Commentary - Luke 6:20-23

Bird's-eye view

In this foundational passage, often called the Sermon on the Plain, Luke presents a condensed and potent version of Jesus' kingdom manifesto. Unlike Matthew's more spiritualized Beatitudes, Luke's account is stark, earthy, and direct. Jesus, having just appointed His twelve apostles, turns His gaze upon His disciples and pronounces a series of four blessings, followed by four corresponding woes (which we will address later). This is not a collection of helpful tips for a better life; it is a radical reordering of the world's value system. Jesus declares that the kingdom of God belongs to those whom the world considers losers: the poor, the hungry, the grieving, and the hated. This is the great reversal. The blessings are not promises that if you are poor now, you will be rich later in some worldly sense. Rather, the blessing is the kingdom itself. The state of need and dependence, when endured for Christ's sake, is the very posture that receives the kingdom. The passage climaxes by connecting the disciples' suffering directly to the historical suffering of the prophets, placing their persecution in a noble lineage and promising a heavenly reward that far outweighs their present troubles.

This is revolutionary teaching. It turns our natural assumptions about happiness and success completely upside down. The world says, "Blessed are the rich, the full, the happy, and the popular." Jesus says the exact opposite. He is establishing the constitution of a kingdom that operates on entirely different principles from the kingdoms of men. It is a kingdom where strength is found in weakness, riches in poverty, and joy in sorrow. This is not a call to seek poverty or persecution for their own sakes, but a profound comfort and assurance for those who find themselves in such states because of their loyalty to the Son of Man.

Outline

Context In Luke

This sermon comes at a pivotal moment in Luke's Gospel. Jesus has been gathering disciples and demonstrating His authority through teaching and miracles. Immediately preceding this, in Luke 6:12-16, Jesus spends a night in prayer and then chooses the twelve apostles from among His followers. This sermon, therefore, is His inaugural address to this newly constituted inner circle, delivered in the hearing of a great multitude (Luke 6:17). It lays out the fundamental ethics and values of the kingdom He has come to establish. The direct, physical language of Luke's Beatitudes, poverty, hunger, weeping, fits with Luke's consistent emphasis on Jesus' ministry to the social outcasts, the poor, and the marginalized. This passage sets the stage for the rest of the Gospel, where Jesus will continue to live out and teach this great reversal, ultimately embodying it in His own suffering and vindication.

Key Issues

The Great Reversal

The central theme of these verses is what we might call the Great Reversal. God's economy is not like man's economy. In the world, value is assigned based on possession, status, comfort, and influence. The rich are blessed, the full are blessed, the laughing are blessed, the popular are blessed. Jesus comes and turns this entire value structure on its head. He does not simply say that the poor will one day be rich. He says that the kingdom of God is theirs, right now. The blessing is not a future compensation for a miserable present; the blessing is a present reality that transforms the meaning of that misery.

This is not an endorsement of poverty or suffering as intrinsic goods. The gospel is not a program for making people poor. Rather, it is a declaration that in a world twisted by sin, the conditions that make a person utterly dependent on God are, paradoxically, the very conditions in which the grace of God is most readily received. The man who has everything is tempted to trust in what he has. The man who has nothing has only one place to turn. Jesus is telling His disciples that the hardships they will face in following Him are not signs of God's disfavor, but are in fact the marks of true blessedness, the entry points into the kingdom.

Verse by Verse Commentary

20 And turning His gaze toward His disciples, He began to say, “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Jesus fixes His gaze on His disciples. This is an intentional, focused address. He is not speaking in generalities to the crowd, but is delivering the core identity of His followers. And the first word is "Blessed." This word, makarios in Greek, doesn't mean "happy" in a shallow, emotional sense. It means to be in a state of divine favor, to be right with God, to be in the place where true flourishing happens. And who is in this state? The poor. While Matthew specifies "the poor in spirit," Luke's stark "the poor" should not be quickly spiritualized away. He is certainly talking about those who are economically destitute, a common state for many who would have left everything to follow an itinerant preacher. But it is not poverty itself that blesses. It is the poverty that casts one upon God. The blessing is for the poor man who knows he is poor and has no other hope but God. To them, Jesus makes an astonishing declaration: "yours is the kingdom of God." Not "will be," but "is." In their state of need, they possess the kingdom's greatest treasure: the King Himself.

21 Blessed are those who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are those who cry now, for you shall laugh.

The next two blessings follow the same pattern of reversal. He blesses those who are hungry now. This is a real, gnawing hunger in the stomach, but it is also a hunger for righteousness, for justice in a world gone wrong. The promise is not that they will get a good meal tomorrow, though God certainly provides. The promise is that they "shall be satisfied." This is a deep, ultimate, eschatological satisfaction. All their longings will be fulfilled at the great Messianic banquet. Likewise, He blesses those who cry now. This is the weeping of grief, of loss, of sorrow over personal sin and the brokenness of the world. The world tells us to suppress our tears and put on a happy face. Jesus blesses the tears. And He promises a complete reversal: "you shall laugh." This is not a chuckle, but a deep, unrestrained, joyful laughter that comes when all sorrow and sighing have fled away forever. The "now" of their hunger and tears is temporary; the future of satisfaction and laughter is certain.

22 Blessed are you when men hate you, and exclude you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.

The final blessing is the longest and most specific, and it brings the cause of the suffering into sharp focus. The blessing is not for those who are hated because they are obnoxious or self-righteous. It is a blessing that comes when the world's animosity is directed at you "for the sake of the Son of Man." The world's system is built on pride, self-sufficiency, and rebellion against God. The Son of Man represents a kingdom of humility, dependence, and submission. Therefore, conflict is inevitable. Jesus lists four escalating forms of this opposition: hatred (the internal attitude), exclusion (social ostracism, being thrown out of the synagogue), insult (verbal abuse to your face), and scorning your name as evil (slander and character assassination behind your back). To have your very name, your reputation, cast out as something wicked simply because you belong to Jesus, this, He says, is a state of divine favor.

23 Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For their fathers were doing the same things to the prophets.

The required response to this persecution is not grim endurance, but explosive joy. "Be glad...and leap for joy." This is an athletic, exuberant reaction. Why? For two reasons. First, the reward in heaven is great. The suffering on earth is light and momentary, but it is producing an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all comparison. The world can take your reputation, your social standing, even your life, but it cannot touch your heavenly reward. Second, this persecution places you in the grand succession of the prophets. The world has always treated God's true messengers this way. "Their fathers" did the very same things to Jeremiah, Isaiah, and all the others. To be hated by the world for Christ's sake is to be identified with the noblest company in history. It is a badge of honor, a confirmation that you are on the right side, speaking for the true King. It is proof that your message is hitting the mark.

Application

These Beatitudes are a diagnostic tool for the modern church. We live in a culture that is obsessed with comfort, affluence, popularity, and self-esteem. And the church is deeply tempted to baptize these values and call them Christian. We want a faith that makes us prosperous, well-liked, and happy on the world's terms. Jesus confronts this desire head-on. He calls us to a kingdom whose values are an inversion of the world's.

This means we must constantly check our own hearts. Do we secretly believe that "blessed are the rich"? Do we measure the success of our churches by their budgets and buildings? Do we avoid speaking hard truths for fear that people might exclude or insult us? Do we value our reputation among worldly men more than our standing before the Son of Man? The Sermon on the Plain forces us to ask whether we are citizens of the kingdom of God or just chaplains to the kingdom of this world.

The application is not to go out and seek poverty or persecution. The application is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And when, as a result of that single-minded pursuit, we find ourselves poor, or hungry for justice, or weeping over the world's sin, or hated by the world's systems, we are not to despair. We are to leap for joy. We are to remember that these are not signs that we have lost our way, but rather signs that we are walking in the footsteps of the prophets, and more importantly, in the footsteps of our blessed Lord, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.