Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Tuesday, June 03, 2008 8:41:08 AM
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount with help from Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Happiness is the great question of mankind. The whole world is longing for happiness. It is tragic to see the ways that people seek for it. The vast majority are doing so in a way that is bound to produce misery. Merely making people happy for the time being by evading the difficulties is ultimately going to add to their misery. That is where the deceitfulness of sin comes in; it is always offering happiness, and it always leads to unhappiness and to final misery and wretchedness. The Beatitudes say, however, that if you really want to be happy, here is the way. This alone is the type of person who is truly happy, who is really blessed.
Let us consider the Christian’s character before we consider his conduct. The only man who is at all capable of carrying out the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount is the man who is clear in his thinking with regard to the essential features and characteristics of the Christian as describes in the Beatitudes.
Is it right to say that all Christians are to manifest all the Beatitudes? Is it right to say that some are meant to be ‘poor in spirit’ and some are meant to ‘mourn’ and some others are meant to be ‘meek’ and ‘peacemakers’ and so on? Let us make the case that every Christian is meant to be all of them and to manifest them all at the same time. Now we did not say that they would be manifest to the same degree in every believer, but that they will be manifest to some degree.
When we analyze the Beatitudes each one of necessity implies the other. For example, we cannot be ‘poor in spirit’ without ‘mourning’; and we cannot mourn without ‘hungering and thirsting after righteousness’; we cannot do that without being one who is ‘meek’ and a ‘peacemaker’. Each one of these in a sense demands the others. It is impossible to manifest one of these graces, and to conform to the blessing that is pronounced upon it, without at the same time showing the others also. The Beatitudes are a complete whole.
None of the Beatitudes refers to what can be called a natural tendency. This is the glory of the gospel. The proudest man by nature will become a man who is poor in spirit under the influence of grace. The Beatitudes illustrate the essential and utter difference between the Christian and the non-Christian. They belong to two entirely different realms.
The first and last Beatitude promise the same reward, ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. What does it mean? Jesus starts and ends with it because He is saying that the first thing the Christian has to realize is that he belongs to a different kingdom.
We are not only different in essence, but we are living in two different worlds. We are in the world; but not of it. We are citizens of another kingdom.
What is meant by the kingdom of heaven?