Commentary - Matthew 5:1-12

Bird's-eye view

The Sermon on the Mount is the great manifesto of the King, Jesus Christ. It is His constitution for the kingdom of God. Here, at the very outset of His public ministry, Jesus ascends a mountain, not unlike Moses at Sinai, and delivers the law of His new covenant. But this is not a new law in the sense of a replacement; it is the fulfillment and true interpretation of the old. He is not giving a set of utopian ideals for some future millennial age, nor is He laying down an impossible standard designed only to drive us to despair. He is describing the character and conduct of those who are citizens of His kingdom, here and now. The Beatitudes, which form the preamble to this constitution, are a series of pronouncements that turn the world's values completely upside down. The world says, "Blessed are the rich, the powerful, the self-sufficient, the happy, the popular." Jesus says the exact opposite. He declares that true blessedness, true happiness, belongs to those who are spiritually bankrupt, who grieve over their sin, who are meek, who hunger for a righteousness they do not possess, and who are persecuted for His name's sake. This is a portrait of the Christian man, a man who lives by grace from first to last.

The Beatitudes are not a list of separate virtues that we can pick and choose from. They describe a logical and spiritual progression. It begins with a right understanding of our own spiritual poverty, which leads to mourning over our sin, which cultivates a spirit of meekness. This in turn creates a desperate hunger and thirst for the righteousness found only in Christ. Having received mercy, we then become merciful. As our hearts are purified by faith, we begin to see God. As sons of God, we become peacemakers. And because our character is now so at odds with the fallen world, persecution inevitably follows. This is the normal Christian life, as defined by the King Himself.

Outline

Context In Matthew

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is the first of five major discourses of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel. It follows the account of Jesus' baptism, temptation, and the beginning of His Galilean ministry. Having announced that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt 4:17), Jesus now proceeds to describe what life in that kingdom looks like. This sermon is not delivered to the hostile religious authorities, but to His disciples and the crowds who were following Him. It lays the ethical foundation for everything that follows in the Gospel. Jesus presents Himself as the new and greater Moses, the authoritative interpreter of God's law. The sermon establishes the radical internal righteousness that God requires, a righteousness that goes far beyond the external righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and which can only be received as a gift through faith in the King Himself.

Key Issues

The Upside-Down Kingdom

The first word out of the King's mouth in His great sermon is "Blessed." The Greek word is makarios, and it describes a state of genuine, deep-seated happiness and well-being that is independent of circumstances. It is a divine pronouncement of favor. And who receives this favor? The people our world considers losers. The poor, the sad, the weak, the hungry. Jesus takes every standard of worldly success and turns it on its head. This is because the kingdom of God operates on a completely different economy than the kingdom of man. The kingdom of man is built on pride, self-sufficiency, and strength. The kingdom of God is built on humility, dependence, and grace.

To enter this kingdom, you must come with empty hands. You don't qualify by being good, but by admitting you are not. You don't earn your way in through strength, but by confessing your weakness. This is the great paradox of the gospel. The way up is down. The way to be filled is to be empty. The way to live is to die. These Beatitudes are not a ladder of self-improvement we are to climb. They are a description of the man who has been knocked off his ladder by the grace of God and is now lying at the bottom, looking up, utterly dependent on the mercy of the King.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1-2 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying,

The setting is deliberate and significant. Just as Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive the law, Jesus, the greater Moses, goes up on a mountain to deliver the law of His kingdom. He sits down, which was the authoritative posture of a rabbi when teaching. His primary audience is His disciples, those who have already begun to follow Him, but the crowds are listening in. This is not a private teaching, but a public declaration. When it says He "opened His mouth," it is a formal way of indicating the beginning of a weighty and solemn discourse. The King is about to speak, and all the earth should keep silence before Him.

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

This is the foundational Beatitude, the gateway to all the others. To be "poor in spirit" is not a reference to financial poverty or a lack of natural enthusiasm. It is a recognition of spiritual bankruptcy. It is the man who knows he has nothing to offer God. He has no righteousness of his own, no merits to plead, no spiritual currency in his pocket. He stands before God as a beggar, utterly destitute. And Jesus says this man is blessed, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to people just like him. The proud, the self-righteous, the man who thinks he is "reasonably good" has no room for the kingdom. But the one who confesses his utter need is the one to whom the kingdom is given as a free gift. All of Christianity starts here.

4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

This mourning flows directly from being poor in spirit. When a man sees his spiritual poverty, he doesn't rejoice in it; he grieves over it. This is not a general sadness about the state of the world, but a specific, godly sorrow over one's own sin. It is the grief of seeing how our sin has offended a holy God. It is the broken and contrite heart that God will not despise (Ps 51:17). To such a person, Jesus promises comfort. This is not a shallow "there, there," but a deep, divine consolation that comes from the assurance of forgiveness. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, and He comes to those who have been broken by the law, bringing the healing balm of the gospel.

5 Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth.

The word translated "lowly" or "meek" does not mean weak, timid, or mousy. Moses was the meekest man on earth, and he was a powerful leader. Jesus Himself was "meek and lowly in heart," and He cleansed the temple with a whip. Meekness is not weakness; it is strength under control. It is the attitude of one who has been humbled by God and therefore does not need to assert himself or fight for his own rights. He entrusts himself to God. And the promise is astonishing: the meek will inherit the earth. This is not a promise of a disembodied heaven. It is a promise of historical, tangible victory. Through the quiet, steady, faithful work of the gospel, the kingdom of Christ will grow to fill the entire earth. The future of this world belongs not to the proud and the powerful, but to the humble followers of the crucified King.

6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

The man who is poor in spirit, mourning his sin, and meek before God, now develops an intense craving. He hungers and thirsts for righteousness. This is not a mild preference; it is the desperate craving of a starving man for food or a dying man for water. And what does he crave? Righteousness. Both a right standing before God (justification) and a right character within (sanctification). He longs to be declared righteous and to become righteous. This is the opposite of the self-satisfied Pharisee. This is the man who knows he is unrighteous and longs for a righteousness outside of himself. The promise is absolute: he shall be satisfied. God will fill him. He will be clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ, and he will be progressively filled with the practical righteousness of the Holy Spirit.

7 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Having received the unmerited mercy of God in salvation, the citizen of the kingdom now becomes a conduit of that mercy to others. This is not about earning God's mercy by being merciful. The order is crucial. We do not show mercy in order to get mercy; we show mercy because we have been shown mercy. A man who has been forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents should not then turn and throttle his brother over a hundred denarii. Because God has been lavishly merciful to us in Christ, we must be merciful to others in their sins and failures against us. The promise is that as we live in this pattern of grace, we will continue to experience God's mercy. The merciless man, on the other hand, proves that he has never truly understood or received the mercy of God in the first place.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Purity of heart is not sinless perfection. In the biblical sense, the heart is the control center of the person, including the mind, will, and emotions. A pure heart is an undivided heart, a heart that is sincere and without hypocrisy. It is a heart that has been cleansed by the blood of Christ and now desires to please God above all else. The promise to the pure in heart is the greatest promise of all: they shall see God. This is the beatific vision. It is a promise that is fulfilled in part now, as we see God by faith in His Word and in His Son. But it will be fulfilled completely in the age to come, when we will see Him face to face. Only the pure in heart can see a holy God, and our hearts are only made pure through the gospel.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Because we have been reconciled to God through the Prince of Peace, we are called to be agents of reconciliation in the world. Peacemaking is not the same as peacekeeping. It is not avoiding conflict at any cost. Biblical peacemaking is active. It is laboring to bring sinners to peace with God through the gospel, and laboring to bring those who are estranged from one another to peace through repentance and forgiveness. It is hard, costly work. But those who do it are given the highest of titles: they shall be called sons of God. Why? Because in making peace, they are doing the very work of their Father. God is the great Peacemaker, who reconciled the world to Himself in Christ. When we make peace, we are showing the family resemblance.

10-12 Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The final Beatitude is expanded and made personal. If a person truly lives out the character described in the preceding verses, persecution is not a possibility; it is an inevitability. The world, which operates on principles of pride and self-righteousness, will hate a person who lives by grace and humility. Notice the reason for the persecution: "for the sake of righteousness" and "because of Me." This isn't a blessing on those who are persecuted for being obnoxious or foolish. It is for those who suffer because their righteous lives are a rebuke to the world, and because they bear the name of Jesus. And what is the response to this? Not grim endurance, but to rejoice and be glad. This is supernatural. We can rejoice because persecution is a sign that we truly belong to the kingdom. It is a mark of solidarity with the prophets of old and with the King Himself. And our reward in heaven is great. This suffering is temporary, but the glory is eternal.

Application

The Beatitudes are a diagnostic tool for the soul. As we read them, we must not see them as a list of virtues to achieve, but as a mirror that shows us our need for Christ. Do you see yourself in this portrait? Are you poor in spirit, or are you self-sufficient? Do you mourn your sin, or do you make excuses for it? Are you meek, or are you demanding? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness, or are you content with the spiritual status quo?

If this description seems alien to you, the solution is not to try harder. The solution is to go back to the beginning, to the first Beatitude. It is to come to God with empty hands, confessing your spiritual bankruptcy, and to plead for the mercy that is found in Jesus Christ. He perfectly embodied every one of these characteristics. He was the truly poor one who became poor for our sakes. He was the man of sorrows. He was the meek and lowly one. He was the one who perfectly fulfilled all righteousness. He is the merciful high priest, the pure one, the Prince of Peace who made peace by the blood of His cross. And He was persecuted and killed for the sake of righteousness.

When we are united to Him by faith, His character becomes our character. His righteousness becomes our righteousness. The Beatitudes, then, are not a burden, but a blessing. They are a description of what God, by His grace, is making us into. Our job is to yield to that process, to cultivate this kingdom character, and to rejoice when the world takes notice and pushes back. For in that resistance, we have the surest sign that we belong to another King and another kingdom.