Preface

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the teachings of Jesus has heard of the Sermon on the Mount. And anyone who has heard of the Sermon on the Mount has probably also heard of the Beatitudes, for they are the eight declarations of blessedness with which the Sermon on the Mount begins. They are set out in verses three to twelve of the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, and they are what this section of my web site (hopefully, to be published in book form at some point) is all about.
But why devote a section of a web site (or a book) to the Beatitudes? Surely the most striking thing about these eight congratulatory statements is their very simplicity and clarity? Why not leave them to speak for themselves? Why try to explain the self-explanatory?
Well, I believe that the simplicity of the Beatitudes is more apparent than real; that their meaning is far from clear — particularly to the mind of a westerner in the closing years of the twentieth century; and that, if left to speak for themselves, they will wrongly explain themselves and be seriously misunderstood. Indeed, I believe that they already are the object of much confusion.
Many, for instance, regard the Beatitudes as a description of an eight-step ladder of merit that, if scaled, will lead to heaven. These eight declarations, they believe, are nothing less than eight precepts — law not gospel — for Jesus was spelling out those aspects of character and conduct to which a person must conform in order to be saved. And that becomes obvious, they say, when one looks at the fifth and sixth Beatitudes. It is the merciful who will obtain mercy and it is the pure in heart who will see God. The Catechism of St Pius X on the Beatitudes states that ‘the Beatitudes ... procure us the glory of Paradise’.
Followers of Martin Luther agree that the Beatitudes are law — a true interpretation of the Mosaic law — but they believe that Jesus intended that law to create such a sense of failure in those who try to live by it that they will be driven to cry for mercy at the throne of grace.
Dispensationalists, following in the footsteps of John Nelson Darby who founded the Brethren, also agree that the Beatitudes (along with the rest of the Sermon on the Mount) are law, but they regard it as a law that has not yet come into effect. In their view, the law contained in Matthew 5-7 was offered to the Jews as the new law of the new kingdom but, in crucifying Jesus, the Jews rejected both. Accordingly, the thousand-year reign of Christ (the millennium) has been postponed until he returns to earth at some time in the future, and the new law has been placed in abeyance until then. Darby’s American friend, the lawyer Dr C I Scofield, has incorporated these views in the Scofield Reference Bible.
Yet others have seen the Beatitudes as a charter for social reform and progress. Despite his own persistent failures to live up to the Sermon on the Mount, Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author, maintained to the end of his days that the characteristics set forth in the Beatitudes could be acquired by sheer endeavour and that in such a direction ran the road to Utopia. Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian Hindu politician who steered India to the peaceful attainment of independence, thought the same.
Julian the Apostate, a Roman emperor of the fourth century AD thought he might help Christians achieve the blessedness of the Beatitudes by creating the conditions under which they would take effect. ‘As a first step,’ he is reputed to have said, ‘let us confiscate all their property and thus make them poor!’
Misunderstanding? Confusion? Yes, indeed.

The material presented here had its origin in a series of Bible studies that I delivered on successive Thursday evenings at our home fellowship group. Each study rested on a number of convictions that had seized me as I studied these sayings of Jesus in my own times of meditation.
First, I was convinced that the sayings must have had real meaning and relevance to those to whom they were first addressed. I simply could not conceive of a Jesus who merely pretended to speak to the people sitting around his feet while, in reality, he was dictating instructions for the subjects of his millennial reign at the end of time!
Next, I was persuaded that the sayings, properly understood, must have been rooted and grounded in grace. The gospel of Jesus was the gospel of grace and, as I saw it, anything that made a person’s admission to God’s kingdom conditional on performance was contrary to such a gospel; so there were no circumstances under which I could construe the Beatitudes as a ladder of ‘new law’ up which one could climb to heaven. Nor could I accept that Jesus might have placed the Beatitudes in his teaching as a kind of hurdle over which everyone would fall and then be sent limping to the first-aid post of the Cross for mercy and grace. Again, the thought of the devious, manipulative Jesus who must needs stand behind such a scheme was not to be entertained.
Then I had what I can only describe as a revelation. It dawned upon me that the secret of the Beatitudes lay in Jesus himself. I suddenly saw that, first and foremost, they were all about him! He was the one pronounced ‘blessed’ because he was the poor in spirit, he was the one who mourns, he was the meek, and so on. The eight characteristics that he singled out for blessing were attributes that he and he alone possessed to perfection. And it was borne in upon me that the blessings that followed upon possession of those attributes were blessings that only Jesus enjoyed to the full.
And that led to my final conviction. The Beatitudes were nothing less than a call by Christ to find in our relationship with him a character wholly pleasing to God, and thus to enjoy through that relationship the blessings which God pronounces on all who have such a character. They are as remote from a call to live by law as one can get. They are an invitation to increasing grace and abundant life. They are the keys to the Kingdom. Not those vouchsafed to Peter, but those whereby anyone may enter into the house of the Lord.
Viewed from this perspective, the Beatitudes became exciting and fresh for me and for the members of our fellowship group.
I should perhaps add that it was only after I had completed the fellowship series that a friend told me: ‘You do know, don’t you, that Henri Nouwen has said something very similar; that the Beatitudes are all about Jesus?’ I didn’t, but I do now. Nouwen says of Matthew 5.3-10: ‘These words present a portrait of the child of God. It is a self-portrait of Jesus, the Beloved Son. It is also a portrait of me as I must be’ (The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri J M Nouwen (Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, 1994), p 54. I have also now discovered that Rob Warner has made the same point: ‘The Beatitudes are supremely Jesus’ self-description — together they represent the finest summary of both the character and the blessedness of Christ himself’ (The Sermon on the Mount, Rob Warner (Kingsway Publications, 1998), p 42.

The chapters included here are ...

Chapter 1. Blessed

Part 1
Part 2

Chapter 2. The Poor in Spirit

Part 1
Part 2