Jesus continued by telling his disciples they would be betrayed. “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”4 This was not an encouraging send-off for the disciples. Family members might turn on them, and friends might end up becoming their greatest enemies.
I will not soon forget Sahil’s testimony. He and his wife both grew up in Muslim homes in India. She came to Christ and then introduced Sahil to Christ. But as soon as their families discovered they had become Christians, they were forced to flee their community at the risk of their lives.
In the years that followed, they grew in Christ and in their desire to see their family know Christ. Slowly they began to initiate renewed contact with the family members they loved. And slowly their family members began to respond. They eventually welcomed Sahil and his wife back to their community, and from all appearances things were going well.
Then one day Sahil dropped off his wife for a meal with her family while he went to be with his family. His wife sat down at the table with her family and began to drink and eat. Within moments she was dead. Her own parents had poisoned her.
You will be betrayed.
You will be betrayed, and you will be hated. “All men will hate you because of me.”5 Now, “all men” obviously doesn’t mean that every person on earth will hate you. But the picture is clear. Whether it is your family, the government, the religious establishment, or someone else, you will be hated.
Again, we don’t think like this. “If we would all just become like Jesus, the world would love us,” we say. The reality is that if we really become like Jesus, the world will hate us. Why? Because the world hated him.
Jesus said next, “When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.”6 Not if you are persecuted but when you are persecuted. Lest we think this is referring only to Jesus’ immediate disciples and not to us, Paul told us later, “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”7
The reason we know that we will be betrayed, hated, and persecuted is because Jesus himself was betrayed, hated, and persecuted. The more our lives are conformed to his, the more we will receive what he received in this world. This is why Jesus said, “A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.… If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!”8
This is the unavoidable conclusion of Matthew 10. To everyone wanting a safe, untroubled, comfortable life free from danger, stay away from Jesus. The danger in our lives will always increase in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ.
Maybe this is why we sit back and settle for a casual relationship with Christ and routine religion in the church. It is safe there, and the world likes us there. The world likes us when we are pursuing everything they are pursuing, even if we do put a Christian label on it. As long as Christianity looks like the American dream, we will have few problems in this world.
But if we identify with Christ, we will lose much in this world. Jesus said this himself: “Everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.”9 These words should frighten us. They should frighten us because our Teacher was mocked, beaten, scourged, spit upon, and nailed to a cross. Do we really want to be like him?
See what Paul said to the church: “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.”10 This is astonishing. Paul essentially said, “Christ has given you a gift of suffering. Come to Christ and get a great gift—suffering.” This is not your typical evangelistic invitation. Bow your heads, close your eyes, pray to receive Christ, and you will receive suffering. It almost seems as though Paul was joking.
But it’s not a joke.
It’s Christianity.
It’s Christian history. Persecution and suffering as we see today in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa have marked followers of Christ from the beginning of the church. In the nearly three hundred years before Christianity was legalized by Constantine, followers of Christ faced terrible persecution. For ten generations, Christians dug nearly six hundred miles of catacombs beneath and around the city of Rome. Catacombs were underground tombs where Christians often gathered in secret for worship. Thousands and thousands of Christians were buried there as a result of intense persecution.
Archaeologists who have explored the catacombs have found a common inscription scattered throughout them. The inscription was the Greek word ichthus, which was used as an acrostic for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Savior.” You might recognize this sign because now these fish symbols are scattered across the backs of cars belonging to Christians. How far we have come when we paste this symbol identified with martyred brothers and sisters in the first century onto the backs of our SUVs and luxury sedans in the twenty-first century.