From Slaves to Sin – to Kingdom Living (Matthew 5:1-3)

The Sermon on the Mount is widely recognized as the heart of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Although almost 2000 years have passed since Jesus uttered these words, they remain as relevant today as when the Savior's lips first breathed them.

One author described the Sermon on the Mount this way:

“After nineteen hundred years the Sermon on the Mount still haunts men. They may praise it, as Mahatma Gandhi did; or like Nietzsche, they may curse it. They cannot ignore it. Its words are winged words, quick and powerful to rebuke, to challenge, to inspire. And though some turn from it in despair, it continues, like some mighty magnetic mountain, to attract to itself the greatest spirits of our race (many not Christians), so that if some world-wide vote were taken, there is little doubt that men would account it ‘the most searching and powerful utterance we posses on what concerns the moral life.’”[1]

The Sermon on the Mount does express the ethic of the Millennial Kingdom, but it also applies to all of God’s people at this moment in history.

The righteousness described in the Sermon on the Mount should be the goal for the character and conduct of every believer today.[2]

“Although the Sermon on the Mount may drive sinners to seek God’s forgiving grace, the sermon was intended to be a description of the effects of God’s transforming grace. Believers should recognize that the righteousness described in the Sermon on the Mount is not attained through mere human effort. On the contrary, this amazing righteousness is progressively produced in Jesus’ disciples through the expression of God’s saving power.”[3]

 

[1] (Hunter, 1965)

[2] (Quarles, 2011)

[3] (Quarles, 2011)