NOTES for Mat 5:1-16
The Sermon on the Mount is truly a sermon of the Kingdom. The very “Beatitudes,” as the blessings pronounced by Jesus at the beginning of the sermon are usually called (vv. 3–11), testify that Jesus connects His coming with the manifestation of the fullness of the Kingdom in the world. It is no accident that He speaks of the blessedness of the “poor in spirit” (v. 3). This obviously refers to those who, in the prophetic books of the Old Testament and in the Psalter, are simply called “the poor,” although material poverty is undoubtedly not what is meant there either. Isaiah of Jerusalem was the first in the history of God’s people to speak of poverty in the Gospel sense, connecting the triumph of the poor with the advent of the messianic age (Isa 29:19). It is possible that members of the community of Isaiah’s disciples later came to be called “the poor.” That community subsequently gave rise to an entire movement which remained connected with prophetic circles even later. Isaiah counted himself among “the poor,” although he belonged to one of Jerusalem’s finest aristocratic families. By “poverty,” he and his followers meant a spiritual state in which a person relies on no one and nothing in the world except God. With such complete surrender to God’s will, a person, even if rich and influential, remained before God a poor man possessing nothing. In a world that, in the Gospel’s words, “lies in evil,” such a person could most often count neither on a kingdom nor even on a quiet life. And now, according to Jesus’ testimony, the day of which Isaiah had spoken had finally arrived: the day of the triumph of “the poor,” to whom the Kingdom is given. This is, of course, not an earthly kingdom, but the messianic Kingdom whose advent Isaiah foresaw and Jesus attested. In the Psalter, such people were sometimes called “the meek” or “the humble.” If before they could not even dream of possessing the land, now, in a world being transformed, this possibility appears for them (v. 5). Yet the Kingdom has still not triumphed finally and in its fullness. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of the blessedness of those “persecuted for truth” (v. 10; it would be more accurate to translate this phrase as “blessed are those persecuted for righteousness”) and of the blessedness of those persecuted for His sake and for their faithfulness to the Kingdom (v. 11). The Kingdom has “drawn near” (Mt 4:17); it is already entering the world and transforming it, but it has not yet been revealed in all its fullness. The forces of evil resist this revelation, assailing those who live by the Kingdom and bear witness to it. Such is our age, the age of the advancing Kingdom.