Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. The shift from third person (blessed are those) to second person (blessed are you) in the final Beatitude personalizes the promise: Jesus is speaking to the specific people in front of him, telling them that the reviling and persecution and false accusations they will face — on my account — are not signs of divine abandonment but of kingdom belonging. The on my account is the key: suffering for Jesus' name is suffering for the kingdom. Acts 9:4 records Jesus telling Paul that persecution of the church is persecution of Jesus himself — the identification between the king and his people is so complete that what is done to them is done to him.

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