Kingdom of Heaven: Its Norms and Witness

Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Kingdom of Heaven from Matthew 5:1-16.

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The more I read these three chapters, Matthew 5–7, the more I am both drawn to them and shamed by them. There is a light in these chapters that draws Christians to it, but the light is so bright it sears and burns and shames. Here there is no room for that form of piety that is just veneer and sham. It is all or nothing. You’re either in or you’re out. There’s no compromise. So in a way it’s almost repulsive. The great theme of these three chapters is the kingdom of God. At the end of chapter 4, we discover that Jesus has been preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom. Matthew usually calls it the kingdom of heaven. Jews regularly called what took place in the God sphere as heaven to avoid using God’s name, which they took to be too holy for passage on common lips. So sometimes they would speak of the “kingdom of heaven” just to avoid saying the “kingdom of God.”

The kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, can sometimes in the New Testament refer to all of God’s sovereignty. It refers sometimes to the way he reigns over all. He never abdicates his authority. More frequently, it refers to his authority coming through to save men. It refers to his saving authority. It refers to the exercise of his reign, which goes after men.

So sometimes there is really no difference in the pages of the New Testament between kingdom of God and eternal life. If you enter the kingdom of God, you enter eternal life. The kingdom idea nevertheless has with it notions of both authority from God’s perspective and obedience from ours. Therefore, the drumming note of obedience and dependence to the God whose is the kingdom comes out again and again in these pages.

That’s at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. You come out with these very stern words. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” There is a sense in which, furthermore, the kingdom is both present and future, and it is necessary to appreciate this to understand what Jesus says in these three chapters.

There is a sense in which God’s saving authority was exercised through Jesus when Jesus came. Jesus came, and with him the kingdom has come. It is already here. There is a sense in which Christians are already in the kingdom, but there is a sense in which the fullness of that authority will be displayed only when Jesus comes again.

So there is a sense in which the kingdom is coming and is not here yet. There is an already aspect to the kingdom, and there is a not yet aspect to the kingdom. Therefore, sometimes when Jesus promises certain blessings from the kingdom on the people described in these chapters, there is a sense of fulfillment now. They get some of these things promised now, but some of them are still to come in that aspect of the kingdom which is still due.

This also accounts for the fact that the standards put here are absolutely unbending. To put it in a nutshell, the epoch of the kingdom of God in its most ultimate form applies now. That’s why in one verse in this sermon Jesus can say, “Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I’m reminded of 1 John, where John says again and again, “The person who is born of God does not sin.”

He is not saying by this that Christians don’t sin in fact; he is simply saying it’s not done. A schoolteacher might say to his pupils, “Gum chewing is not done here. You cannot chew gum here.” It would quite miss the point if little Johnny in the third row stuck up his hand and said, “I am, sir. I am.” The point is it is not done here. Sinning is not done here. Therefore, whenever a Christian does sin, he’s out of line with everything he professes.

It is this aspect of the kingdom that comes through so clearly in these three chapters. The kingdom is not yet here in its fullness, but all its demands are here now, and his blessings are heaped upon those that pertain to it. Let me say just a word about the series as a whole. This week I would like to cover what I envisage to be the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, the first 16 verses, and in the last week, the conclusion, chapter 7, verses 12 and following.

The body of the sermon lies between those two parts, and in a sense the very heart of that comes next week. So this week and next week, I want to spend all the time in the text itself, but in the four weeks after that, although I would like to concentrate attention on the text, I also want to spend just a few minutes each week relating what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount to parallels in Luke and to the rest of what Matthew says, and also to place it within the context of the New Testament as a whole.

It seems to me that sometimes we have a sort of nitpicking view of the Word of God. We get a little bit in focus but somehow don’t see how it fits in with the rest. So I would like to take just a few minutes each of those four weeks to try to relate the Sermon on the Mount to the whole.

“Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.” The crowds mentioned are referred to already at the end of the previous chapter. Large crowds came from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem and Judea, to come to him to be healed of all their diseases. When he saw these crowds, he went to a mountainside, sat down, and his disciples came to him.

The term disciple in the New Testament is an ambiguous one. Sometimes it refers only to the Twelve, the twelve apostles. Sometimes it refers to all those who are following Jesus sincerely, and sometimes it refers only to those who are following Jesus more or less at that moment and, therefore, has no deeper significance.

It seems that what has taken place here is that Jesus withdraws somewhat to a mountain, possibly in the quiet hill country west of Galilee, and the disciples, the budding students … not just the Twelve but as many as wished to learn from him, a sizable crowd … then draws off to listen to him. We see it is not just the Twelve by the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, where we read that there is still a crowd that marvels at all his words and sayings and notes in particular his authority.

He sat down. It was a custom for Jewish teachers, whether in synagogues or in schools, to sit not to stand. Here he sat and began to teach them. If you have an older version, you will see that verse 2 has, “He opened his mouth and taught them, saying …” To our ears, we begin to wonder what else he could have done. Yet the expression is a fairly common idiom, and it simply adds to the deliberateness of what is then coming. It’s sober. It draws attention. He opens his mouth and begins to speak, saying …

Then we come to the norms of the kingdom. There are three general things to remark about these beatitudes. First, the word blessed itself. Some modern translations try to cover it by the word happy. That just doesn’t quite do. The word has more of a connotation of being approved by God. He who is approved by God will be happy, but it does not follow that he who is happy is approved by God. So perhaps it is better to preserve the word blessing.

This immediately raises the question about whose approval we seek, and really that is what a great deal of the Sermon on the Mount is about. Whose approval do we seek? Am I out primarily to please my friends, my family, my colleagues, to be the best known and best loved, or do I want above all, above everything else, to please God?

The second general thing to be noted is that the things promised in these beatitudes are not arbitrary rewards, but they grow naturally (or perhaps I should say supernaturally) out of the character described. Look at verse 6, for example. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” There’s a connection between the hungering and thirsting and the being filled.

Verse 7: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” There’s a connection between the condition and the fulfillment. This is so in each case, as we shall see. They are not arbitrary rewards. The promise and the fulfillment are linked. The third general thing to observe is that two of the beatitudes promise the same reward, the first beatitude and the last. Verse 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Verse 10: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Verses 11–12 are not part of the Beatitudes per se. They break up into a different form, and instead of being in the third person, “Blessed are such-and-such, for they are such-and-such,” they now speak directly in the second person, taking this last beatitude and applying it in a distinctive fashion, as we shall see.

This business of having a particular blessing at the beginning and at the end is called an inclusion, and what it means is that everything in between is really bracketed on this concept of kingdom of heaven. All that is being talked about in these beatitudes is the kingdom of heaven. What is the character, what is the norm of behavior of those who are in the kingdom?

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

Poverty of spirit does not mean financial poverty. It has nothing to do with how many stocks and shares I have or how fat my wallet is. Nor does it have anything to do with being poor in the Holy Spirit or having only a small amount of the Holy Spirit. Nor does it have anything to do with being poorly spirited or being poor in courage. Nor is it even being poor in spiritual awareness.

The expression itself comes from the Old Testament when sometimes God’s people are so oppressed they are called the poor of God, but eventually, whether they are oppressed or not, the name sticks, and then it takes on a whole deeper dimension of being poor in spirit. This poverty of spirit is not a sort of self-generated self-hatred. I think all Christians are repulsed by that sort of sham humility, which tries so hard to be humble but never succeeds.

I can think of one chap I studied with at seminary. He was much brighter than the rest of us, and he had far more degrees than the rest of us. He had already been through I don’t how many programs, and he kept telling us that when he got the next one he’d just stick it in the bottom drawer and forget about it. He told us so many times we sometimes wished he’d stick himself in the bottom drawer.

Poverty of spirit isn’t anything like that at all. Rather, genuine poverty of spirit is the conscious acknowledgement of un-worth before God. It is the deepest form of repentance. Isaiah says, “Thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit.’ ” Again, “To this man will I look: him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word.”

The psalmist in Psalm 51 says, “The sacrifices of the Lord are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, you will not despise.” It is to depend not a whit on my so-called talents and skills when I stand before God. There are dangers to being in Cambridge. There are dangers to being in CICCU in Cambridge. I suspect there is no pride more deadly than that which finds its roots in great learning and great show of piety.

This beatitude of the Lord is a full, honest, factual, conscious, and conscientious recognition of my personal un-worth before God. Poverty of spirit, therefore, may end in a triumphant Gideon vanquishing enemy hosts, but it begins with a Gideon who first affirms that he is incapable of the task, and he insists that if the Lord doesn’t go with him, he’d much rather stay home and thresh his grain. That’s poverty of spirit. It is exemplified by the publican in the temple. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Therefore, we can see why the reward is the kingdom of God. It is theirs because they belong to it. These who are poor in spirit have submitted to the kingdom’s obligations, namely the total reign of God, and therefore, they enjoy its privileges. It is, in fact, deep repentance. God is far more interested in what we are than in what we do, and therefore, the very first beatitude strikes at the very essence of the human being. It states right at the beginning that person’s reward is the kingdom of heaven.

2. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

This follows naturally from poverty of spirit. There are different kinds of mourning that are particularly stressed in the Scriptures, but perhaps two are in view in particular. There is the mourning over personal sin, and this follows naturally from the first beatitude, the first blessing. We think of Isaiah who sees something of the glory and holiness of God, such that even the very angels in heaven cover their faces and cry, “Holy, holy, holy.”

As a result, he is conscious of his un-worth, and he says, “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips.” Or we think of Peter seeing something of the Lord’s spectacular power in the realm that Peter knew most about (namely, fishing) and saying, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” We see Paul wrestling in Romans, chapter 7. “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?”

There’s that kind of mourning, but there is also a mourning that mourns over sins and injustices at large. Even in the Isaiah passage itself, it’s intriguing to note that Isaiah does not just say, “I am a man of unclean lips.” He also says, “I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips.” It is as if he bears with him all of the sins of his people representatively. He puts himself with them, and he weeps over those as well.

Or think again of Jesus’ words at the end of Matthew 23, when he looks over the lights of Jerusalem and says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you together like a hen gathers her chicks, but you wouldn’t.” This text says, “Blessed is the one who mourns.” That makes me ask myself, “Do I view my sins in that way? Do I mourn over my sins? Or do I view them with such equanimity that I almost regard them as inevitable? ‘We all have our things.’ Or does every sin grieve me?”

It also makes me ask if I look at other people and other cities and mourn over these people and these cities. I went with a friend of mine once to a beach near Ottawa. There was a high school party, something between O levels and A levels, taking place on the beach. It got to be a really raucous affair with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of young people. I hadn’t known this was going to be there, and my friend and I were down having a swim.

This other chap was another minister. He came out of the water, and I saw him just sort of standing there. I’m having fun, and he’s just standing there watching all these hundreds of kids. I went up to him and said, “Ken?” He said, “High school students … what a mission field.” Just so. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

This does not suggest that Christians are to go around being morose and weepy, but on the other hand, we’re not to be frivolous and cheap. The world likes to laugh. It does not like a wet blanket. Somewhere in between stands the Christian. In the world, pleasure sellers dispense merry hearts and chuckles all around for a neat profit, but it becomes almost the summum bonum of life, the very goal, the very essence: to be happy, to make it to the next high.

The Christian doesn’t think in those terms. Rather, the Christian, in a sense, is the truest realist. He sees both himself and his world the way they are under God, and he mourns. He’s not being a pessimist. He’s not going around with a morose face like the little girl who said to her mother, “That horse must be a Christian because it has such a long face.”

No, that’s not the idea. The idea is simply that the Christian is a realist. He sees himself, he sees his finances, he sees the world’s predicament, and he sees its ugliness against standard of God’s transcendent purity, and he mourns. These people, then, are promised that they will exchange their ashes of mourning for the oil of joy, the spirit of heaviness for a garment of praise.

Ultimately, we read that in a new heaven and on a new earth, God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Perhaps here there is also that particular mourning that is the path of Christians who are persecuted, but that too will one day be gone, in a new heaven and a new earth, when the kingdom is consummated and the mourning and the weeping turns into laughter.

3.“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

How does this meekness differ from the poverty of spirit? In this way, I think, poverty of spirit has more to do with what a person is in himself. Meekness has more to do with his relationship to others, first toward God and secondly toward his peers, his colleagues.

Again, it is apparent that meekness is not considered an ideal by the world. Meekness is simply not one of the world’s ideas of strength, yet every Christian ought to be characterized by this beatitude, by this meek spirit. I fear that too frequently we who name the name of Christ lay the ax to this beatitude more quickly than any other on the list.

Think of God’s method of decreasing Gideon’s host and increasing the percentage of committed holiness. He didn’t seem to be interested in the large display and the large showy force, but he was interested in the men. Or think again of Abraham’s deference to Lot. That’s meekness. Or think of Moses so reluctant to be pushed into the forefront. That’s meekness. “The meekest man who ever lived,” we read.

Meekness, therefore, is certainly not to be confused with weakness. Meekness does not mean being a wishy-washy Charlie Brown who can be walked over and pushed over with a wet noodle. It is something strong and deep. It is with respect to God the conscious acknowledgement that he is Lord, and with respect to my fellow men that I desire to see their interests and their attitudes precede my own.

One writer puts it this way: “The man who is truly meek is the one who is amazed that God and men can think of him as well as they do.” Meekness must then go on and express itself in our whole demeanor and in our behavior. In other words, there is to be no cheap spirit of retaliation and endless one-upmanship. Rather, we are to leave everything … ourselves, our rights, our cause, our whole future … in the hands of God, and especially so if we feel we are suffering unjustly.

In this day, when many people are yelling loudly about their rights, the Christian in matters of personal relationship with others is willing to leave his rights in the hands of God. I draw your attention in passing to Titus 3:1–7 and 2 Peter, chapter 3. We read, “And the meek shall inherit the earth.” What a devastating contradiction to the world’s philosophy. The materialism of our day says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, only do it first.”

The philosophy of our day says, “Grab what you can. The strong man first and the Devil take the hindmost.” That is so whether you are on the left of the political spectrum or on the right. Somehow people get embroiled in their own things, and they see themselves as being attacked when even their ideas are questioned, but while the pressures of a competitive and increasingly crooked business world forge such philosophies, Jesus says, “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

This is true in at least two ways. It is true now, in the first place, because the truly meek man is the truly contented and satisfied man. In this sense, he inherits the earth now. Paul, therefore, could affirm, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.” The materialist is never truly content, no matter how much he owns. “All things are yours,” Paul insists. “You may not have them right now, but they’re yours. They’re yours in principle. Look at the long-range view. They’re all Christ’s, and you’re Christ’s, and therefore they’re all yours.”

This brings us to the second way in which it’s true. It will be demonstrably true in the new heaven and the new earth. If I dare speak of eternity in terms of time, 50 million billion trillion years into eternity, the threescore years and ten we spend down here will not seem like much more than that. Then we will wish we had reoriented our perspectives, our goals, and our values during these threescore years and ten.

4. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Righteousness is often parodied as some form of obsolete Victorian prudishness. I suspect the modern rendition of this particular verse would run something like, “Blessed are they who are not too hungry and thirsty for righteousness, lest they be thought to be religious fanatics.” The God whom we serve wants no sort of half-baked stance vis-a-vis righteousness.

In the epistles of Paul, righteousness takes on a special meaning so that the unconverted man stands in need of the imputed righteousness of Christ. Christ’s righteousness is reckoned to the sinner, and the sinner’s sin is reckoned to Christ. Jesus was condemned, and the sinner goes free. Is that the righteousness that is in view here?

Or again, for the Christian there ought to be a growing experiential righteousness in his own life, a personal holiness, righteousness of speech and conduct and secret thought and hidden motive. Is that the righteousness that is discussed here? Matthew’s gospel makes no distinction. In Matthew’s gospel, the word here used for righteousness simply means conformity to the will of God. So this beatitude strikes through every man.

It means, “Blessed is the person who hungers and thirsts to be conformed to the will of God, for he shall be filled.” Furthermore, this Christian, therefore, must not simply desire to be a little bit better. He must really hunger and thirst. Most of us here, I suspect, are young enough never to have been really hungry.

Probably very few of us went through hungry times during the war or during the dark ages from 1929 on, the Depression. We probably know little of what it means to be hungry. Just two or three times in my own life have I faced that, because in my country, students are not so well supported by their government, and I ran out of money. So for two or three days, I just drank water to keep my stomach from rumbling, and I began to know what it was to be hungry. Just a little bit hungry.

In an agricultural society like that of Jesus, where a couple of bad crop years could bring real hunger, this sort of beatitude would strike a deep root. I sometimes have to ask myself if I’ve ever hungered and thirsted as much for righteousness as I hungered and thirsted for some good food those few years ago. A man who is really hungry and thirsty for righteousness concentrates more and more time to knowing God’s will and doing it.

He learns to obey when some new injunction or responsibility is shown him from the Word of God, and he fears disobedience more than anything else. He makes it a point to learn to pray. He asks God for ways in which he may practice righteousness and for grace that the righteousness he practices will be welling up from within and not merely the mechanical actions of his body.

M’Cheyne, that great saint, regularly prayed, “O God, make me just as holy as a pardoned sinner can be.” That’s what this verse is talking about. And the result? They shall be filled. To the degree that a person hungers and thirsts after righteousness, to that precise extent does he become righteous, and as a result of becoming righteous, he hungers and thirsts for more righteousness.

There is, as it were, a built-in cycle here. The more he knows of the Lord, the more he wants to know of the Lord. There is an analogous sort of expression in Paul, where Paul can say, “I know whom I have believed,” and yet he can say, “Oh that I may know him.” It’s that sort of thing. The Christian is introduced to righteousness, but, oh, he hungers and thirsts for more righteousness. The more he tastes, the more he wants, and he shall be filled.

5. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.”

Some try to interpret this verse legalistically, as if it were to say that they can obtain mercy from God only by showing mercy in the sense that they earn God’s favor by themselves being favorable to others. The text regularly cited is chapter 6 of this gospel, verse 14. “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

In the light of the flow of the argument in these beatitudes, it is apparent that it is not a sort of legalistic approach to God that is in view. Rather, it has to do with the heart and the attitude. If I am harboring a grudge against someone, am I really repenting of my own sin? If I am so busy being bitter to the person whom I can’t forgive, how then have I repented, and how then will God forgive me?

If I secretly nurture hatred, am I really poor in spirit, mournful because of my sin or genuinely meek and hungering for righteousness? No wonder the psalmist said, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” There have only been two occurrences in my life where I’ve seen something of the Spirit of God break through in a group in a really special way. I hesitate to use the term revival because it really wasn’t, but it was special, distinctively special.

The second was what came to be called the Canadian Revival. It was a movement of the Spirit of God that swept literally thousands of churches from coast to coast in our country by word of mouth. It lasted only two or three months. It dropped the crime rate in our major cities. That was only four years ago.

The first sign in each case that this movement of the Spirit of God was erupting right among us was not in anything sensational. Rather, it was in Christians going to Christians with tears in their eyes saying, “I’m sorry.” Meetings quite literally stopped as Christians got up to leave to go and repent for offending some brother. All those holy deacons and ministers, those spiritual super saints.… It began to be obvious that among us were often the chief sins of pride and bitterness.

The problem is one of the heart. It’s hard to say, “I’m sorry. I’ve been holding grudges against you and saying bad things about you behind your back. I repent of it. It breaks me up to have done that, and I wish you’d forgive me. By God’s grace, I’ll pray for you, and I won’t do that sort of thing again.” It’s hard to say that, but it’s only hard because we’re proud.

6. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

In this beatitude, our Lord does not confer special blessings on the intellectually keen nor the emotionally pious nor the athletically adventurous but on the pure in heart. In biblical imagery, the heart is the center of the entire personality. As Jesus says elsewhere, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”

In other words, this principle before us says that resemblance to God is an indispensable prerequisite for fellowship with God. We cannot really see God unless we become like him. It asks questions like, “What do you think about when you slip your mind into neutral?” You turn off the physics problem, throw the psychology book over your shoulder, and relax. What do you think about? It asks questions like, “What’s your sense of humor like? What do you really find funny?”

I’m reminded of what Paul says in Philippians 4:8. “Whatever things are pure and just and of pure reproach and of good reputation, think on these things.” People who are pure in heart. In Psalm 73 we read, “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.” Again in Psalm 24 we read, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord and stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.”

That is why Hebrews 12:14 can say that without righteousness no man will see the Lord. It is why it is a hope as we look to the future, why 1 John 3:3 can say, “Everyone who has within himself the hope of Jesus’ return purifies himself, even as he is pure.” If the kingdom is then but it is already now, I must live now the way I will live then. To fail to do so is a contradiction of what the kingdom means. I am inviting some very serious culture shock, as it were.

When I first came to this country, I didn’t have the problem of having to learn a completely new language. Some of my co-residents in Tyndale House doubt that at times. But I still did face the odd little bit of culture shock. I stepped off the pavement, only I called it a sidewalk, and when I stepped off I looked the wrong way, and I almost got killed … repeatedly. I would go to tea at Tyndale House and say, “Pass the cookies,” and I would provoke gales of uproarious laughter and blush magnificently. Small items of culture shock.

That is the whole point with respect to the kingdom. The kingdom has already come. I am to live now as I would live in the new heaven and the new earth. I am not to think, “Well, it’s all right. I’ll live this way now, and then I’ll live differently.” For then we shall stand, and we shall see his beauty and holiness, the holiness that sears and burns. Will I who name him Lord, will I who call him King therefore develop a different standard now? “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

7. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”

This verse does not say, “Blessed are those who are peaceful” but “those who are peacemakers.” There is a ministry of making peace. In the total biblical perspective, the chief peacemaker is none but Jesus himself. He is the harbinger of peace. He brings peace between God and men. He brings peace between brother and brother. No wonder the prophet could say, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who are the harbingers of peace.”

There is a sense, undoubtedly, in which the Christian in his role of spreading the gospel is a peacemaker, but again, Matthew is not restricting his perspective to that. It is much broader. A number of years ago, when I was still pastoring a church in the province of Quebec in Canada, there arose a situation in which one of my fellow ministers accused another of some things this other brother had not done, and indeed he accused him in a really nasty way.

Eventually, a number of ministers who were involved got together to sort this thing out. As it was sorted out, it became obvious that the chap who had made the accusations had done so quickly and unthinkingly and harshly. Several of us (including myself, I am ashamed to say) jumped on him, but one brother was a peacemaker, and he spoke to the chap who had offended.

Without pulling his punches but still with tears in his eyes he said, “O my brother, I’m so sorry you’ve done these things. They are wicked and foolish, but I understand how people can do that sort of thing. It could have been me. Won’t you repent of these things and try to make restitution to the brother you’ve offended? We need your ministry, and we love you as a brother.” He made peace.

This sort of peacemaking costs. “The wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. Wherefore let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” The reward of the peacemaker is that he is called a son of God. In Jewish thought, son often has the connotation of partaking of the character of.

To this day in Israel if you want to insult someone you might refer to him as the “son of a dog.” This is not casting aspersion on his parentage. Rather, it is telling him that he partakes of the character of a dog, which is a very low form of life in the eyes of a traditional Jew. In other words, in this particular sense as well, to be a peacemaker is to partake of the very character of God, and that is the reward of the peacemaker.

8. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus said some very categorical things about persecution. He said, for example, in John 15, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” Paul affirms, “Yes, and all who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” These statements are categorical. In other words, there are no exceptions.

There is not a Christian alive who lives the sort of life described here who will not face some form of persecution. It might not be the rigorous variety found by our brothers in Russia, but at least some will begin to say, “Well, it’s all right to be a Christian, but this character is just a bit much. Thoroughly unbending on the Scripture. He won’t even cheat on his income tax, and the other day at the office when I offered him a binder that I know he needs he wouldn’t take it. He said it was stealing from the company. Victorian.”

Note that this is not persecution for being some kind of nut. It’s not persecution for being obnoxious. It’s persecution for righteousness’ sake. It’s persecution for being aligned to Jesus, and that is why this text is the most searching of all and binds up the Beatitudes, because if a Christian is not being persecuted in some sense, then where is the righteousness of God displayed in him?

That’s why you come back again to this promise: “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” We have come full circle. It is from this point, then, that Jesus jumps off and applies this last beatitude to put to the particular circumstances of the disciples. Now no longer addressing things in the third person but in the second person. He’s addressing them directly.

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” In other words, these believers align themselves with God’s saints in every generation. Theirs is indeed the kingdom of heaven, and indeed great will their reward be in heaven.

Finally, the witness of the kingdom. This is tied to what precedes it by two things. First, Jesus has moved, as I said, from speaking in the third person to speaking in the second person, and he continues this direct form of address. Second, the idea of witness itself. The idea of witness and persecution are linked. The Christians are persecuted in verses 10–12 because of what they are, which is in itself a form of witness, and they are persecuted because of it.

So now Jesus goes on to speak about a form of that witness more specifically, and he does so with two metaphors: salt and light. Salt was used primarily in the ancient world as a preservative. They didn’t have Frigidaires, and they used salt. This suggests, therefore, that Jesus is saying at the same time that the world is corrupt and detained without the Christians whose presence serves as salt.

“If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” “Ah,” some protest. “Salt really doesn’t lose its saltiness. Salt by pure nature can’t be anything but salt. Therefore, surely Jesus is saying that there is an inner necessity that compels Christians to witness.” Again, I think that misses the point.

Whereas salt per se cannot lose its saltiness, salt can be adulterated. It can lose its effectiveness by being indistinguishable from that which surrounds it. It no longer preserves anything. It is then part of the corruption, so it’s thrown out the door onto the street, which was the refuse pit of the East, and it’s trodden underfoot by men, useless. It is no longer good for anything.

The Greek word for saltiness, losing its savory-ness, also suggests becoming foolish, and indeed in the thought of the rabbis in Jesus’ day salt was a metaphor for wisdom. In other words, Jesus is saying something that sounds like this: “In your witness, be all the things I’ve already told you about, and with all be wise. Be distinctive and be wise. Don’t be foolish. In the light of all that I said, in the light of the fact that the kingdom of God is here, to lose your saltiness, to adulterate your witness, is to be foolish. It is silly.”

In other words, salt stands as a rather negative function of fighting deterioration and, therefore, it itself must not deteriorate. We need salty believers, not like those in John 12 who believed in Jesus but didn’t come out openly for fear of the Jews. As one wag put it, if Christianity were outlawed, would there be enough evidence to convict you? The Christian witness is to be distinctive.

The last metaphor is light. “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.” The word for bowl here is a peck measure, a measure for dry foods. “Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

I have a suspicion that we in our electrified Western world have little idea of what it is like really to be in the dark. If all else fails, we push a switch. If there’s a temporary strike, we reach for a torch. However, I come from a country where it is possible to be 300, 400, 500 miles from the nearest city, and then on a cloudy night, when you look up at the sky, you’re too far away from any city to see reflecting light from that city on the clouds of the heavens, and it is dark. It’s dark.

You put your hand in front of your face, and you don’t see your hand. You can wait all night for your eyes to get acclimatized, and you still don’t see your hand. In that sort of context, the smoking flickering wick from an olive lamp torch shows a wonderful light, and it’s incredibly stupid, then, to take a peck measure and cover it over and snuff it out. That’s what Jesus is saying.

The world is that dark. The world is that black, and we are its light. Therefore, a city that really is planted clearly on a hill can’t be not seen. It can’t be hidden. It can’t be covered over. It stands in glorious display, shedding its light over the countryside for miles around so that the darkness that once made everything black, even though still very dark, is now a little more bearable than it was before.

What does this mean? Does this mean Christians are to go around saying to every person on the street we meet, “Brother, you ought to be saved”? Does it mean there ought to be endless ecclesiastical pronouncements about all the sins and evils of our times? Not primarily. Not in Jesus’ thoughts here. Not in the context.

The burden of the message is that Christians are to live out the norms of the kingdom whenever and wherever they are. They refuse to take company goods. They are the first to help a stricken colleague. They reflect a clean healthy humor. They honestly desire the other’s interests to be advanced even, if need be, at the expense of their own. They insist on doing a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. They are transparent in their honesty and simplicity and with all they witness, and they spread their light.

A book I recommend to you very strongly is one written by John Wesley Bready. The British edition is called England: Before and After Wesley. The American edition, typically, is called This Freedom—Whence? It is a very searching book. What it does is describe social situations in England before the arise of the Evangelical Awakening under Whitefield and Wesley, beginning about 1740.

Religious conditions had sunk so low in this country that on Easter Sunday 1740 a total of six people showed up for Communion at Saint Paul’s in London. It is said that in some parts of London, every sixth building was either a brothel or a pub. Slavery was rife. Child exposure was everywhere, and what children were not exposed were sent down in the pits.

Bready then traces social development and notes that in virtually every case of major advance, Christians, men and women who had been saved by the grace of God and owned nothing but lordship to Jesus Christ, spearheaded the changes that were introduced from there to the time of Wilberforce.

Examine almost all the social changes of the time, whether the abolition of child labor, introductory medical care, prison reform, the beginning of trade unions, the abolition of child exposure, abolition of slavery. Without exception, those things were hammered home by Christians who owned nothing but the lordship of Christ. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and praise God.”

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Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union