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[Jesus said] “Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.”

Think of all the things in your life that make you rejoice and leap for joy. A clean bill of health. The birth of a healthy child. A good grade on a project or paper that you spent a lot of time on. Making the team or the cast. Watching your team win the championship.

In today’s verse, Jesus adds to that list being insulted, excluded, rejected, and hated. But who would rejoice over things like that? And then, when Jesus says that we suffer like this “because of the Son of Man,” because of Jesus himself, that makes it sound even worse. It sounds like Jesus wants us to be insulted, hated, and excluded.

But that’s not what Jesus means. He means that we experience those things because our identity and trust are in him.

Our world doesn’t want a God like Jesus. A God who says our daily failures make it impossible to earn his love and a home in heaven. He expects too much of us!

On the other hand, our world also hates the idea of a God that gives us his love unconditionally without expecting anything from us, a God who rewards us with heaven because he himself met the expectations of his law for us. That’s nonsense, according to the world.

For revealing such impossible demands and showing such impossible love, Jesus himself was insulted, hated, excluded, rejected, and killed. And we can expect the same treatment because we trust in him. But Jesus promises, “great is your reward in heaven.” When we know and believe God’s forgiving love in Jesus, we are saints in God’s eyes and have a place in heaven with our name on it.

Now we can rejoice in our suffering as saints in this world. We can see it as a blessing that reminds us of God’s love and leads us to look forward to the great reward he has prepared for us.

Jesus, help me to rejoice when I suffer because of you, knowing that you have won a great reward for me in heaven. Amen.

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.