Blessed are ...
The Beginning of the Sermon on the Mount
We are finally to the Sermon on the Mount itself.
For almost three chapters, 107 verses, and 1938 words of Matthew, we have what could be termed the Kingdom of God manifesto.
With these words, Jesus turns the worldly understanding of the way things work on their head.
Humanity, blinded by its own pride, its will to survive apart from God, and its self-centered viewpoints, thinks and acts in most every way opposite of and in opposition to God’s economy, that is, the way God intended the world to be.
Human desires independent of God and God’s desires are mutually exclusive.
The Sermon on the Mount addresses both.
Its words contain some of the most famous passages in history: the Beatitudes, the command to “Love your enemies,” the Lords’ Prayer, and the Golden Rule among others. In the Sermon, Jesus undercuts the lies humans live by and gives the true way of God.
In the days and months ahead (with a few breaks for other topics) I will seek to unpack this torrent of truth.
I recently had a dear lady in a Bible study ask me how she could understand the Bible without a teacher. I answered (hopefully in a gentle way), “Read what is there and don’t try to explain it away.” We do often need some explanation for what is the Bible says, but the issue for most is responding in trust to what is there. I pray my explanations are just enough to make clear what is present in the text, so you, my readers (and me) can respond in trust.
Interpreters of the Sermon have come up with multiple outlines, each with strengths and weaknesses. I won’t even attempt an outline, though some sections do stand out like the Beatitudes.
The continual addition of truth from beginning to end is what ultimately gives the Sermon its extraordinary power. It is a giant diamond with many facets that shine brightly in themselves, but together form a brilliant and beautiful whole.
The Beatitudes
The first ten verses of the Sermon have been called the Beatitudes at least since Augustine in the 5th century.1 Almost all of the English translations begin with the words “Blessed are.” The New Living Translation has “God blesses those who …” and the Good News Translation (GNT) and Young’s have “Happy are.”
Besides these translation differences, in our English Bibles the term “Blessed” as an adjective is used to translate more than one word, three in fact—makarios, eulogētos, and eulogēmenos. The latter two have the sense of “a good word is due to” or “praise is due to.” Thus when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday the crowds acclaimed “Blessed (eulogēmenos) is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” Based on their hopes and Jesus’s reputation, they invoked this term of blessing: “A good word is due to the one coming …” When Paul writes “Blessed be God …” in Ephesians 1:3, he uses the adjective eulogētos, essentially the same “a good word is due to.” The Latin is benedictus (bene=good, dictus=word).
But by far the most common word translated “Blessed” is makarios. Latin translates makarios as beatus, from which we get “beatitude” in English. This word implies the “state of blessedness,” and was used mostly to refer to people who received the blessing of God on their lives in some way. This is the term that begins each of the Beatitudes. In the Old Testament the Greek makarios translates the Hebrew ’ashry, the term that begins Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man who … .”
So even though English uses “blessed” for makarios and eulogētos/eulogēmenos, the intent/meaning has a different focus. The GNT tries to convey this difference with the word “Happy,” but happy is an emotion that may proceed from blessedness, but not blessedness itself.
I may not always feel happy, but I am always blessed by God. “Joyous” might be a good rendering.
Each verse of Matthew 5:3-11 begin with makarios, so technically there are nine beatitudes. But because the first eight are in the third person and the ninth is direct address in the second person (and an expansion of the eighth) traditionally eight beatitudes are counted.
In the days ahead, we will see that makarios, “Blessed,” takes on a very different character from the world’s view of happiness/blessedness. The ordinary person gets their happiness from the money they have, the things they own, the people they spend time with, the experiences they participate in—and in themselves there is nothing wrong with these. We tend to make these ends in themselves that we deserve rather than accepting them as the gifts from God that they really are.
Jesus gives a view of blessedness that is radically different from the world: poor in spirit, mourning, humility, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, purity, peace-making, perseverance in persecution. The state of blessing that Jesus speaks of is vastly deeper and transformative in the human spirit than any happiness that the world may give.
May you have a blessed Palm Sunday as you prepare for Good Friday and Easter ahead.
An Invitation
Are you interested in learning New Testament Greek? I will be teaching an intensive course with 50 hours of live instruction via Zoom from June to August. Please contact me at jack.painter@gmail.com or go to https://www.rightonmission.org/intro-to-new-testament-greek for more information. I would love to have you!
St. Augustine, The Sermon on the Mount, 2.10
Such a good word. There's definitely some quotable lines for Notes in this post. I think your right about the idea of joyous Dr. Painter, if someone wanted a different translation from blessed. Joy calls to mind deep desire, hope, and satisfaction all at once, and it's something that transcends the moment, even when we're suffering. A lot of the beatitudes seem to involve personal suffering or lacking, or helping someone else with their suffering. It's a tough and scary lesson Jesus gives, but every point is also laced with hope because God's blessing/favor/joy is being promised.