Jesus words today are very hard. He is speaking of Christians so dedicated to their faith that their family and social relationships will be broken. Their neighbors and their synagogues will turn against them. Not only that, but family members will denounce them and have them arrested. There is no way to describe those predications or warnings except as shocking and disturbing. Jesus is saying that living with persecution will become a common component of Christian life.
In the USA today Christians live in a culture that is nominally Christian and generally accepts Christian values. The Christianity of our culture has been diluted into a cold, inactive Christianity. Most of us who live in this culture have been infected with a lukewarm attitude towards the Gospel where religious concerns are near the bottom of our priorities. Everyone tends to draw a line that limits the extent to which we wish to live the Gospel. It is hard to image being persecuted for being Christian in our culture that generally gives only lip service to the Gospel and where we tend to edit out of our lives the portions of the Gospel that we don’t like. We live in a time where everything is based on personal rights. So today everything is acceptable; everything is Christian; is religious; everything is OK. We rarely see a true Christian.
Yet Jesus says very clearly that a true Christian will be at odds with the rest of the culture. That attitude will spark persecution. Jesus’ recommendations about how to respond to the violence of persecution are just as shocking and similarly hard to understand. While living as sheep amid wolves, Jesus calls his disciples to be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. Doves are not violent animals. The response to violence and persecution is a well thought out, non-violent action.
That response of non-violence is based on an overwhelming confidence in the presence and action of God our lives. Jesus advises his disciple not to prepare legal defenses or speeches for their moment in court. The words they will use will flow out of their relationship with God the Father. Rather than worrying about being persecuted, being expelled, what to say, or what to do when they are arrested and brought before a magistrate, Jesus challenges his disciples to concentrate on living as Christians who have all their confidence in the action of God in their lives.
Setting our worries and violence aside, we can concentrate on actions more congruent with Christian life and we can let God direct our responses.
Do not worry about how you are to speak
or what you are to say.
You will be given at that moment what you are to say.
For it will not be you who speak
but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
Image: Canva CJ Dunn 08July2026 AI Generated.