But you must never abandon your allegiance to me and my word, no matter how much animosity it brings down on your head. In other words, righteousness must not be compromised in order to make peace with your persecutors. When Jesus pronounces a blessing on you for being persecuted for the sake of righteousness, he clearly subordinates the goal of peace to the goal of righteousness. First pure, then peaceable, not the other way around. Purity takes precedence over peace.
Purity is the basis of Biblical peace.
Purity may not be compromised in order to make peace. Now I want to close by dealing with one more question that a message like this would raise for some people today. Before we answer that question, let's ask another one. There is another explanation for why he preaches the way he does. He took a major social outrage of injustice and turned it into a demand for personal, individual repentance.