Bible Synapse
If Jesus’ yoke is easy, why does following him bring tribulation and persecution?
Hard question · The life of Jesus · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Jesus offers rest to the weary: “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
The scribes and Pharisees bind “heavy burdens and grievous to be borne” on others.
For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
“In the world ye shall have tribulation”, but in Christ there is peace.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
All who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
The Lord disciplines every son he receives.
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
The objection
Jesus promises rest: his yoke is easy and his burden light. Yet he also warns that his followers will have tribulation in the world, Paul says that all who live godly lives will be persecuted, and Hebrews speaks of God’s discipline. Following Jesus does not sound easy.
The answer
Jesus never promised an easy life; he promised an easy yoke. In Jewish speech a ‘yoke’ meant the teaching a person lived by, such as the yoke of the law, and Jesus sets his against the “heavy burdens and grievous to be borne” that the scribes laid on others (Matthew 23:4). His teaching does not crush: he is “meek and lowly in heart”, and those who take his yoke find “rest unto your souls”; the Greek for ‘easy’, chrēstos, means kindly or good to use.
The trouble comes from the world, not from the yoke. John 16:33 holds both together in one verse: “in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation”. Persecution falls on believers because they belong to Christ (2 Timothy 3:12), and the discipline of Hebrews 12 is the training a loving father gives his children. Paul, who suffered more than most, could still call it “our light affliction, which is but for a moment” beside the glory to come (2 Corinthians 4:17). Inner rest under a kind master and outward hardship from a hostile world can be true of the same person at the same time.
From the classic commentators
Christ calls a profession of faith in him, and subjection to his ordinances, a yoke, in allusion to the law of Moses, and in distinction from it; and a ‘burden’, with respect to the very heavy ones the Scribes and Pharisees laid upon the shoulders of the peopleJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Matthew 11:30 (1746–1763)
In the world ye shall have tribulation—specially arising from its deadly opposition to those who ‘are not of the world, but chosen out of the world.’ So that the ‘peace’ promised was far from an unruffled one.Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary, on John 16:33 (1871)