Jesus’ original audience often misunderstood him because they filtered his teachings through their preconceived worldview and the skewed questions that flowed from it. We have a different worldview with different questions, but we basically do the same thing. In the Sermon on the Mount, where we see a bunch of rules, Jesus is trying to show us God’s heart. While we ask how to “go to heaven,” Jesus wants to talk about living out the Kingdom of heaven on earth.
So it’s no surprise that misunderstandings abound when it comes to the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10). Almost every individual beatitude is plagued with multiple confusions. (In articles on this website and in the book Sermon on the Mount, I try to sort out a lot of these.) This makes it extremely hard to grasp the Beatitudes as a whole.
We sense that some kind of reversal is going on here, but what, exactly? At first, Jesus blesses people who do not seem blessed, but then we get to “the merciful” or “the peacemakers.” Those kinds of people may be uncommon, but they don’t appear inherently unfortunate.
We also sense some kind of progression in the Beatitudes. The people blessed near the end seem qualitatively different than the people blessed at the beginning. For instance, the “peacemakers” display far more agency than the “poor in spirit.” Yet attempts to articulate this progression often feel forced and artificial. As a result, the individual beatitudes aren’t really allowed to be themselves.
“To understand the progression of the Beatitudes, we have to understand the New Testament worldview.”
To understand the progression of the Beatitudes, we have to understand the New Testament worldview. There is an “old age” characterized by sin, death, and the work of the Devil. Paul calls it “the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4). John calls it “the world” (cf. John 16:33). I like to call it “this broken world.” But there is also a “new age” characterized by righteousness, life, and the work of the Spirit. Paul calls this the “new creation” (Galatians 6:15). Jesus calls it “the Kingdom of Heaven.” In Christ, this Kingdom is breaking in now. Or, as Jesus puts it, it has “come near” (Matthew 4:17).
We also have to understand the baggage we each carry as a result of growing up in this old, broken world. Because the world is broken, we get hurt. In response, we accept messages about (and form strategies for) promoting our interests. But these messages and strategies are based on a scarcity worldview that leaves us competing against everyone else’s messages and strategies. In the end, we contribute more hurt to an already hurting world.
The Beatitudes are the progression from being a broken part of a broken world to being a healing agent of the in-breaking Kingdom.
Beatitudes 1-3: Turning Away from the Old Way
The first three beatitudes (poor in spirit, mourn, meek) deal with turning away from the old way of doing things.
Life has forced “the poor in spirit” into an awareness that their strategies for self-protection and self-promotion don’t work. These folks are “overwhelmed and desperate” because they still feel a need for protection/promotion, but they know that it is totally beyond their power. According to Jesus, this is a good place to be. This recognition of the impotence of the strategies of the “old world” is the most basic step toward the Kingdom.
“Those who mourn” could try to self-protect from the pain and grief of loss by denying it, escaping from it. Instead, they show a glimmer of agency in deciding to face it, to own it. They allow themselves to hurt. Only when they sit in this honesty about their pain are they capable of receiving comfort.
“The meek” refuse to control and dominate others. They are actively rejecting the old strategies for self-promotion. This turn away from the old, broken world’s way of doing things sets them up for the next three beatitudes (hunger and thirst for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart), which deal with being drawn into the life of the Kingdom.
“This turn away from the old, broken world’s way of doing things sets them up for the next three beatitudes.”
Beatitudes 4-6: Drawn into Kingdom Life
If the meek see that the world’s way is a way they don’t want, “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” see that Jesus’ way is a way they do want. They don’t have it, yet. They’re just ready to pursue it because they can tell there is actual life there.
If someone is on the cusp of stepping into the life of the Kingdom, forgiveness (as the act of “mercy” Jesus probably has in mind) may seem like an odd non-sequitur. That is, unless we realize how crucial to the Kingdom forgiveness is. As I lay it out in Sermon on the Mount: 40 Days of Learning the Ways of the Kingdom, forgiveness is the bridge from the old, broken world (which we helped break) to the new, unbroken one. “The merciful” forgive and are forgiven, which is the very atmosphere of the Kingdom.
In talking about “the pure in heart,” Jesus wants to move beyond external cleanness to cleanness that goes to our core self. This is a work only he can do. The Spirit replaces our heart of stone with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). We are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and we live out of a new identity as the adopted children of God (Romans 8:14-16).
“Jesus wants to move beyond external cleanness to cleanness that goes to our core self.”
Beatitudes 7-8: Our Vocation in the Kingdom
This new identity in Christ leads directly to vocation—the focus of the last two beatitudes. People can see that “the peacemakers” are God’s healing agents in the world; hence they are called “children of God.” The original vocation of human beings was to be life-giving stewards of God’s creation. In Christ, we return to that vocation by being agents of shalom (Romans 8:16-21).
Living the Kingdom way (i.e., “righteousness”) brings healing to the broken world, but it also makes us stand out. (Jesus continues this point in the next paragraph of the Sermon on the Mount.) For “the persecuted,” the real reversal—from the way of the world to the way of the Kingdom—is complete. They reject all strategies for self-promotion and self-protection in favor of their Master’s strategy of being self-giving. Those who cling to the world’s ways find this incomprehensible and, indeed, threatening (John 3:19). Paul is clear that sharing in the Messiah’s vocation also means sharing in his suffering (Philippians 3:10-11). Paradoxically, this suffering is itself part of the vocation of the Messiah to bring healing to the world.
Congratulations and Correctives
We can see in the Beatitudes a progression from the world to the Kingdom. What’s odd is that Jesus draws absolutely no attention to the Beatitudes as a progression. He doesn’t say, “Take this step, then take this one, then take this one.” In fact, there are no imperatives whatsoever in Matthew 5:3-10. Jesus is not prescribing behavior. If this is the path of the Kingdom, Jesus is congratulating people for being anywhere on that path. Those who have lived out the vocation of Messiah to the point of being persecuted are congratulated in the exact same way as those who barely have a dim, desperate awareness that the way of the world isn’t working. Both are heirs of the Kingdom.
“Those who have lived out the vocation of Messiah to the point of being persecuted are congratulated in the exact same way as those who barely have a dim, desperate awareness that the way of the world isn’t working.”
However, the Beatitudes can work as a corrective. Those of us who are trying to walk the Kingdom path can wander away from it at any point in this progression (including points we thought we were far past). We live in a world that is constantly trying to re-enforce the old messages we lived by. When it succeeds, Jesus stands here in the Beatitudes gently calling us back. “This is how my Kingdom works, remember? This is the way of life. Empty out the old, and be filled with the new.”
