The Beatitudes: Returning Home; an Introduction
5:1 And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him (Matt. 5:1 NKJV).
Foundational truth does not change.
Cultures do change.
An incorrect perception of truth can arise from the culture.
God is love.
Let us see how Jesus demonstrated this enduring truth 2,000 years ago.
To say that the nation of Israel was at a low point in its history during the years of Jesus’ ministry would be misleading. For tens of generations, the fortunes of Israel had been far below the fortunes of the patriarchs.
A thousand years had passed since the kingships of David and Solomon. The fall to a succession of conquerors began in 722 B.C. for the northern tribes of Israel and in 586 B.C. for Judah. A succession of foreign powers had each ruled for a time - Assyria, Babylon, Medea Persia, and Greece. Rome was the dominant political power of Jesus’ day, and Israel was but a small piece in a sprawling Roman Empire.
The culture of Israel in Jesus’ time was divided between different political/religious groups –
But Jesus tends not to follow the choices presented to Him by the culture of His day. He chooses a more excellent way.
The position of Matthew’s Gospel at the beginning of what we call the New Testament is appropriate as a book of transition. Drawing extensively on the books of Moses and the Prophets, Matthew goes to great lengths to assure his Jewish readers of Jesus’ role as Christ, the Messiah.
Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy, which proves Jesus’ correct lineage. The Gospel’s first word in the Greek is the word “Genesis”, the genealogy. From the first word of his narrative, Matthew is connecting with his Jewish readers.
The first three chapters of Matthew’s Gospel give details of Jesus’ birth, early years, and baptism by John the Baptist. Each recorded event speaks to the expectations of the Jews for the Messiah. The calling of the disciples and the healing of the sick in Matthew 4 bring His story into active participation in the reality of Jewish life in that day.
As forerunner to the Messiah, John the Baptist had cried out, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matt. 3:2). After His baptism by John, “Jesus began to preach and to say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matt. 4:18).
John the Baptist spoke in Hebrew to those who would hear their language and hear the call of God.
The Hebrew word translated as "repent" is the same as used by the prophets, return (Strong’s H7725), as in, Jer. 24:7, “Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.”
The prophets’ call is for a return, a restoration of relationship with God.
But this call of the prophets of old is misunderstood as a transaction, a bargain in which God will return to the people if the people return to Him. When the people do the Law, then God will return to Israel.
This is the misunderstanding of the Pharisees. They would put God into their debt by performing all the works that the law they had written required of them. God would be forced to honor them.
This focus on actions misses the point: returning is a matter of the heart, a matter of restoring oneness, a matter of love.
Israel was multi-lingual in the time of Jesus. Aramaic was the dominant language of the countryside areas such as Galilee; Hebrew was the language of the Temple, the Pharisees and those who focused on the law; and Greek was the language of the upper class and the economy. Latin was known by many because of the Roman occupation.
The concept of the word we translate as “repent” meant something different to the Hebrew and to the Greek. The meaning in the Hebrew language was a return of the heart, as in Jeremiah above. The Greek understanding (metanoia – literally, “concerning the mind/thinking”) was a reference to reason and rationality.
Our English word, repent, does not appear until the 14th century according to Merriam-Webster. The meanings include, “to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life,” and “to feel regret…,” or “change one’s mind,” reflected the understanding of the church at that time.
And this emphasis is more along the lines of the Pharisees and Greeks than of Jesus, more of a change in doing and thinking than a change of heart, the restoration of relationship.
The law and reason are poor substitutes for love.
As in the story of Job, the prophets reminded Israel that God is everything that is good. To return to Him is to restore the original intent of God’s Creation, the oneness of God and His creatures in the Garden. God seeks restoration of relationship of Father/child rather than Master/servant.
Sometimes words get in the way of our understanding this truth.
Our oldest Gospel transcripts are in Greek. This has implications for our understanding of Jesus.
The Greek word metanoia (Strong’s G3340) is translated for us as repent or repentance. But let us understand the word in the sense used in the Scriptures. It is beyond a regret for past actions, or even the turning back of the mind to God.
Jesus expands on the concept of repentance beyond act (Pharisees) or thought (Greek). Repentance is a restoration of relationship, a return to oneness with God. He wants us to change our hearts about God, to see the Father as He is: love.
Genesis 1 and 2 presents love in action. Here we see the ideal for life on earth as being life in heaven, also.
Genesis 3 is also love in action. God will not enable Adam and Eve to attempt to serve two masters. The first couple has raised Satan to God’s level in their eyes, and their divided loyalty can only bring them pain.
God’s love manifests in the consequences for their actions. Rather than the entire Garden of Eden fall from the dimensions of heaven, God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden.
His love allows them death rather than force them to live forever in a state of alienation from Him. God is love, not force.
And His love also extends mercy in the hope of Genesis 3:15.
We misunderstand the call to repentance as a focus on the past. We focus on the sins, the wrong choices, rather than to focus on the goodness of the Creator, the promise of a future.
When we focus on the sin and the resulting ill effects, we lose sight of love.
When we see the effects of sin as stemming from God rather than being the inevitable consequences of our actions, we may feel that love loses.
But when we see a wrong choice and its inevitable consequences as a means to have us return to truth and light, to return to Him as His, then we see how love wins.
Jesus came to show us the Father. He shows us God’s love even as He shows us the faults of His culture (and each succeeding culture, including our own).
To open our eyes, minds, and hearts, Jesus shows us a new way of seeing, a new way of thinking, a new way of being. He is opening the door to a new future.
With the kingdom of heaven at hand, literally within our reach, preparation for a new kind of life is in order. This is the thrust of Jesus’ ministry, beginning with the Beatitudes.
The teachings of Jesus throughout the Gospels bring clarity to the Commandments given at Sinai. The Sermon on the Mount may be seen in the light of Mount Sinai as a retelling of the story in Exodus:
God’s Law, the underlying truth existing within Creation, contrasts sharply with mankind’s law, which attempts to establish control through external force.
Mankind had reduced these Ten Words from a broad understanding of relationship with God and with people to a burdensome system of narrow works. The traditions of culture had replaced the intent of God at Sinai. Repentance – a return from mankind’s reality to God’s reality – was and is appropriate.
Jesus took John’s call to repent and added instructions for how to renew one’s life. Having shed the old, we must put on the new, and Jesus helps us to understand the character we are to have. His eight Beatitudes are a description of the character of the new man and woman.
And the principles that Jesus preaches are not at all what anyone expects.
Matthew begins the section on the Beatitudes by describing the setting for the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus saw the increasing number of people who followed Him as He went through the countryside teaching, preaching, and healing. “And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated, His disciples came to Him” (Matt. 5:1). He then taught them the words that are now collectively known as the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes.
Jesus sat and His disciples came to Him. He is speaking directly to His disciples, but He is also aware of the crowd that again surrounds them. The message is not restricted but is for all who are willing to hear.
The stimulation of our physical senses by the world easily can overwhelm our spiritual senses. When the physical world is our only reality, we lose connection and an appropriate awareness of our place and who we are. We are left separated from God and fractured in our being. Jesus calls us to oneness with Him and within ourselves.
The Beatitudes possess many interpretations. Below is one understanding. The meaning that your heart receives will be unique to you, and this meaning will deepen as your experiences reveal the truths within these few verses.
The word, Beatitude, comes from the Latin, beatus, with translations such as happy, fortunate, prosperous, blessed. One of Webster’s definitions of bless is to make happy or prosperous, and this is what God has intended for us from the beginning, that we be blessed – happy and prosperous. Let us come to understand this blessed state of being.
We will explore the journey of the individual to a closer relationship with God. We will see also how this journey had been modeled in the Sanctuary at Sinai, in which God had given the children of Israel a visual aid of the heavenly Sanctuary (Ex. 25-28, Rom. 8:1-2). And we will see how each Beatitude brings us blessedness, happiness.
The Beatitudes consists of eight statements, and each statement contains at least one reversal of what is considered true in this world.
The first reversal lies within the verse. For example, the poor inherit a kingdom, those who mourn are comforted by the One they have spurned, and the meek inherit the earth. We do not usually associate the reward with the particular group.
Another reversal is the statement itself. Each statement concerns a group who we are to consider blessed. They are not in circumstances that we identify with the blessed, and they definitely do not conform to the other translation of the Greek for blessed – happy. The poor in spirit, the mourner, and the meek, the seeker, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemaker and the persecuted are all in situations that appear to place them at odds with their society and with blessedness and happiness.
In describing the new person, Jesus is also describing the new person’s goal, his purpose. This goal is equally at odds with expectations: Jesus thoroughly refutes wealth and prosperity in earthly terms as legitimate goals.
The goal of the new individuals, the object of their striving, is to arrive at the point where proper relationship with God is all that matters. Goals linked to the physical world “where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” cannot give true happiness because they all pass away. True happiness, blessedness, comes with pursuing things that “neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:19-20).
The pursuit of happiness, blessedness, requires a change in course.
Jesus knew the expectations of His audience. They were looking for a literal kingdom in their present world, a new political system based upon the current religious paradigm. He did not confront the popular misunderstanding directly. His words, however, effectively destroyed such visions and established an alternative view of the kingdom to come.
Based on the Sermon on the Mount, people could no longer expect a political Messiah. The new promise was much better. The crowds, and even Jesus’ disciples, however, missed Jesus’ call to follow Him to a new kingdom.
People still miss the point of Jesus’ sermon.
The Beatitudes are Jesus’ description of the journey of the new man and woman who will reside in this new kingdom. These eight verses are a step by step revelation of how to live in the new dispensation following repentance, becoming a new child of God.
After the Beatitudes, the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount provides details on how to live this new life. Jesus provides His hearers in any era an alternative view of successful living on planet earth.
Rather than living with an eye to life in a future kingdom of heaven, Jesus describes how to live in the kingdom of heaven in the present, as well as in the future. He does not want us to have to wait.
Next article
5:1 And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him (Matt. 5:1 NKJV).
Foundational truth does not change.
Cultures do change.
An incorrect perception of truth can arise from the culture.
God is love.
Let us see how Jesus demonstrated this enduring truth 2,000 years ago.
To say that the nation of Israel was at a low point in its history during the years of Jesus’ ministry would be misleading. For tens of generations, the fortunes of Israel had been far below the fortunes of the patriarchs.
A thousand years had passed since the kingships of David and Solomon. The fall to a succession of conquerors began in 722 B.C. for the northern tribes of Israel and in 586 B.C. for Judah. A succession of foreign powers had each ruled for a time - Assyria, Babylon, Medea Persia, and Greece. Rome was the dominant political power of Jesus’ day, and Israel was but a small piece in a sprawling Roman Empire.
The culture of Israel in Jesus’ time was divided between different political/religious groups –
- Pharisees, legalistic conservatives
- Sadducees, morally liberal
- Zealots, religious ultranationalists
- Essenes, religious ascetics
- Agnostic, unclear or mixed ideology and loyalty
But Jesus tends not to follow the choices presented to Him by the culture of His day. He chooses a more excellent way.
The position of Matthew’s Gospel at the beginning of what we call the New Testament is appropriate as a book of transition. Drawing extensively on the books of Moses and the Prophets, Matthew goes to great lengths to assure his Jewish readers of Jesus’ role as Christ, the Messiah.
Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy, which proves Jesus’ correct lineage. The Gospel’s first word in the Greek is the word “Genesis”, the genealogy. From the first word of his narrative, Matthew is connecting with his Jewish readers.
The first three chapters of Matthew’s Gospel give details of Jesus’ birth, early years, and baptism by John the Baptist. Each recorded event speaks to the expectations of the Jews for the Messiah. The calling of the disciples and the healing of the sick in Matthew 4 bring His story into active participation in the reality of Jewish life in that day.
As forerunner to the Messiah, John the Baptist had cried out, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matt. 3:2). After His baptism by John, “Jesus began to preach and to say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matt. 4:18).
John the Baptist spoke in Hebrew to those who would hear their language and hear the call of God.
The Hebrew word translated as "repent" is the same as used by the prophets, return (Strong’s H7725), as in, Jer. 24:7, “Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.”
The prophets’ call is for a return, a restoration of relationship with God.
But this call of the prophets of old is misunderstood as a transaction, a bargain in which God will return to the people if the people return to Him. When the people do the Law, then God will return to Israel.
This is the misunderstanding of the Pharisees. They would put God into their debt by performing all the works that the law they had written required of them. God would be forced to honor them.
This focus on actions misses the point: returning is a matter of the heart, a matter of restoring oneness, a matter of love.
Israel was multi-lingual in the time of Jesus. Aramaic was the dominant language of the countryside areas such as Galilee; Hebrew was the language of the Temple, the Pharisees and those who focused on the law; and Greek was the language of the upper class and the economy. Latin was known by many because of the Roman occupation.
The concept of the word we translate as “repent” meant something different to the Hebrew and to the Greek. The meaning in the Hebrew language was a return of the heart, as in Jeremiah above. The Greek understanding (metanoia – literally, “concerning the mind/thinking”) was a reference to reason and rationality.
Our English word, repent, does not appear until the 14th century according to Merriam-Webster. The meanings include, “to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life,” and “to feel regret…,” or “change one’s mind,” reflected the understanding of the church at that time.
And this emphasis is more along the lines of the Pharisees and Greeks than of Jesus, more of a change in doing and thinking than a change of heart, the restoration of relationship.
The law and reason are poor substitutes for love.
As in the story of Job, the prophets reminded Israel that God is everything that is good. To return to Him is to restore the original intent of God’s Creation, the oneness of God and His creatures in the Garden. God seeks restoration of relationship of Father/child rather than Master/servant.
Sometimes words get in the way of our understanding this truth.
Our oldest Gospel transcripts are in Greek. This has implications for our understanding of Jesus.
The Greek word metanoia (Strong’s G3340) is translated for us as repent or repentance. But let us understand the word in the sense used in the Scriptures. It is beyond a regret for past actions, or even the turning back of the mind to God.
Jesus expands on the concept of repentance beyond act (Pharisees) or thought (Greek). Repentance is a restoration of relationship, a return to oneness with God. He wants us to change our hearts about God, to see the Father as He is: love.
Genesis 1 and 2 presents love in action. Here we see the ideal for life on earth as being life in heaven, also.
Genesis 3 is also love in action. God will not enable Adam and Eve to attempt to serve two masters. The first couple has raised Satan to God’s level in their eyes, and their divided loyalty can only bring them pain.
God’s love manifests in the consequences for their actions. Rather than the entire Garden of Eden fall from the dimensions of heaven, God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden.
His love allows them death rather than force them to live forever in a state of alienation from Him. God is love, not force.
And His love also extends mercy in the hope of Genesis 3:15.
We misunderstand the call to repentance as a focus on the past. We focus on the sins, the wrong choices, rather than to focus on the goodness of the Creator, the promise of a future.
When we focus on the sin and the resulting ill effects, we lose sight of love.
When we see the effects of sin as stemming from God rather than being the inevitable consequences of our actions, we may feel that love loses.
But when we see a wrong choice and its inevitable consequences as a means to have us return to truth and light, to return to Him as His, then we see how love wins.
Jesus came to show us the Father. He shows us God’s love even as He shows us the faults of His culture (and each succeeding culture, including our own).
To open our eyes, minds, and hearts, Jesus shows us a new way of seeing, a new way of thinking, a new way of being. He is opening the door to a new future.
With the kingdom of heaven at hand, literally within our reach, preparation for a new kind of life is in order. This is the thrust of Jesus’ ministry, beginning with the Beatitudes.
The teachings of Jesus throughout the Gospels bring clarity to the Commandments given at Sinai. The Sermon on the Mount may be seen in the light of Mount Sinai as a retelling of the story in Exodus:
- Jesus leads us out of bondage to the lie to live in truth;
- He gives us a new law: love;
- He gives us a new kingdom: heaven.
God’s Law, the underlying truth existing within Creation, contrasts sharply with mankind’s law, which attempts to establish control through external force.
Mankind had reduced these Ten Words from a broad understanding of relationship with God and with people to a burdensome system of narrow works. The traditions of culture had replaced the intent of God at Sinai. Repentance – a return from mankind’s reality to God’s reality – was and is appropriate.
Jesus took John’s call to repent and added instructions for how to renew one’s life. Having shed the old, we must put on the new, and Jesus helps us to understand the character we are to have. His eight Beatitudes are a description of the character of the new man and woman.
And the principles that Jesus preaches are not at all what anyone expects.
Matthew begins the section on the Beatitudes by describing the setting for the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus saw the increasing number of people who followed Him as He went through the countryside teaching, preaching, and healing. “And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated, His disciples came to Him” (Matt. 5:1). He then taught them the words that are now collectively known as the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes.
Jesus sat and His disciples came to Him. He is speaking directly to His disciples, but He is also aware of the crowd that again surrounds them. The message is not restricted but is for all who are willing to hear.
The stimulation of our physical senses by the world easily can overwhelm our spiritual senses. When the physical world is our only reality, we lose connection and an appropriate awareness of our place and who we are. We are left separated from God and fractured in our being. Jesus calls us to oneness with Him and within ourselves.
The Beatitudes possess many interpretations. Below is one understanding. The meaning that your heart receives will be unique to you, and this meaning will deepen as your experiences reveal the truths within these few verses.
The word, Beatitude, comes from the Latin, beatus, with translations such as happy, fortunate, prosperous, blessed. One of Webster’s definitions of bless is to make happy or prosperous, and this is what God has intended for us from the beginning, that we be blessed – happy and prosperous. Let us come to understand this blessed state of being.
We will explore the journey of the individual to a closer relationship with God. We will see also how this journey had been modeled in the Sanctuary at Sinai, in which God had given the children of Israel a visual aid of the heavenly Sanctuary (Ex. 25-28, Rom. 8:1-2). And we will see how each Beatitude brings us blessedness, happiness.
The Beatitudes consists of eight statements, and each statement contains at least one reversal of what is considered true in this world.
The first reversal lies within the verse. For example, the poor inherit a kingdom, those who mourn are comforted by the One they have spurned, and the meek inherit the earth. We do not usually associate the reward with the particular group.
Another reversal is the statement itself. Each statement concerns a group who we are to consider blessed. They are not in circumstances that we identify with the blessed, and they definitely do not conform to the other translation of the Greek for blessed – happy. The poor in spirit, the mourner, and the meek, the seeker, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemaker and the persecuted are all in situations that appear to place them at odds with their society and with blessedness and happiness.
In describing the new person, Jesus is also describing the new person’s goal, his purpose. This goal is equally at odds with expectations: Jesus thoroughly refutes wealth and prosperity in earthly terms as legitimate goals.
The goal of the new individuals, the object of their striving, is to arrive at the point where proper relationship with God is all that matters. Goals linked to the physical world “where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” cannot give true happiness because they all pass away. True happiness, blessedness, comes with pursuing things that “neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:19-20).
The pursuit of happiness, blessedness, requires a change in course.
Jesus knew the expectations of His audience. They were looking for a literal kingdom in their present world, a new political system based upon the current religious paradigm. He did not confront the popular misunderstanding directly. His words, however, effectively destroyed such visions and established an alternative view of the kingdom to come.
Based on the Sermon on the Mount, people could no longer expect a political Messiah. The new promise was much better. The crowds, and even Jesus’ disciples, however, missed Jesus’ call to follow Him to a new kingdom.
People still miss the point of Jesus’ sermon.
The Beatitudes are Jesus’ description of the journey of the new man and woman who will reside in this new kingdom. These eight verses are a step by step revelation of how to live in the new dispensation following repentance, becoming a new child of God.
After the Beatitudes, the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount provides details on how to live this new life. Jesus provides His hearers in any era an alternative view of successful living on planet earth.
Rather than living with an eye to life in a future kingdom of heaven, Jesus describes how to live in the kingdom of heaven in the present, as well as in the future. He does not want us to have to wait.
Next article