Suffering for Christ

"Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake."

While this lines sounds a lot like the last line of the Beatitudes, there are important differences. First, while in the previous stanza, dioko includes a lot of possible meanings not all of them negative, here "persecute" is clearly the best meaning because dioko is used with other unambiguously negative attacks.

My tendency is to think that the meaning is narrower here than in the last stanza because this is the type of parallel and contrast that distinguishes Christ's words from everything else that has been written. The fact that we can be pursued for seeking perfection here is compared with the ideas

The is another parallel here where the pursuit of excellence (righteousness) is paired with the idea of following Christ. While people can compete with you in a non-negative way when you are simply trying to be the best you can be, you will encounter more negatively when you seek excellence through pursuing Christ. Following Christ (as opposed to simply embracing a mainstream "Christian" religion) has never been and will never something that is applauded publicly. Later one, Christ explains many reasons why this must be true.