the character of the kingdom

(matthew 5.1-12)

Jason Procopio

Last week we read the entire Sermon on the Mount together. Before we read it, we saw how the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms us to become members and citizens of the kingdom of God. The gospel is a message—it is the good news of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who lived to give us his life, died to spare us his death, and was raised to apply all this work to our lives. It is by this gospel that we are saved, yes—but it is also by this gospel that we learn to live as citizens of God’s kingdom.

And that’s why we have the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus gives us commandments which are, by ourselves, impossible—but by the Spirit who applies this good news to our lives, these things become not only possible, but a joy.

That’s where Jesus begins his sermon, in Matthew 5.3-12, which is among the most well-known passages in all of Scripture. These verses (often called “the Beatitudes,” named after the Latin word for “blessed”) are a summary of Christian character. It’s really important that we see that: at the beginning of his sermon, Jesus summarizes Christian character, not Christian action. He doesn’t start by describing what Christians should do, but rather what Christians should be like. 

And right from the outset, his words should hit us like a freight train, because what he describes could not be farther from what we often see in people—Christians included. Myself included. (As it will often be the case in this series, I’m preaching to myself this morning as much as I’m preaching to you.)

Christians can convince everyone of the strength of their faith if they know what verses to drop at the right time, what prayers to pray when people are listening. They can even convince themselves of the strength of their faith, based on their knowledge.

But the way we can truly see the strength of our faith, the way we can truly see our faith in action, is in the way we live—in what we are like, not just what we say, or even what we do. 

So let’s run through the Beatitudes together, and then we’ll try to see together how these aren’t several different qualities he’s describing, but actually different facets of the same diamond.

The Character of the Kingdom (v. 1-9) 

Matthew begins chapter 5 by describing the situation. As we saw last week, Jesus has been traveling around, teaching and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction among the people (Matthew 4.23). And now in v. 1 of chapter 5, he says,  

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 

So there are two groups of people we see here: you have the crowds, and you have his disciples. The crowds were presumably made up of people who were following Jesus because he was doing incredible things, and they didn’t want to miss it. They wanted to see people healed, or they wanted to be healed themselves. Jesus’s disciples were those who were following Jesus, not just to see what he would do, but to listen to him and learn from him.

It’s actually like this in most churches, too. You have people who love Christ and who want to follow him and learn from him; and you have people who don’t know Christ, but who are coming because they were invited, or because they’re curious, or because they have a need they want filled.

So although Jesus is speaking primarily to his disciples in this sermon, he does it within earshot of the crowds. Because he knows that his teaching, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will draw people to him for the right reason—not just for what he can do for them, but for who he is.

So he begins to teach—we’re going to take these one at a time. 

V. 2:  

2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 

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

This word “blessed” means, literally, happy—happy in the completest sense. Fully at peace, fully fulfilled, fully in tune with God’s intention for the world he created. Jesus starts every sentence but the last with this word, because he wants it to be clear that no matter how crazy it may sound to us, what he’s describing is what will make us happiest in God.

And as they all have the same beginning, they all have a similar end: they all end with a promise of what is or will be ours if we are this type of person.

Notice as well that the promise of every beatitude is for the future, except for the first and the last. The first and last promises are identical: For theirs IS the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, these promises and these qualities belong to this kingdom. If you belong to the kingdom of God, this is what you will be like, and this is what you can expect.

The first type of person he describes is “the poor in spirit”. He’s talking about those who realize that they are sinners, and so don’t have the spiritual resources they need to please God. They don’t have enough wealth in their spiritual bank account to pay these kinds of debts: they are poor in spirit. (And of course, that describes all of us, because none of us can obey God on our own.) Jesus is describing those people who realize this fact, and so turn to God for the help they need. It is to those people, he says, that the kingdom of heaven belongs.

So that’s the first thing: the kingdom of heaven is not for those who think they can please God on their own.

V. 4:  

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 

Obviously happiness and mourning do not usually go together. But an essential step to happiness, Jesus says, is in first realizing that our sin has damaged ourselves and the world around us. We cannot understand the grace of God until we realize we need his grace; we can’t appreciate his forgiveness until we realize we need his forgiveness.

Remember Psalm 38, which we saw two weeks ago? David is beaten down by the gravity of his sin, so he goes to the only place he can, the only refuge available to him—God himself. And he has hope that God will come to his rescue and forgive him. The mourning of Psalm 38 is what makes possible the joy of Psalm 32: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 

V. 5:  

5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 

God promises that when Christ returns, when he renews the earth and resurrects us, he will call us to reign along with him. We will, in a very real sense, inherit the earth. But those who inherit the earth will be rulers of a very particular sort. 

They will not assert themselves over others to get their own way. Rather, they will be meek. They will be gentle. 

Christian groups on social media probably wouldn’t survive if they were filled with people like this. Because why do people comment on social media? Far too often, it’s to prove someone else wrong. Someone says something we think is foolish, we want to react and prove them foolish—and we think they won’t listen if we don’t take the same harsh, abrasive tone they do. Someone does something wrong, and we want to call them out—so we rail against the wrongdoer, with vehemence and bitterness, because (we think) strength can only be silenced by greater strength.

Now I’ll be completely honest with you. I’ve managed to publicly sidestep some of this, and at least be seen as meek, not because I am meek, but because I get flustered when I’m nervous or angry or offended. The dam in my brain gets blocked, and none of the things I’d like to say actually make their way out of my mouth. That’s a terrible disadvantage in a debate; nearly anyone can win an argument with me (even if they’re wrong). 

It’s handy when I want to make myself seem meek though, because I can point to a million times someone else would respond with anger, and I can say, “You see? I didn’t react that way. I held my tongue.”

But the truth is, that’s not meekness; it’s social awkwardness. I’m not meek; I just don’t speak well on the fly. 

Meekness would be if I knew exactly what to say, and could say it exactly how I wanted…and responding with gentleness anyway. Meekness is trusting that I don’t need to defend myself or have the last word, because God will defend what is right, and his way is the way I should be seeking, not my own. Meekness is trusting that I don’t have to be forceful in order to be effective.

You see, it’s not just that the meek aren’t pushy or abrasive; it’s that they realize they don’t have to be. They don’t need to get their own way. They don’t need to have the last word, because they know God will, and it is his last word that they want to hear above all others.

And when you are this kind of person, that will extend much further than situations of conflict. It will cause you to reach out to those who are hurting, and love them well. It will cause you to correct those who have sinned with patience and understanding instead of harshness. It will cause you to forgive those who have wronged you, because you are poor in spirit—you know that you have wronged others too.

This is the type of person who will rule and reign with Christ in the New Heavens and the New Earth: the meek will inherit the earth.

One more before the break. V. 6:  

6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness aren’t those who want to appear like God, but who want to be like God—who want to think like he thinks, and love what he loves, and desire what he desires. Many people who think they want this don’t actually want this—because God does not love a lot of the things we love. God sometimes calls us to set aside things we love, for his sake. He sometimes calls us to do things we don’t naturally want to do. 

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness want to do whatever they must in order to live and love and desire like God. And the promise here is that if we want this, we will be satisfied. If they hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will receive righteousness; they will grow to be righteous, as he is righteous.

[PAUSE]

The Character of the Kingdom (cont., v. 7-9) 

V. 7:  

7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. 

Now this one’s a bit tricky; let’s do the hard part first. It almost seems as if Jesus is saying that God’s mercy to us depends on the mercy we show to other people. Which is another way of saying that we can earn our salvation by showing mercy to others.

That’s not what he’s saying here, and we know this in part because he’s speaking to his disciples—to those who have already received the mercy of being called to follow Christ and learn from him. 

So if he’s not saying we earn our salvation through mercy, what is he saying? He’s saying that if we don’t show mercy to others, how can we say we have received mercy from God? Because when we understand the mercy we have received from God, we naturally want to extend that same mercy to others. Or, to put it another way, if we belong to Christ, we are merciful to others because we know the mercy we have received won’t stop. As Jeremiah said in Lamentations 3.22-23, The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning… 

This is especially hard for us to wrap our brains around because, generally, those who need mercy the most are those who deserve it the least. But the same is true for us; although we deserved God’s eternal wrath, we have received his eternal blessing in Christ. Although we deserve his judgment, we receive his grace. 

And when we understand what we deserve and what we got instead, it becomes simply ridiculous to keep desiring retribution for the wrongs committed against us. People still do it; they still refuse mercy even when they’ve received it—Jesus tells a parable about exactly this subject in Matthew 18—but it happens when we don’t understand or take into account that mercy he has shown us. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

V. 8:  

8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

The pure in heart are those who desire to be pure as God is pure, and whose desire for purity effects every aspect of their lives, down to the deepest movements of their heart. Purity, in this context, is the absence not just of sin, but of a desire to sin. For the pure in heart, their desire for purity fuels all their other desires, and reorients them rightly. 

This is something we’ll come back to many times in the coming weeks, because Jesus comes back to it constantly in this sermon. Jewish tradition required rituals to make the worshiper “pure.” But they were external rituals, which only achieved external purity. Jesus will say over and over again that if you perform the act, but stop at the act, you really haven’t achieved anything of consequence: a pure heart, and not only pure actions, is what makes us truly pure.

And the promise attached to this pursuit is that they shall see God. We see the ultimate fulfillment of this promise in Revelation 22.4, where John sees a vision of the New Heavens and the New Earth, and God’s children see his face, in the face of Jesus Christ. Everyone who sees his face on that day will have a pure heart.

V. 9:  

9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. 

This is a verse that has been frequently misused. People will do almost anything to avoid conflict, or to be offended when sin is addressed, under the pretext being “peacemakers.” The “peace” in focus here is not just the absence of violence, but the presence of goodness—it is the Old Testament idea of shalom, of total well-being, both personally and communally.

Being a peacemaker doesn’t mean avoiding conflict; it doesn’t mean refusing to stand firm on issues of first importance; and it doesn’t mean refusing to call out sin in love. At Jesus’s birth, the angels proclaimed that his coming was bringing “Peace on earth.” How did he bring that peace? By dying a horribly violent death on a cross for people who didn’t deserve it. This kind of peace requires the greatest courage, and often the greatest loss. 

Being a peacemaker means that we pursue it anyway, no matter what it costs us. We seek the good of our brothers and sisters, and of our neighbors. We seek the good of the world in which we live. We seek the good even of those who hate us. 

So it’s not surprising that the promise attached to this quality is that they shall be called sons of God—this pursuit of this peace is exactly how the actual Son of God lived. Not only did he die for his people; he taught them. Not only did he teach his people; he healed even those who didn’t know him. Not only did he heal those who didn’t know him, he prayed for the forgiveness of his enemies. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. 

The Last Beatitude (v. 10)

The last Beatitude is longer and more complete; we’ll be here for most of the time we have left. V. 10:

10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

So he’s still keeping the same form, and repeating the same promise he started with: Blessed are THOSE WHO… for THEIRS is the kingdom of heaven. 

But then in v. 11, he makes a shift—he switches from the third person to the second person: from them to you. In other words, he’s not just giving a list of proverbs here. He expects the disciples listening to him to become these kinds of people, and to endure this kind of reaction from the world. V. 11:

11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. 

Can I just say the obvious? What he’s saying sounds insane. This is the kind of behavior that, when I see it in others, makes me think they’ve got a screw loose. Why would you be happy when others make fun of you? when they ruin your reputation? when they hurt you? Especially given the fact that this persecution is coming because you did the right thing! He says, “Blessed are you when others persecute you on my account!” 

“So you’re saying, Jesus, that if I do the right thing, and I follow you, and stay faithful to you, and obey your commands, I will be reviled, persecuted, rejected, ridiculed…and I should be happy about it? Not just that I should take it bravely, but actively rejoice?”

It sounds insane…but that’s exactly what he’s saying. And he gives us two reasons why in v. 12. He says, Rejoice and be glad, 1) for your reward is great in heaven, and 2) for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven. In other words, those who are persecuted rejoice in their persecution, because they know that whatever they are losing isn’t even worth comparing to what is waiting for them. You suffer chemotherapy because you know healing from cancer is waiting for you. You suffer long workdays because you know vacation is waiting for you. Paul says (Romans 8.18):  

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 

This is what I have to go through on my way to glory? No problem. Glory’s still waiting. I can rejoice.

Secondly, rejoice and be glad, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. It’s hard for us to see why this would be an incentive in our day, but Jews at the time of Christ held the prophets in ultimate esteem. If you want to rephrase this a bit for today: Jesus could easily have said, “for so they persecuted me.” (Except they hadn’t yet, so he didn’t say it.)

This is exactly what Peter is getting at in 1 Peter 2.19-21:  

For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. [Why?] 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.

We rejoice in persecution because this is the pattern we see in our Savior, and in the faithful men and women who suffered like him. Because in their suffering, they show (both to themselves and the world) that they love God more than whatever they’ve lost for him.

This passion for God’s kingdom above all things—above reputation, above possessions, above everything—is what marks God’s people. If they persecute you, you are in great company. So you can rejoice.

Now, that’s the meaning behind this last statement, but as I said before, I believe this last statement is where all the others are heading, if we take them to their logical conclusion.

Jesus isn’t giving a list of qualities to have here, from which we can pick and choose; he is describing different aspects of the same thing. He’s not describing several types of people; he’s describing one type of person, who has all of these qualities. He’s describing the marks of a redeemed human nature. What he is describing is the human nature God intended for us; it’s the human nature we see marvelously displayed in Christ himself; it’s the human nature he has made possible for us again in Christ.

Living the Beatitudes, being this type of person, isn’t just counter-cultural; it is unnatural. And that is exactly the point. When we become this kind of person, it is not a natural occurrence. It is, by definition, supernatural, because it is a miracle of human re-engineering: Christ taking the fallen human beings we are, remaking us into his image, and then inviting us into the joy of living as he lives.

The child of the kingdom is not a person whom the world would see as powerful. The child of the kingdom recognizes his need for help. 

The child of the kingdom is not a person who thinks he is good. The child of the kingdom knows he is sinful, and is broken over his sin.

The child of the kingdom is not a person who towers over others, using his strength to have others serve him. The child of the kingdom is meek, and serves others with care and gentleness.

You see what I’m getting at. All together, these qualities make for a person whom this sinful world would pity, and want to take advantage of. The child of the kingdom of heaven casts a small shadow. 

And I believe this is why Jesus ends with persecution. Because he knows that if you make yourself small (in the world’s eyes), if you are meek as he is meek, if you are meek for his sake, then persecution is where it will often end up. People will try to run over you. People will try to take advantage of you. People will think, Oh we can easily tear this person down; she’s a Christian. 

Every fiber of our being fights against this. Everything in us wants to reject it. Because fallen human nature hates giving the appearance of weakness. Fallen human nature hates letting someone else feel like they have the upper hand (especially if that upper hand is used against us). Fallen human nature hates when unfair, abusive people seem to get the last word. Fallen human nature says, “I must be proven right!”

But redeemed human nature—the nature of the kingdom—says, “I don’t need the last word; I need Christ.”

(And by the way: please don’t come to me after the service saying, “Well what about women who are being abused by their husbands, or things like that? Should they just let them walk all over them?” Of course not. But that’s not what we’re talking about, 99 times out of 100. The vast majority of situations are not that extreme; and even then, it is possible to get out of an abusive situation, and protect yourself, while still being gentle, and meek, and merciful. Most of the situations we will encounter are not like that. We must never accept this idea that “I can’t let them walk all over me!” is an acceptable reason to reject the character of Christ in us. Most of the time, if it’s between letting them walk all over me, and becoming like them…yeah, I’d rather let them walk all over me.) 

Redeemed human nature doesn’t need to win, because Christ has won. That is why Jesus calls us “blessed” if we belong to his kingdom. Nothing is more freeing than not having to win. Nothing is more freeing than not having to be successful as the world thinks of success, not having to be big as the world thinks of stature, not having to be powerful as the world thinks of power. We don’t have to be big, because he is big for us. We don’t have to be successful, because his kingdom will come. We don’t have to be powerful, because his power is made perfect in our weakness. We can be, but we don’t have to be. None of these weights need lie on our shoulders: we can rest.

So let’s end today with a few very simple questions, which all come down to this: What kind of Christians are we going to be?

Think about our pride: what do we think of ourselves? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Our hope: where do we find hope when we suffer for our sins, or for the sins of others? Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 

Our temperament: what will people see when they look at us? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 

Our desires: what do we want more than anything else? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 

Our anger: what keeps us from forgiving the sins of others? Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. 

Our character: what sinful tendencies do we need to call into question? Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

Our relationships: are there those whom we need to forgive, or from whom we need to ask forgiveness? Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. 

Our motives under fire: do we want to win, or do we want to react to persecution and slander like our persecuted Savior? 10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

This is the life of the kingdom, brothers and sisters. This is the type of people we are called to be. This is the type of person our Savior is—he who meekly and humbly went to the cross. By the world’s standards, Jesus was nothing if not a pushover: a weak man who let himself be bullied by a crowd even though he could have destroyed them all with a word. We know better. He lived to give us his perfect life. He died to take our punishment on himself. He was raised so that we might be raised with him. He did all this so that we might be like him.

So with his help, by his power, let us be like him, and let us be blessed in him.