Red Letters

Matthew 5:10-12
“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men cast insults at you and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Abusive treatment is to be taken joyfully, as it yields a great reward in heaven. The prophets, Christ and the apostles are all examples of martyrs whose deaths precipitated great conquests for the kingdom. The human instinct is to believe that sacrifice helps win struggles - and it is true in spiritual warfare. Winston Churchill, speaking of temporal war, said that “no damn bastard ever saved his country by dying for it. He saves his country by killing the other damn bastard.” Spiritual, not temporal, struggle is closer to the human instinct.
The blood of the martyrs has always been the seed of the church, and the spiritual principles involved suggest that non-fatal persecution yields the same sort of results. Thus a ridiculed, reviled, abused Christian can be influential in the spiritual realms by Christlike nonresistance.
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Matthew 5:13-16
“You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden… Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

The salt and light metaphors speak clearly of the Christian’s role in the public square. We are to be set on a hill, not hidden under a bushel. Nor are we to lose our “saltiness”, in which case we would be worthless to God and men.
“Saltiness” is our distinction from the rest of the world; if we conform and blend in we become part of the world, rather than actively in the world - but not of it - as we ought to be. The light metaphor warns against the opposite pitfall - withdrawing from the world and being neither in nor of it. Light should not be hidden, and if we give off light only to those inside our bushel basket then we have failed in our duty to light the world.
The object of our being in the world is to be a display of godliness so that men glorify God.