“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Another house of worship was attacked this past weekend. A man drove his truck into the building, and once he came to a stop, he started firing. He was eventually taken down after a brief shootout with police, but before that time he managed to kill or wound several members and set fire to the building, causing extensive damage and potentially killing even more. The church in America may not be the recipient of the extent of persecution as the church in places like Nigeria where scores are being brutally murdered each year by Islamic terrorists while the government looks on with apathy, but there is an evil force that is motivating more and more persecution of it. This is in spite of the current administration’s intentional efforts to put a stop to any federally sanctioned forms of persecution the previous administration quietly implemented. What are we supposed to do in the face of all of this? Paul tells us right here. Let’s talk about it as we continue our walk through his list of instructions that give some practical contours for living the life of Christ well.

Persecution is always unjust. It is always unfair. It is never right. It is a violation of our natural rights. And in the face of such actions whether they come by way of an individual or an institution, our natural reaction is anger. Now, yes, anger is often a secondary emotion the way we experience it. In this light, our anger in the face of persecution is often an anger driven by fear, but the immediate expression is anger all the same. We get angry, and we want to lash back out at those who have persecuted us. We want them to feel what we have been made to feel. We want to curse them.

Yet what does cursing them in some way accomplish? Persecution is nearly always a display of power. The offender is demonstrating that he has more power than the victim. The offender always feels justified in his actions however twisted and illegitimate those justifications may be. If we respond in kind, offering a curse of some kind in reply, what are we acknowledging? We are indicating a belief on our part that might really does make right. We are playing into his games of power,

There are two problems with this. Well, there are many problems with this, but two stand out as particularly notable. The first problem is that if we actually don’t have more power than our persecutors (and we generally don’t), then our responding in kind is only going to invite them to come back with an even greater display of power that we are not capable of matching. Now, instead of merely harassing us, they are coming to destroy us. We have guaranteed our own demise and to what end? Nothing has been accomplished except for us to walk a pathway of destruction freely. What a stupid thing to do!

The other problem is that if we manage to accumulate enough power for ourselves that we are in fact the more powerful of the two of us, and if we go on to use that power to their harm in response for all the harm they have caused us, we have demonstrated that we are no better than they are. When we fight using the tactics of our enemy, we justify their attacks against us in the first place. If we make ourselves an enemy to our enemies, we lose our grip on the thing that makes us different. To put that more directly, if we become more like the world rather than reflective of the character of Christ, we’re not being the church anymore in the first place. And if we give up being the church in order to battle persecution that was designed and intended to destroy us, we are merely giving our enemies the victory they are seeking.

So then, what are we supposed to do instead? Again, Paul tells us here. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” Cursing our enemies in some form or fashion is off the table as a response to persecution for followers of Jesus. Instead, we are called to bless them. But why on earth would we do that? What have they done to deserve a blessing from us? Nothing is the answer to that question. They have done nothing to deserve a blessing, and have instead done something to warrant that curse. So, why would Paul command us to bless them?

Because God in Christ blessed us when we were His enemies.

When we respond to an attack from the world using the tactics of the world, we demonstrate that we are just like the world. And if the church is just like the world, then it isn’t really the church at all. The world wins. When we respond to our enemies with a curse, what have we accomplished? Our enemies in this case are almost assuredly those who are not following Jesus. Well, our goal, the whole reason for our existence, is to see those who are not following Jesus come to start following Jesus. If we curse those who aren’t following Jesus, how likely are we to achieve that goal?

When we hate those who hate us, we are no different from those who hate us. That’s what the world does. It loves friends and hates enemies. But we are not to be like the world. We are to be different. We are to be holy as our God is holy. At Charlie Kirk’s memorial, after Erica, his widow, stood and publicly forgave his murderer, President Trump took his turn to speak. In the course of his long and rambling speech that meandered into all sorts of places that were irrelevant to the moment, Trump said one thing that stood in stark contrast to Erica. He said that he doesn’t forgive his enemies; he hates his enemies. That’s how the world thinks. That’s how the world operates. If the church joins in with that, we stop being the church. And without the church, the world is a hopeless place.

When we are persecuted, our response needs to be one of blessing. What kind of blessing? That depends on the circumstances. Sometimes, the only blessing we will be able to manage is to forgive and pray for our persecutors. If that’s the case, then we do both with intentionality and passion. Other times, the situation will allow us a more immediately practical response. We can seek to meet their needs in some way. We can be intentionally kind to them. We can care for their families. On and on the list can go.

And again, we do this not because our enemies are somehow deserving of it. They aren’t. If they were deserving of it, they wouldn’t be our enemies. They would be our friends. We do this because it is what God in Christ did for us. As Paul wrote back in chapter 5, “But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He goes on to say, “For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.”

When Jesus died for us, we were not God’s friends. We were God’s enemies. We were entirely opposed to His rightful rule and reign as the sovereign creator of all we see and don’t. We were living in open rejection to His goodness and holiness and righteousness, and were instead embracing evil in all of its various forms. We deserved nothing but judgment. But God in His infinite grace and mercy sought reconciliation with us. He pursued a restoration of His relationship with us. He sought to bless us with righteousness and eternal life. And, knowing we couldn’t achieve any of this on our own – much less that we were even interested in it at the time – He did all the work on our behalf. He took the initiative. He didn’t wait until we were deserving of the blessing, He simply blessed.

So must we.

When we are persecuted – for as followers of Jesus, persecution is a when, not a whether – our response must be one of blessing. We must bless and not curse and by that demonstrate the goodness and surpassing worth of the kingdom of God over and against the kingdom of this world. We demonstrate that the power of this world is no match for the stronger power of the kingdom of God. We demonstrate that nothing indeed can overcome the love of God.

Doing this will convince many of the goodness of His kingdom, and they will come to embrace it themselves. Then, instead of enemies, they will be our brothers and sisters in the Lord. That’s the greatest victory. It will not convince some others, though, and they may double or triple down on their efforts to persecute us. In this case, we can stand firmly on God’s promise to right all injustices and to reward our faithfulness in the end. We have eternal life waiting for us at the end of this one. What happens in this one can’t take away from that, and so we can freely bless without worrying about the response.

The persecution we receive is designed and intended by our enemy to destroy God’s kingdom. When we stand firmly in that kingdom, demonstrating its unconquerable resolve, we win in the end regardless of how it looks in the moment. If we are going to be followers of Jesus, this is how we do it. So, let’s get to blessing those who would intend us harm and bring glory to our God.