to prepare is not to brace yourself but to know the Lord well now, because you cannot draw on a relationship you have not built. What would it take for anyone at your workplace to find out you belong to him?

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Timothy 3:12, ESV)