LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 188

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188

IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

Why Are You Persecuting Me?
A Christian Response to Hostility and Persecution
Introduction

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Session 1: “Why Are You Persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4)
The Roots of Hostility and Persecution

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Session 2: “My Power is Made Perfect in Weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9)
Responding in Joy and Forgiveness

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Session 3: “Earnest Prayer for Him Was Made to God” (Acts 12:5)
Responding in Prayer and Faithfulness

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Session 4: “To Speak Your Word with All Boldness” (Acts 4:29)
Responding with the Proclamation of the Word

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Session 5: “Is It Lawful?” (Acts 22:25)
Responding According to Our Rights as Citizens

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Session 6: “Fear Not, I Am . . . the Living One” (Rev. 1:17-18)
Suffering, the Cross, and the Empty Tomb

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Resources

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Introduction

“Saul approved of his execution” (Acts 8:1). A Christian deacon named Stephen was stoned to death by
an enraged mob, the first martyr to follow his Lord into death. As Stephen fell asleep in Jesus, a young
Pharisee named Saul kept an approving watch over the execution—and over the cloaks of Stephen’s
murderers. The death of just one person “belonging to the Way” was not enough to satisfy the zealous
Pharisee. Saul, “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” requested letters of
permission from the high priest to arrest any believers found in the synagogues of Damascus (Acts 9:1-2).
As he approached Damascus, Saul was stopped abruptly and set on a very different path with a very
different purpose. Surrounded by light from heaven, Saul fell to the ground before the One he would soon
learn was the risen Christ Himself. The crucified and risen Lord asked, “Saul, Saul, why are you
persecuting me?” The Lord did not ask, “Why are you persecuting my followers?” or “Why are you
persecuting my Church?” The question was personal: “Why are you persecuting me?”
Encountering the risen Christ, Saul was first blinded and later baptized, his sight restored. Saul—better
known as Paul—would carry the name of Christ “before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel”
(Acts 9:15). With the death of Stephen, the persecution of the Church in Jerusalem began, and believers
were scattered into the surrounding regions of Judea and Samaria. Herod “laid violent hands” on those
who belonged to the Church, murdering James the brother of John (Acts 12:1-2). Peter and the other
apostles were repeatedly arrested and imprisoned and, according to tradition, all of them—with the
possible exception of John—suffered martyrdom. Paul, too, would suffer for the sake of Jesus’ name—
“imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death” (2 Cor. 11:23), and was most likely
martyred in Rome at the command of the Emperor Nero.

In its early centuries the Church would enjoy periods of peace and suffer through waves of hostility, even
as it continued to spread among the nations. Protesting the unjust hatred directed against Christians, the
Church Father Tertullian (c.160-225 A.D.) wrote, “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in
number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.”1 The truth of Tertullian’s comment has been proved
time and again down through the centuries. The Church continues to grow, as does the hostility against it.
According to the World Watch List published by Open Doors International, a charity that supports
persecuted Christians, pressure against Christians increased worldwide in 2013.2
In a nation where hostility against the Church may take less intense forms—ridicule, accusations of
ignorance or intolerance, threats to religious liberty—it is possible, in freedom, to study persecution and
our response to it. In countries where the saints lose homes and families, where they are imprisoned and
murdered, persecution can only be endured. Satan, the crafty serpent of Eden, is still devious enough to
employ hostility in forms that will be most effective for the location and circumstances. Yet Christ, by
His death and resurrection has conquered him and the ancient dragon awaits his final and complete
destruction. Until that Day, we will suffer our enemy's great wrath, “because he knows that his time is
short” (Rev. 12:12). Hostility and persecution will vary in intensity and duration. Yet whatever its form or
time frame, hostility against the Church will be present until our Lord returns.
How do we, as members of the body of Christ, respond to the hostility and persecution directed against
us? The following six session Bible study will examine that question. In the first session we will study the
roots of persecution. The second session will examine our unexpected response of joy and forgiveness.
The third, fourth, and fifth sessions will present responses of prayer and faithfulness, the proclamation of
the Word, and the use of our rights as citizens. The final session will examine—in the light of the empty
tomb—the cross of persecution and suffering as Martin Luther saw it, as an identifying mark of the
Church.
The Lord Jesus, who endured the hostility of many Pharisees during His earthly ministry, chose an
equally hostile Pharisee as His ambassador. Paul, who had once so zealously afflicted the Body of Christ,
would eventually in his own flesh suffer “Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”
(Col. 1:24). When the followers of Jesus Christ, the members of His Body, encounter persecution and
hostility on account of their faith, it is Jesus Himself who is being persecuted. Yet the Lord Jesus has, by
His crucifixion and resurrection, already endured and overcome persecution, hostility, and even death for
the sake of His Body, the Church. For this reason He promises us, “In the world you will have tribulation.
But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

1
Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 50, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, eds.
Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 55.
2
The nations in which the level of persecution against Christians increased include Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,
Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Columbia, and Kazakhstan. Katherine Burgess, “Aiming for ‘Effective Anger’: The Top 50
Countries Where It’s Hardest to Be a Christian,” Christianity Today, posted January 8, 2014 at
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/channel/utilities/print.html?type=article&id=115162. Communist
governments have a long and violent history of opposition to the Church. Communist regimes among the top 50
persecuting nations today include North Korea, where Christians are sent to labor camps, and Vietnam and Laos,
where Christians are viewed as “foreign agents” and pressured to renounce their faith. Islamic extremism has
become the primary source of persecution in 36 of the top 50 countries on the World Watch List.
https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/news/2920576/2920586/2925422.

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Session 1
“Why Are You Persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4)
The Roots of Hostility and Persecution

of God, preach it, hear it, learn it, and practice it.”7 As Paul had come to see and share, the followers of
the Way are rightly rooted in Christ and His Word. The hostility leveled against them has deep roots of its
own.

The terrorist group Boko Haram (the name means “Western education is sacrilege”) wants to establish
Muslim Sharia law in Nigeria. The group has stated that it will kill all the Christians in the country.3

A review of the hostility directed against Christ and His followers takes us back to a tree deeply rooted in
the newly created soil of Eden. Satan, “the ancient serpent” and “deceiver of the whole world” (Rev.
12:9), successfully tempted Eve, and Adam with her, to despise the Word of God and so—they were led
to believe—become wise through eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.8 They ate
of the forbidden fruit, and instead of wisdom gained a terrible and intimate knowledge of evil, sin, guilt,
and shame. The corrupting stain of sin was inherited by their children—by all of us. The hostility of
Satan, who was intent on destroying the Word and work of God, bore early fruit in Cain, the firstborn son
of Adam and Eve. Both of their sons offered sacrifices to God, but by faith Abel offered “a more
acceptable sacrifice than Cain” (Heb. 11:4), and Cain became angry enough to kill his brother. The hatred
and violence directed against the Word of God, against Jesus, the Word made flesh, and against those
who cling to Him by faith has not ceased since those early days of the world. Generations upon
generations later, the apostle John would see the results of the endless hostility against the Word as he
glimpsed in heaven the souls of those who were martyred “for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of
God” (Rev. 20:4).

In the past decade, the Christian population of the city of Mosul in Iraq dropped from 35,000 to 3000;
more recently these remaining Christians fled after ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria) militants
took control of the city. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS militants demanded that Christians convert to Islam, pay a
protection tax, leave, or face death.4
Gay activists disrupted services at a Michigan church, shouting slogans at churchgoers, distributing fliers
and claiming that Jesus was homosexual. Another group demonstrated outside of the church, but left
peacefully when asked.5
San Diego State University allows its officially recognized campus organizations to exclude students who
disagree with the message advocated by the group, unless the groups are religious. According to this
policy, a Christian group cannot require that its officers or members believe in the Christian faith. A
Christian fraternity and sorority declined to agree to the nondiscrimination statement and their
applications to become officially recognized student organizations were rejected.6
Why are you persecuting me? In each of the examples above, how might that question be answered? What
seems to be the underlying reason or motivation in each situation for the hostility shown toward the
Christians in question? Do you think that hostility will grow worse in years to come? What might prevent
hostility from increasing?
Hostility against the Body of Christ may be expressed in abusive or threatening speech, in social or
political opinions and actions, or in violence as opponents attempt to marginalize, dehumanize, and even
destroy those who trust in Christ. But what are the origins of such hostility? The apostle Paul, arrested in
the Jerusalem temple, was accused of defiling the temple and “teaching everyone everywhere against the
people and the law and this place” (Acts 21:28). Speaking in his own defense, Paul described his
conversion and the reasons behind his earlier hostility against the followers of the Way. He had been
strictly educated according to the Law of Moses, being as equally “zealous for God” as a persecutor as his
persecutors now were (Acts 22:3). Paul persecuted believers because of his own religious beliefs and his
misplaced zeal for the Word of God.
In a sermon of 1530, Martin Luther (who, with his sixteenth century followers, experienced a great deal
of hostility for the sake of Christ) also linked the cause of persecution with the Word, in this case not the
misplaced religious zeal of the persecutors but the faith by which the persecuted cling to the Word. Luther
wrote that “the cause of our suffering is the same as that for which all the saints have suffered from the
beginning. Of course the whole world must bear witness that we are not suffering because of public
scandal or vice, such as adultery, fornication, murder, etc. Rather we suffer because we hold to the Word

The martyrs knew, as do we, and Satan as well—although he puts no faith in it—that “man lives by every
word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut. 8:3). The Word sent forth by the Father, the Word
made flesh, accomplished the purpose for which He was sent (Is. 55:11). The Gospel Word, the good
news of all that Jesus has done to win salvation for us, is a saving Word, the Word from the mouth of the
Lord by which we live. The Gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom.
1:16). The powerful Word of the Gospel is a personal Word. Jesus told His disciples, “The one who hears
you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent
me” (Luke 10:16). Jesus asked Paul, “Why are you persecuting me?” The hostile forces that reject the
Word are arrayed not only against countless faithful witnesses, but also against the crucified and risen
Son and the Father who sent Him. Still, Satan makes every attempt to snatch away the saving Word, as
birds devour seed sown on a hardened path (Matt. 13:19). Those who thrust aside the Word judge
themselves “unworthy of eternal life” (Acts 13:46). For this reason the ancient serpent does not want the
life-giving Word to take root, or if it has, he seeks to uproot it and bring disaster, as he did in Eden.
Consider again the examples of persecution at the beginning of this lesson, or other situations of which
you are aware. How does each reflect the hostility of Satan against the Word of God?
In his epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul examines Eden’s fall into sin as if under a microscope. Like
a deadly virus escaping a laboratory, sin spreads its infection across the human race—with Christians and
persecutors, believers and unbelievers alike, falling under God’s just condemnation (Rom. 2:1-2; Rom.
3:22-23). In his examination of sin, Paul discusses the unfaithfulness of all people toward their Creator, as
they worship and serve “the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). Rebellion against the Creator
manifests itself in “all manner of unrighteousness,” including sexual immorality, envy, murder, gossip,
malice, and strife (see Rom. 1:26-32).

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World,” The Daily Beast, February 6, 2012,
www.thedailybeast.com .
Ruth Moon, “Thousands Flee as Terrorists Take Over Iraq’s Christian Heartland, Christianity Today, June 16,
2014, www.christianitytoday.com and http://lcms.org/president/persecution.
5
“Gay activists disrupt Sunday service at Michigan church,” Catholic News Agency, November 13, 2008.
6
Rob Kerby, “Are U. S. Colleges Hostile to Christian Students?” www.Beliefnet.com. This issue has moved beyond
a single campus. See the articles concerning campus organizations at other universities at
http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/september/intervarsity-now-derecognized-in-california-stateuniversit.html and http://www.intervarsity.org/page/vanderbilt-university.
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2016 Convention Workbook

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Martin Luther, Sermon at Coburg on Cross and Suffering (1530), Luther’s Works, vol. 51, ed. and trans. John W.
Doberstein (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 200.
Concerning the fall into sin, Luther wrote that Eve “let the Word go and kept thinking what a fine apple it was and
that after all such a little thing was of no great importance. So she went her way. And when one lets the Word go,
there can be no other result. But when we stay with the Word and hold on to it, we shall certainly have the
experience of conquering and coming out of it fine.” Luther’s Works 51:205.

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