CS Lewis Beattitudes

Blessed are the poor (and nasty)

We must, therefore, not be surprised if we find among the Christians some people who are still nasty. There is even, when you come to think it over, a reason why nasty people might be expected to turn to Christ in greater numbers than nice ones. That was what people objected to about Christ during His life on earth: He seemed to attract ‘such awful people’.

That is what people still object to and always will.  Do you not see why? Christ said ‘Blessed are the poor’ and ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom,’ and no doubt He primarily meant the economically rich and economically poor. But do not His words also apply to another kind of riches and poverty?

One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give and so fail to realise your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing cheques, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. Now quite plainly, natural gifts carry with them a similar danger.

 If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. ‘Why drag God into it?’ you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex, or dipsomania, or nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognise their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are ‘rich’ in this sense to enter the Kingdom.
    
It is very different for the nasty people—the little, low, timid, warped, thin-blooded, lonely people, or the passionate, sensual, unbalanced people. if they make any attempt at goodness at all, they learn, in double quick time, that they need help. It is Christ or nothing for them. It is taking up the cross and following—or else despair. They are the lost sheep; He came specially to find them. They are (in one very real and terrible sense) the ‘poor’: He blessed them. They are the ‘awful set’ He goes about with—and of course the Pharisees say still, as they said from the first, ‘If there were anything in Christianity those people would not be Christians.’
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 213-214.

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The Beatitudes - CS Lewis Institute

The Beatitudes

With James Houston, Board of Governors’ Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver
From C.S. Lewis Institute's Legacy Recordings | 1981

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Free Seminar Audio:

Part 1 - The Literary Meaning of the Sermon of the Mount (unavailable)
Part 2 - Ethical Significance of The Sermon On The Mount
Part 3a  - The Christian's Character Pt. 1
Part 3b - The Christian's Character Pt. 2
Part 4 - The Christian's prayer Life (unavailable)
Part 5 - The Christian Kingdom

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About James Houston:

Dr. James Houston is Board of Governors’ Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. Dr. Houston co-founded the C.S. Lewis Institute and serves as Senior Fellow. Prior to that, he founded Regent College, an international graduate school with a world-class faculty, including J.I. Packer, Bruce Waltke, and others. Dr. Houston is the author of several books, including The Transforming Power of Prayer: Deepening Your Friendship with God, In Pursuit of Happiness: Finding Genuine Fulfillment in Life, and his most recent book, The Mentored Life: From Individualism to Personhood. Jim and his wife Rita make their home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

How to Achieve Happiness - Beattitudes

How to Achieve Happiness

(Homily for Fourth Ordinary Sunday, Year A) Someone once cricitized C. S. Lewis for “not caring for the Sermon on the Mount.” He replied, “As to ‘caring for’ the Sermon on the Mount, if ‘caring for’ here means ‘liking’ or enjoying, I suppose no one ‘cares for’ it. Who can like being knocked flat on his face by a sledge hammer? I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition than that of a man who can read that passage with tranquil pleasure.” [God in the Dock, pp. 181-82].

Today Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount by setting out his plan for happiness (beatitude). For his original hearers it had a “sledge hammer” effect. In so many words, this is what he says will make us happy: bankruptcy, loss of loved ones, abstinence from savory food and sex, political defeat, invasion of boundaries, misunderstandings, false accusations – and, above all, to become the laughingstock of former friends.

Jesus is not saying any of those things are good in themselves.* Unfortunately, some have used the Beatitudes to justify not helping others out of their misery – or to encourage a false resignation. No! Poverty, grief, insults are evils from which we must do our best to protect others and ourselves.
Still, those evils will come. Even Bill Gates will experience total deprivation before he departs this life. What Jesus says is that when those things come, if we embrace them for His sake, we will discover true happiness.

When I read the Beatitudes – and reflect on what they mean- I realize how unconverted I am. Last week, Jesus opened his public ministry with the word, “Repent.” It means to change ones mind. I sometimes find myself astonished that, after thirty years of preaching and celebrating the sacraments, how little progress I have made in the transformation of my mind. I continue with the illusion that something this world offers will give me happiness: clergy pension plan, vacation, health, money, reputation, influence, the attention of a certain person – anything except the Kingdom of Heaven. Or maybe I have begun to imagine that, when all is said and done, those things are the Kingdom. As I get older and experience modest success, the temptation becomes stronger. Like a sledge hammer, the Beatitudes are meant to shatter such an illusion.**

In just ten days we begin a season intended to bring us back to reality. February 13 is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. On that day people come to church whom we normally do not see, particularly youth and the poor. They sense that all the things they are struggling to obtain will not satisfy them. The discipline of Lent – fasting, prayer and almsgiving - can help one discover the real source of beatitude. As we shall see, Lent is not about extinguishing desire, but rather to encounter the only One who can fulfill our deepest wants.
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*Abstinence from rich food and sex, while often essential for a disciple, is not good in itself. God meant us to enjoy those things in their proper context: sex within a loving marriage open to procreation and rich food on a festive occasion. Unfortunately, we Americans have become convinced that to be deprived of those things, even for a short time, will cause untold psychic damage. We are paying the price for such indulgence.

**Regarding that illusion Pope John Paul II pointed out the similitary - and difference - between Christianity and Buddhism. Although critized for his bluntness, it is well worth reading what he said in Crossing the Threshhold of Hope, Chapter 14.

Caravan Contradictions.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

 Caravan Contradictions.

“A ‘caravan’—the euphemism for a current foot-army of more than 10,000 Central Americans—of would-be border crossers has now passed into Mexico. The marchers promise they will continue 1,000 miles and more northward to the U.S. border, despite warnings from President Trump that as unauthorized immigrants they will be turned away. No one has yet explained how, or by whom or what, such a mass of humanity has been supplied, cared for, and organized. Once at the border, the immigrants further predict that they will successfully, but illegally, enter the United States, then claim refugee status, and finally rely on sympathetic public opinion—and progressive political activism—to avoid deportation. If past experience is any guide, they are quite right in thinking they can melt into the population, ignore future legal summonses, and count on the de facto amnesty that currently protects 22 million illegal aliens, the vast majority from Mexico and Central America.”

 

A“caravan”—the euphemism for a current foot-army of more than 10,000 Central Americans—of would-be border crossers has now passed into Mexico. The marchers promise they will continue 1,000 miles and more northward to the U.S. border, despite warnings from President Trump that as unauthorized immigrants they will be turned away. No one has yet explained how, or by whom or what, such a mass of humanity has been supplied, cared for, and organized.

Once at the border, the immigrants further predict that they will successfully, but illegally, enter the United States, then claim refugee status, and finally rely on sympathetic public opinion—and progressive political activism—to avoid deportation.

If past experience is any guide, they are quite right in thinking they can melt into the population, ignore future legal summonses, and count on the de facto amnesty that currently protects 22 million illegal aliens, the vast majority from Mexico and Central America. Border crashers assume rightly that U.S. security agents and the military will not use force, on the principle that Central Americans appearing on CNN battling helmeted Americans with batons and tear gas is bad American “optics.”

But for all the staged midterm theatrics, the caravan illustrates the abject ironies and paradoxes of the entire illegal alien project.

Refugees, True and FalseCentral Americans claim they are “refugees,” forced out of their homes by violence and endemic lawlessness to save their very lives by migrating to the United States. They insist on that rationale because of quirks in American law that make it more difficult to deport resident “refugees” (especially those with small children) than ordinary illegal aliens seeking improved economic conditions inside the United States.

Yet the migrants are now for the most part well inside Mexico. The Mexican government has generously offered succor. No one is threatening their lives. Mexico has even offered temporary residence for those who seem to have good grounds to be admitted as true political refugees.

In response, the caravan migrants have ignored those offers, because the vast majority are not true refugees. They are mostly no different from the millions of illegal aliens who have entered the United States for higher wages, for the chance to send remittances to their families back home, and for the generous entitlements of American social services that supplement entry-level wages and subsidize remittances. (We keep ignoring that a 15 to 20 percent federal tax on all remittances sent from the U.S. to Central America and Mexico—around $60 billion a year—would, along with a wall, provide a deterrent to caravan immigration.)

To be sure, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are often violent places. They have been so for centuries, both before and after the Spanish conquest. But pause and reflect on the ensuing paradox: fury and fear over endemic lawlessness now prompts thousands to wish to break the law to enter the United States, and continue to ignore statutes by illegally residing here.

Do the migrants ever pause and wonder whether their own past and present attitude to the law in the abstract may in some small part explain why their own country in the concrete is often prone to lawlessness? In other words, why would a host country welcome in aliens who break the law to enter it because their own former home is lawless?

Honduras or El Salvador is not an abstraction. Each nation is a collective of people who likely harbor the same general assumptions as those in the caravan—and neither will improve if its population abandons it or assumes that it can also soon break the law with exemption. It is Orwellian to leave a nation because of its lawlessness and then, first, to enter another nation illegally, and, second, to continue to reside in contravention of the law.

What Is America to Them?Is the United States a saintly or sinful place? Weirdly, and by the very same people seeking its succor, it is often deemed a cruel and awful place—and especially a cruel and awful place because it does not open its borders to the world to enjoy its cruelty and awfulness.

Interviews with some of the migrants reveal this ongoing irony. Most claim that they have no intention of diverting their odyssey to any other country. Only America will do.

Yet often Central American governments, the Mexican elite, would-be illegal aliens, and their sympathizers in the American progressive and identity politics movements obsess on the supposed xenophobia, the racism, the nativism, and inhospitality of the United States.

So what exactly is America—demonic or deified? Why would anyone wish to enter such an illiberal country, so different from the customs and traditions of Central America? Would not Mexico be a much better place of refuge for the caravan people, given multiple affinities of ethnicity, language, history, and culture?

It is not infrequent to hear from American ethnic activists that the current Spanish-speaking migrants are only “reclaiming” their ancestral frontiers in North America (as in American settlers took it from Mexican nationals who took it from the Spanish who took it from indigenous peoples who took it from other indigenous peoples).

Aside from such historical illiteracy (there were few Mexican nationals in western North America even by the mid-19th-century, and those who were here were often quite hostile to non-Spanish-speaking natives), why exactly would such a strange American culture be so attractive to Central American migrants?

Apparently, it is not the fear of Honduras that drives the caravans, but instead the desire to be among foreign Americans—more specifically, to live in a society blessed with constitutional law, protections of private property, free-market capitalism, open inquiry, individual rights, religious tolerance, gender and racial equity, due process, and an independent judiciary? And where exactly did that tradition arise that now oddly seems to work like a magnet for Latin Americans? If the United States is deemed so desirable, why could not the American paradigm be xeroxed in naturally rich, fertile, and inherently wealthy Central America and Mexico?

Assimilation, Intermarriage, and IntegrationFurther, the reason the United States is a nation of immigrants is not because of the enduring multiplicity of tribal affinities. America does not work because a fifth of the population still speaks German, or immigrants from Asia create enclaves that perpetually mimic the culture of China, or because Scandinavians have somehow maintained the socialism of Sweden inside the United States.

Immigrants, the ancestors of most of us, enriched our food, music, fashion, art, and literature by importing ideas, customs and practices from their mother countries, but they do not tamper with our core that has guaranteed our success: religious and political tolerance, adherence to the U.S. Constitution, English as the official language, free-market capitalism, and individual liberty.

Thus assimilation, intermarriage, and integration, the now despised “melting pot,” for over two centuries converted immigrants into Americans. At the moment when Americans fail to continue this tradition of assimilation we will end up like the Balkans, Rwanda, Iraq, or for that matter most of the countries in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Have any of the would-be immigrants in the caravan thought much about learning English, of soon recalibrating to envision an American from Vietnam or Russia or Somalia as more one’s kindred soul than those who would soon become to them a foreign national in Central America? Are the caravan migrants hopeful of adapting to the laws of the United States, and of transforming their loyalty and affinity to the United States away from their home country? Or, in the spirit of postmodernism, is the United States envisioned just as a safe, secure, and relatively prosperous enclave in which to remain Central Americans without Central America in their midst?

In other words, immigration has been historically a brutal bargain, one that demands of the immigrant not to live as he did in the past, because to do so would replicate the failures from which he was escaping. Those in Tijuana, for example, live according to customs, protocols and laws quite different from those a few thousand yards away in San Diego, which explains why the two municipalities are themselves so different. The melting pot forced the unwilling to accept that reality and thereby allowed the idea of e pluribus unum to work and to avoid the more common and dangerous romance of ex uno plures. Otherwise why would a Central American leave Central America to recreate it in America?

The Irony of Equal RightsA final incongruity is reciprocity. Mexico and Central American certainly would not appreciate it if Americans acted toward their country as they do to ours, specifically to enter illegally, to reside illegally, and then to make demands upon the host. Mexico until very recently had wacky stipulations in its constitution and immigration laws that constrained legal immigration if it endangered the demography of Mexico, its apparent cherished idea of raza. In sum, it would be nearly impossible for an Irish-American, a Somali-American, a Vietnamese-American to emigrate to Mexico or Central America and to be considered a full-fledged citizen of the country with all the constitutional protections and cultural affinities of native-born Mexicans.

Yet Mexican and Central Americans, even when entering and residing in America illegally, naturally and understandably assume they can enjoy the same rights and be treated the same as Americans. Is there any formal appreciation that the United States is the only country in the world where that reality is possible, where superficial appearance is no guide to Americanness?

Or more bluntly put, why is America so unlike China, Russia, or Mexico, in the sense that all immigrants from such countries can become full-fledged citizens and be treated as such, and yet few of those nations would consider an American immigrant who did not look Chinese, Russian, or Mexican to ever be considered fully a compatriot?

No doubt some in the caravan are genuine political refugees seeking their salvation in America. A few already may have applied in their home consulates for legal residence and may already be learning English and the peculiarities of the U.S. Constitution.

But that is not the image the caravan conveys. For some reason, the caravan is a paradox, a contradiction and an irony of many thousands who are quite eager to violate U.S. law, to make claims upon their would-be host without serious reflection about why they are leaving one nation and demanding entrance into another—with the full expectation that their new home has no right to demand that all would-be guests fleeing lawlessness should first abide by laws.Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

How to Read the Sermon on the Mount

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Bill Gaultiere

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Tags: Dallas Willard, Kingdom of God, Transformation

I was taught in seminary that the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 to 7) wasn’t one sermon of Jesus’, but a collection of his sayings that Matthew assembled and that I was to obey. It was confusing to me. I saw the highest ideals of morality in attitude and behavior and the best advice for a good life and yet I knew I couldn’t “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). All I knew to do was to try hard to do what I should and ask God to forgive all my shortcomings! At that point I didn’t know how to become the kind of person who would obey Jesus from my heart — until Dallas Willard taught he how to read the Sermon on the Mount. (See his classic, The Divine Conspiracy.)

This is Jesus’ Greatest Teaching and it is based on a divine order that makes obeying his teaching possible. It’s a life-changing paradigm that many Christians are missing.

Understanding the beatitudes is the key that unlocks Jesus’ wisdom. Let’s pick up this key and open the treasure chest of the Sermon on the Mount. Dallas says that from start to finish in his sermon Jesus is not giving us commands, but illustrations of the blessings of living under God’s rule.

Jesus’ Tour of Life in God’s Kingdom

Let’s imagine that Jesus is giving us a guided tour of what life is like in the Kingdom of the Heavens. (The thoughts that follow are inspired by the opening of Dallas’ talk, “Knowing Christ Today” given at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in 2009.) We’re walking along with our Lord he’s showing us different kinds of people who are living under the Father’s loving rule.

Beatitudes

For instance, Jesus shows us some people who are living in poverty: they don’t have any money and yet they’re happy! You scratch your head wondering why. Then you hear the poor saying things like, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Or, “I don’t have any money, but I have the Lord — he’s good to me and his hand is at work in my life.”

Next Jesus points out some people who are grieving — a loved one has died or their business has failed or a family member has turned against them. They are sad because of what they’ve lost and perhaps because God has not answered their prayers the way they want him to and yet they smile with happiness. “How can this be?” you ask. Jesus answers, “They have found comfort under the wing of the Lord.”

Become Free of Anger and Lust

You continue walking along with Jesus, meeting all kinds of people. Over here you’re surprised to find some people who don’t get mad or resentful even when they’re mistreated. They’re quick to forgive and at the same time they’re free of shame and fear. They don’t use anger to get what they want — they are at peace. You realize that they too are in God’s kingdom and that’s why they’re blessed even in unfair circumstances.

Then you find some people who don’t cultivate lust and sensuality — even if they haven’t been able to find a spouse or are stuck in a disappointing marriage. Instead of lusting for what they don’t have they are content and happy with God and what he provides for them. And you say, “Well, I didn’t see that in the advertisements — I thought I needed a Lexus!”

Be Honest and Genuine

These people are radically different from most people in the world! And there’s more. Jesus points out some people who tell things exactly like they are — no exaggeration, no song and dance, no pressure. They don’t try to get people to do things. They simply speak the plain truth to others in a calm, matter of fact way.

Then Jesus says, “Look over here. These are people who don’t do their good deeds to be seen by people. They’re not trying to impress anybody by how they look or act — they’re just simple, ordinary folk.” You say, “My goodness, nobody is praising them, but they hold their heads high. How is it that they could have such confidence?” Jesus answers, “They’re looking to their Father who is secret and he rewards them openly.”

Don’t Judge

Following Jesus, he shows you some people who don’t judge other people. They don’t criticize the faults of others. They don’t engage in gossip or slander. And they don’t try to “fix” other people or get them to do what they “should.” Instead they accept people where they’re at, think the best of them, and say positive things about them. And if they want something from people or from God they simply ask politely. They live humbly and joyfully under the care of God.

Training with Jesus

These and the rest of the people in the Sermon on the Mount are able to be the kind of people that Jesus describes because they live with his spirituality. They go to God through grace of Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection on their behalf, and they trust God as he does, apprenticing themselves to him. Jesus is their Lord and Savior and their teacher/coach that they train under.

In the book of Acts we see Jesus’ followers living as bi-habitational creatures, “in the world, but not of the world.” The blessed and fruitful supernatural life in Christ that they demonstrate is for us too! The Sermon on the Mount lays out the path.

Jesus’ Greatest Teaching

My studies in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy which unpacks it led me to write a paraphrase of the whole text of Matthew 5 to 7. What a meditation this is! You’ll love it! I  put this into a booklet which features a coaching tool, soul talk questions, and experiments for personal devotions or small groups. For just $3.99 you can have a copy of Jesus’ Greatest Teaching.

Dallas Willard on the Beatitudes

January 2, 2017 | by Geoff

Dallas Willard’s understanding of the Beatitudes:

It will help us know what to do—and what not to do—with the Beatitudes if we can discover what Jesus himself was doing with them. That should be the key to understanding them, for after all they are his Beatitudes, not ours to make of them what we will. And since great teachers and leaders always have a coherent message that they develop in an orderly way, we should assume that his teaching in the Beatitudes is a clarification or development of his primary theme in this talk and in his life: the availability of the kingdom of the heavens. How, then, do they develop that theme?

In chapter 4 of Matthew we see Jesus proclaiming his basic message (v. 17) and demonstrating it by acting with God’s rule from the heavens, meeting the desperate needs of the people around him. As a result, “Sick folk were soon coming to be healed from as far away as Syria. And whatever their illness or pain, or if they were possessed by demons, or were insane, or paralyzed—he healed them all. Enormous crowds followed him wherever he went” (4:23–25 LB).

Having ministered to the needs of the people crowding around him, he desired to teach them and moved to a higher position in the landscape—“up on the hill” (Matt. 5:1 BV)—where they could see and hear him well. But he does not, as is so often suggested, withdraw from the crowd to give an esoteric discourse of sublime irrelevance to the crying need of those pressing upon him. Rather, in the midst of this mass of raw humanity, and with them hanging on every word—note that it is they who respond at the end of the discourse—Jesus teaches his students or apprentices, along with all who hear, about the meaning of the availability of the heavens.

I believe he used the method of “show and tell” to make clear the extent to which the kingdom is “on hand” to us. There were directly before him those who had just received from the heavens through him. The context makes this clear. He could point out in the crowd now this individual, who was “blessed” because The Kingdom Among Us had just reached out and touched them with Jesus’ heart and voice and hands. Perhaps this is why in the Gospels we only find him giving Beatitudes from the midst of a crowd of people he had touched.

And so he said, “Blessed are the spiritual zeros—the spiritually bankrupt, deprived and deficient, the spiritual beggars, those without a wisp of ‘religion’—when the kingdom of the heavens comes upon them.”

Or, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.” This, of course, is the more traditional and literally correct translation of Matt. 5:3. The poor in spirit are blessed as a result of the kingdom of God being available to them in their spiritual poverty. But today the words “poor in spirit” no longer convey the sense of spiritual destitution that they were originally meant to bear. Amazingly, they have come to refer to a praiseworthy condition. So, as a corrective, I have paraphrased the verse as above. No doubt Jesus had many exhibits from this category in the crowd around him. Most, if not all, of the Twelve Apostles were of this type, as are many now reading these words. (Willard 99-101)

INTRODUCTION TO THE BEATITUDES

By: Sam Storms

Introduction

As we begin our study of the Beatitudes, we would do well to hear D. A. Carson’s warning:

“Diligent readers often cherish writers and speakers who can capture a complex position in a single, polished gem of a statement. Such aphorisms (as they are called) are especially telling when they first become public. Unfortunately, once an aphorism has been widely disseminated, it is in danger of being domesticated – a trained poodle that is dragged out when the circumstances require it. For many Christians, that is what has become of the Beatitudes. . . . We are so familiar with them that the words can glide piously off our tongues without disturbing us. Yet each of these beatitudes is a revolutionary aphorism and together they can, when properly understood, utterly overthrow secularism and radically transform insipid Christianity” (35).

A.        Eight Characteristics of the Beatitudes

(1)       The beatitudes are what Thomas Watson called “the sacred paradoxes in our Saviour’s sermon” (39). Whereas philosophers contend that one contrary expels another, that is to say, something cannot coexist with its opposite, “here one contrary begets another” (39). Poverty is thought to be the negation of riches: here poverty begets riches. Mourning is thought to expel joy: here mourning is the precondition of joy. Persecution normally yields misery: here it gives birth to happiness.

(2)       The beatitudes reveal how contrary the values and perspective of the church and the world really are. Conspicuous by their absence from this list are many of those things which the world prizes. Power, popularity, sexual prowess, influence, physical beauty, things which we are led to believe are essential for genuine human fulfillment, are nowhere to be seen in this list. That isn’t to say that there is something inherently sinful in these things. It is to say, however, that they are no measure of spiritual maturity; they have no bearing on one’s place or position in the kingdom of God.

Let’s take wealth as one example. Although nothing in the beatitudes condemns wealth per se, it is noteworthy that it is not mentioned as a condition for blessedness. Blessedness does not lie in possessions. Watson:

“Outward things can no more cure the agony of conscience than a silken stocking can cure a gouty leg. When Saul was sore distressed (1 Sam. 28:15), could all the jewels of his crown comfort him? If God be angry, whose ‘fury is poured out like a fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him’ (Nahum 1:6), can a wedge of gold be a screen to keep off this fire? ‘They shall cast their silver in the streets; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord,’ (Ezek. 7:19). . . . The things of the world will no more keep out trouble of spirit, than a paper screen will keep out a bullet” (27).

There is a story reported by Plutarch about Tarpeia, a vestal nun, who bargained with the enemy to betray the city of Rome if they would give her their golden bracelets. Once in the city they gave her not only the bracelets but cast upon her all their wealth, under the weight of which she was crushed to death. Says Watson, “God often lets men have the golden bracelets, the weight whereof sinks them into hell. Oh, let us pant after things heavenly, let us get our eyes fixed, and our hearts united to God, the supreme good” (32).

(3)       The beatitudes teach us about the nature of true religion (using that last word in its good sense). Upon whom, upon what kind of person, upon what sort of behavior does God look with approval? On whom does God smile? What brings joy and delight to His heart? The answer of the beatitudes is strikingly at odds with what most in society think: “Poverty leads the van, and persecution brings up the rear” (Watson, 39). Many would wear Christ’s jewels, but flee his cross.

(4)       The beatitudes describe what every Christian is to be like, not just an exceptional elite or the twelve apostles or the clergy or perhaps a few additional super-saints.

(5)       The virtues, qualities, and characteristics described here are supernatural. That is to say, they are not inherent to human nature. They are produced and cultivated by the Spirit of God. Natural endowments that resemble them are still only natural and will never find acceptance with God. The really good news is that the beatitudes not only describe what you and I should be, they describe what we can be. The gospel of grace can take the proudest man and make him deeply aware of his spiritual poverty. It can transform the meanest into the most humble and the self-sufficient into one who hungers and thirst for righteousness.

(6)       We must note the relationship between the beatitudes and the grace of God. Are these qualities that we must strive to achieve in order to be saved? Hans Windisch said that “from the standpoint of Paul, Luther and Calvin the soteriology of the Sermon on the Mount is irredeemably heretical” (6). He argues that Paul’s emphasis on justification by grace through faith led Matthew to deliberately compose the Sermon as a kind of anti-Pauline tract. As noted earlier, some dispensationalists, feeling the force of what they see as a legal element in the Sermon, relegate it to a future time when they believe the Mosaic Law will once again be in force. But note the first beatitude: the kingdom of heaven is for those who are so utterly bankrupt spiritually that they have nothing to merit God’s approval.

(7)       Living out the beatitudes (and the entire Sermon) can never be divorced from a right relationship to Jesus himself. Unlike other preachers and their sermons, the latter of which you may like and the former of which you don’t (or vice versa), here you cannot embrace one without embracing the other.

(8)       Finally, observe the three-fold structure of the beatitudes. Each beatitude has a congratulation, a cause, and aconsequence.

a.            the congratulation (or, the ascription of blessedness) – How are we to understand the word “blessed”? Some suggest this is “Jesus’ prescription for human happiness.” Whereas I do believe that our desire for happiness and joy are good and God-given and that we should neither be ashamed or repent of it, Jesus has in mind here something moreobjective in nature. Blessedness is primarily a declaration of what God thinks about us. To be blessed thus means to becongratulated in a deeply religious sense. The emphasis is more on divine approval than on human feeling. Then again, nothing should make us happier than to realize what God approves! See the appended study on the nature of human happiness.

b.            the cause (or, the basis of blessedness) – The virtues on account of which blessedness is pronounced are not separate items. Jesus is not saying that some Christians are poor in spirit, others are meek, others are pure in heart, etc.These are to be qualities of the same person. All of us are by God’s grace to experience all of these characteristics. They are not spiritual gifts. Every virtue should be found in every believer.

c.            the consequence (or, the reward of blessedness) – Three things to note: First, each promise is uniquely fitted to its beatitude (the hungry get filled, the merciful are shown mercy, the poor inherit a kingdom, etc.). Second, the first and last beatitudes promise the same thing (“the kingdom of heaven”). This is a common literary device called inclusion. The point simply is that the kingdom of heaven is the central theme of the message. And third, are these blessings present or future or in some sense both? Probably the latter. “We enjoy the firstfruits now; the full harvest is yet to come” (Stott, 35). As Tasker has noted, “the future tense . . . emphasizes their certainty and not merely their futurity.”

B.        Dallas Willard on the Beatitudes

We should take note of a perspective on the beatitudes recently expounded by Willard in his book, The Divine Conspiracy (Harper). Says Willard:

“The Beatitudes, in particular, are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings. No one is actually being told that they are better off for being poor, for mourning, for being persecuted, and so on, or that the conditions listed are recommended ways to well-being before God or man. Nor are the Beatitudes indications of who will be on top ‘after the revolution.’ They are explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship to Jesus. They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope” (106).

In other words, it is in spite of these conditions that God blesses, not because of them. Although (not because) you are poor in spirit, you will inherit the kingdom. Although (not because) you mourn, you will be comforted, etc. Willard insists that Jesus is using a form of teaching in which he corrects a general assumption or practice thought to govern the situation at hand. He does this “by pointing out that the case before him provides an exception and shows the general assumption or practice to be an unreliable guide to life under God” (107). Here, he says, is the key to understanding the beatitudes:

“They serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the heavens. This fact of God’s care and provision proves to all that no human condition excludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with his care and deliverance” (116).

Willard proceeds to try to interpret each of these conditions asnegative and undesirable, in spite of which God is determined to bless. This is where I believe Willard’s exegesis falls far short of what Jesus intended. Whereas his theory may work with “the poor in spirit” and the “persecuted”, it is a stretch, to say the least, to argue that meekness, hunger for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, and peacemaking, arenegative conditions that God does not want us to experience but in spite of which he will bless us. Although Willard attempts to re-interpret these characteristics in keeping with his view, I think he has failed to make good sense of them. Therefore, I find his overall view of the beatitudes to be inadequate.

C.        Special Noteon Happiness

The simple fact is that everyone does everything in order to be happy. You should never be ashamed of your desire to be happy. It is as natural as hunger. Many, if not most, believe that to the degree that they seek their own happiness they diminish the virtue or value of an act. They have this distorted idea that the only way an act is virtuous is if we compel ourselves to do it, contrary to our desire not to do it. We tend to measure the worth of an act by the depth of pain and sacrifice we endure to perform it. Doing something because we enjoy doing it seems to empty the deed of its moral worth. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. Blaise Pascal expressed it as follows:

"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves” (Pensees, p. 113, thought #425).

I know what you're thinking: "But doesn't someone commit suicide because they are unhappy?" Yes, but they choose suicide precisely because they are convinced (wrongly, of course, but no less convinced) that death will bring them more happiness than life ever could. Or perhaps it would be better to say that they believe death will deliver them from the miseries of life. In either case, they hang themselves because they no longer want to be miserable and depressed. Believing that living can no longer bring them the happiness they so desperately desire, they take their own life.

Although what I’m describing may sound unfamiliar, even unspiritual, to some of you, it has a rich heritage in the church. Perhaps no one understood it as clearly or expressed it as vividly as did Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), puritan pastor and theologian of the First Great Awakening. The soul of every man, said Edwards, “necessarily craves happiness. This is a universal appetite of human nature, that is alike in the good and the bad” (“Safety, Fulness, and Sweet Refreshment To Be Found In Christ,” in Jonathan Edwards on Knowing Christ, 166). Two words in that statement jump out at me: “necessarily” and “universal.” In other words, when it comes to happiness, everybody must seek it. In fact, says Edwards,

“it is not only natural to all mankind, but to the angels; it is universal among all reasonable, intelligent beings, in heaven, earth, or hell, because it flows necessarily from an intelligent nature. There is no rational being . . . without a love and desire for happiness. It is impossible that there should be any creature made that should love misery, or not love happiness, since it implies a manifest contradiction; for the very notion of misery is to be in a state that nature abhors, and the notion of happiness is to be in such a state as is most agreeable to nature” (166-67).

This desire for happiness is “insuperable . . . never can be changed, . . . never can be overcome, or in any way abated. Young and old love happiness alike, and good and bad, wise and unwise” (167). Certainly people have different notions of what constitutes happiness, and will pursue it according to their particular appetites, but this in no way alters the fact that its presence is universal among mankind.

Edwards was only eighteen years old when he preached a sermon entitled “Christian Happiness,” in which he for the first, but by no means last, time affirmed the inescapable yearning for happiness among both the righteous and wicked:

“They certainly are the wisest men that do those things that make most for their happiness, and this in effect is acknowledged by all men in the world, for there is no man upon the earth who isn’t earnestly seeking after happiness, and it appears abundantly by the variety of ways they so vigorously seek it; they will twist and turn every way, ply all instruments, to make themselves happy men. Some will wander all over the face of the earth to find it: they will seek it in the waters and dry land, under the waters and in the bowels of the earth, and although the true way to happiness lies right before them and they might easily step into it and walk in it and be brought into as great a happiness as they desire, and greater than they can conceive of, yet they will not enter into it. They try all the false paths; they will spend and be spent, labor all their lives’ time, endanger their lives, will pass over mountains and valleys, go through fire and water, seeking for happiness amongst vanities, and are always disappointed, never find what they seek for; but yet like fools and madmen they violently rush forward, still in the same ways. But the righteous are not so; these only, have the wisdom to find the right paths to happiness” (Yale ed. of Works, 10:303).

It is this ruthless determination among the wicked to find happiness in whatever sinful or perverse experience imaginable that hardens the believing heart against its own impulse for pleasure. Not wanting to be classed among those who reject Jesus, many Christians have wrongly assumed the problem is in their passion and have taken whatever steps they believe will effectively suppress and stifle its expression. But the righteous, says Edwards, ought to differ from the lost in choosing “the right paths to happiness,” not in seeking to rid themselves of the desire itself. The problem isn’t in the passion; it’s in the paths.

People struggle with what I’ve just said because it strikes them as experientially misguided. “How can you say I want happiness and joy and satisfaction when I’m always making decisions that I know are painful and sacrificial?” The answer is that we always choose what we think will ultimatelymaximize personal happiness and minimize personal misery. If you make a decision that is immediately painful and uncomfortable and unsettling, I assure you it is because you believe that such a choice in the long term will generate more pleasure than not. In other words, you gladly forego present pleasures if you believe the long-term benefits outweigh whatever short-term discomfort you might experience or sacrifice you might make. Likewise, you will ignore long-term consequences if you believe the immediate pleasures of a decision are worth the risk.

You may deny yourself the pleasures of a banana split now because you believe the joy of weight loss later is worth it. Your desire for a long-term satisfaction (the joy of a slimmer waist-line) is stronger than the appeal of ice cream now. You weigh (pardon the pun) competing pleasures. Your will is energized based on your belief that one pleasure (whether immediate or long-term) is better than others. But in every case you choose and act with a view to increasing joy and avoiding pain.

Satan isn’t responsible for this. God is. God made you this way so that you would choose Him and His soul-satisfying pleasures in lieu of those which pass with the using and ultimately leave you empty and miserable. The alternative to resisting the passing pleasures of sin isn’t religious misery but relishing the permanent pleasures of God.

In sum,

human beings desire optimum joy and unending pleasure . . . and it is good that they do! We must come to grips with the fact that the Bible unashamedly appeals to our desire for pleasure and happiness. And it does so because God built into us an undeniable, unrelenting, inescapable hunger for joy and satisfaction and delight. God built us to be fascinated, to be intrigued, to be exhilarated, to be stunned.

It will never let up. There are no breaks, no rest, no sabbatical. This is no surface, fleeting diversion, but a basic, foundational, instinctive orientation of the human soul. You can no more escape from your desire for eternal pleasure than you can cease to be human, nor should you try. Let me be even bolder and say that your responsibility as a Christian is to be as happy as you possibly can. In fact, it is impossible for you to be too zealous for happiness or inordinately committed to the pursuit of pleasure. Your pursuit may be misdirected, as is the case when you prefer the passing pleasures of sin to the excellencies of God. But it can’t be too strong. God’s creative design was that your ravenous appetite for pleasure find fulfillment in him, for nothing more wonderfully reveals his glory than the joy the creature has in its Creator. As Piper says, “the bottom line of happiness is that we are granted to see the infinite beauty of God and make much of him forever” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 35).