Last time I preached, we looked at eternal life. Let’s do a quick refresher. Around the time Jesus lived, the rabbis were discussing the difference between two kinds of living.
· hayei olam (Hi-YAY Oh-LAHM) was the Hebrew phrase for eternal or everlasting life. It referred to living in a way that focused on matters of eternal importance. It was about a quality of life.[1]
· hayei sha’ah (Hi-YAY Sha-AH) was the Hebrew phrase for fleeting or earthly life. It was only concerned with short-term material needs of today: working, making money, eating, etc.
The New Testament language is going to use more stark language of eternal/everlasting life vs. eternal/everlasting death. Aiōnios, the word often translated as “eternal” or “everlasting”, means “of the Age” or “pertaining to the age.” Like “hayei,” it focuses more on quality rather than quantity.[2]
There were other Greek words that focused unambiguously on the time factor: aidios, aperantos(unlimited), adialeiptos (unceasing), or ateleutos (endless). The writers of the Bible were inspired by God to choose aiónios instead, so there must be something important here.
Think of the Bible as talking about the Now “the life/death of this age” or the Not Yet “life/death of that age to come.”[3] It’s going to tell us something about how we are participating in the life Jesus offers starting right now – or how we are participating in the ways of death, starting right now.
I suspect the best overview of this is in the Sermon on the Mount, with a focus on the Beatitudes. Jesus explains how to enter into aonios life, the life of the age right now, as a foretaste of the life in the age to come. The contrast is going to show us what participating in the death of this age looks like, which is also a foretaste of the death in the age to come. From Matthew 5:
Then Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place. When he saw the crowds, Jesus went back up the mountain. After he sat down his disciples came to him. Then looking up at his disciples, he began to teach them by saying:· Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
· Blessed are those who mourn or weep, for they will be comforted and laugh.
· Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
· Blessed are those who hunger and thirst now for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
· Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
· Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
· Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God
· Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
· Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me. Rejoice in that day and jump for joy, because your reward is great in heaven. For their ancestors persecuted the prophets before you in the same way.
The Greek word for blessed, makarios, was used by the Greeks for the kind of happiness and well-being the gods themselves enjoy. When Jesus talked about the makarios, the blessed ones, he meant those who participate in life with God, as God intended.
The “blessed” follow an interesting pattern. Starting with the poor in spirit, they seem to lay out a progression of how to move into deeper spiritual, relational, and emotional aonios life of this age. We are only going to cover the first three this morning, but I think you will see that progression emerge.
You might also notice that the qualities described and approved are the opposite of those that empires typically value. So as we go through the Beatitudes, we are also going to look at what characterizes participating in the death of the age.
We begin with the “poor in spirit.” These are the ones who understand their spiritual situation: they are broken. They are struggling with the chains of sin; they are in a spiritual battle against principalities and powers, and they have at times fought with the enemy instead of against him. But in spite of this, they are living in a blessed state, because recognizing the problem is the first step in inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.
The first beatitude gives the correct diagnosis: we need a doctor, not just to save us from death, but to continue to heal us. We have to see this to find life. We see in Luke’s gospel.
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)
I think this first beatitude is meant to be one on which the others are built. If the original sin was pride; the original virtue – humility - is the opposite of it. And, I might add, a powerful way to engage in spiritual warfare.
Kingdom people recognize their own inadequacy and insufficiency apart from God. To quote from the first step in a lot of recovery groups, “We admit that we are powerless, and our lives have become unmanageable.”
This kind of humility or ‘poorness of spirit’ is not self-loathing. It’s not incessantly focusing on our weakness, or thinking of ourselves as less than we ought. We are, after all, image bearers of God. If we are a follower of Jesus, we are an ambassador, a son or daughter of God, a temple – so much language in the Bible explaining our worth.
Humility involves not thinking more highly of ourselves than we should. It’s being realistic about the broken and sinful parts of who we are. It’s knowing the limit of our abilities; it’s seeing where we are weak and acknowledging it. The poor in spirit are very much just…honest about themselves.
The opposite is pride. The proud live in a cursed state; they think they are grand, that they are all put together. They would say, if they were in a group, “I admit that I am powerful, and my life will be what I make it.”[4] They thrive on insulting and humiliating others. Everything circles back to them. In their minds, they are the smartest, the most capable, the expert on everything. For you gamers, everyone else is a boring Non-Playable Characters (NPCs).
They don’t see how they are damaged and enslaved by sin, how badly they are in need of righteousness, how painfully they land in the world, or how their unaddressed participation in the death of this age is hurting those around them.
If there is one sin which God hates more than another, and more sets Himself against, it is the sin of pride. Like a weed upon a dung-heap, pride grows more profusely in some soils, especially when well fertilized by rank, riches, praise, flattery, our own ignorance, and the ignorance of others…
Those, perhaps, who think they possess the least pride, and view themselves with wonderful self-admiration as the humblest of mortals, may have more pride than those who feel and confess it. (J.C. Philpot)
One of the hardest things to deal with is people who say, “I’ve got this!” when you know they don’t got that. The hardest kids to coach are not the ones who know they are terrible; it is those who can barely dribble who think they have a shot at the NBA. The hardest person to counsel…the hardest musician to train…the hardest spouse or parent to live with… they all follow this pattern. They have so much awesomeness to defend.
Here’s how C.S. Lewis describes God’s plan for the poor in spirit:
[God] wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.
He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are.
I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off—getting rid of the false self, with all its 'Look at me' and 'Aren't I a good boy?' and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.
Only by stopping my attempts to rule in the Kingdom of Me, where I must increase while God and others decrease, can I participate in the life of this age. Only by being humbly and desperately dependent on the saving and transforming grace of God can we become what God has created us to be.[5]
Next come the mourners. The context indicates that they are mourning over sin and evil; they especially mourn their own, but they also mourn the failure of mankind to live righteously.[6] They have moved beyond being aware of the problem to bemoaning the broken state of the world. The godly remnant of Jesus' day wept because of the humiliation of Israel as a result of their sin, both personal and corporate. Weeping for sins, to the Israelites, was a deeply poignant[7] act that covered societal sin and those who participated in it.
Mourners are not only thinking about the situation the way God thinks about it; they are feeling about the world the way God feels about it. They call good; good; evil, they call evil. (Isaiah 5:20) God grieves over the sin and brokeness of the world (Ephesians 4:30; Mark 3:5), and they do too.
This mourning is not sadness that leads to despair (see 2 Corinthians 7:10). God has promised comfort to his people (Isaiah 40:1; 51:3; 61:2 – 3; 66:13). Holy sorrow is part of repentance, conversion, and virtuous action.[8] We are blessed as this drives us to the comfort of salvation. When know we are sick, and we want the cure, and we find the right doctor, we will be okay. The life of the age commences.
In contrast, “Cursed are the hardened.” They know there is a problem – maybe - but they refuse to address it. They convince themselves that they will be okay, or that it’s not their problem. They have nothing to repent of, for sure. They define good in the world is that which benefits them; the evil, that which gets in their way. They detach the proper emotion from this reality, and off they go with a smile – or a scowl - fixed on their face.
They distract themselves or drown their emotions in a flood of parties, distractions, pleasures, and work. It’s a lifestyle of denial. They refuse to pursue empathy on behalf of the poor, the downtrodden, the weak, the marginalized. They don’t care about life in someone else’s shoes.[9] Even if they see the diagnosis, they don’t hate the sickness enough to care about the cure. #fruitofpride
Because - let’s be honest - the cure is hard. It requires mourning. If you know anything about Old Testament precedent, it was sackcloth and ashes, and fasting. Who looks forward to mourning brokenness and failure? And mourning might mean you care enough to get involved in a way that costs you something.
But….not mourning is hard too. The hardening of our lives has its own consequence. The things we use to drown our emotions will eventually drown us. The walls we build to wall off parts of ourselves we want to avoid will eventually be walls that separate us from others, because - let’s be honest - people who refuse to address their own issues are hard to be around.
Two paths, both of which are hard. Choose the one that leads to life. The beatitudes teach that we begin by embracing transformative sorrow to participate in the life of this age.
Counterintuitive, I know. But it’s the way to life, because God is at work in the midst of that process. In fact, the word used for “they shall be comforted” is parakaleo, from which we get parakletos, the Holy Spirit, our comforter who is also an advocate[10] for those whose mourning has led them to repentance and into salvation.
These first two beatitudes deliberately allude to the messianic blessing of Isaiah 61:1-3, the one Jesus read in his hometown to announce who he was. Here it is again – at least the portion Jesus read:
The Lord has appointed me for a special purpose. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to repair broken hearts, and to declare to those who are held captive and bound in prison, “Be free from your imprisonment!” 2 He has sent me to announce the year of jubilee, the season of the Eternal’s favor.
That’s where mourning is headed: gladness, victory, joy, and comfort. But it starts with mourning.
Then there are the gentle, or meek/humble. The same word is used in the Greek in a variety of ways:
· bulls that pull a plow
· horses that pull a chariot
The meek are the ones who are willing to have their power harnessed into the service of the Kingdom. Our pattern for meekness or gentleness[11] is Jesus, who submits to the will of His Father.
Though Jesus set the pattern, we need this harnessing in ways Jesus did not in order for us to flourish in the life of this age. Unharnessed, we are wild and untamed.
The humble (the poor in spirit who mourn the effect of sin) know they need to be controlled, because on their own they will just tear things up. They know that they need a yoke; they know that if their life is harnessed in the right cause, they can be strong in the service of something greater than themselves. They began to gain a sense of what their life might mean to others.
In meekness, we see the beginning of a sense of community.
Because the meek are God-controlled, the Holy Spirit brings about the strength to have mastery over passions and emotions. Meekness is not passive weakness, but strength directed and under control to bring about good.
The problem with winter hurricanes and cyclones isn’t that there is wind; it’s that the wind is untamed and destructive. It leaves devastation in its wake. None of us look at that and think, “Well, wind is a terrible idea.” No, we look at it and say, “That much wind is a problem.”
· If you physically bully people, the problem isn’t that you are too strong; it’s that you use your strength to break the world instead of fix it.
· If you verbally abuse people, the problem isn’t that you can speak; it’s that you use the power of your words to bring death instead of life.
· If your emotions lash out in a way that manipulates or wounds people, the problem isn’t that you have emotions; it’s that your emotions are unharnessed and destructive.
So it is with the things constrained by meekness. Holy Spirit-empowered meekness orders our lives for our good and the good of others. The life of this age flourishes when we surrender to God’s constraint to fulfill His design in ourselves and in the world around us. Participating in eternal life means participating in the lives of those around us in ways that reveal that goodness of the Kingdom of God.
In contrast, it is participation in the death of the age to remain wild, living an unharnessed or destructive life. The wild don’t want authority over them; they want to do their own thing, follow their own heart, use their strength for themselves and not bring their lives into submission or service to others. They are all about the self. “I can do what I want. Nobody tells me what to do.” They are bullies who love to force themselves onto the world. #stillafruitofpride
When I taught my ethics class at NMC, a key question that kept coming up was this: “What would it look like if everybody lived like you?” or “Would you like other people if they lived by your standards?” It’s a way of talking about the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would like for them to do to you.” This does not happen when we are not meek.
This is the opposite of the meek, who have a sense of their place and responsibility in community. They see how their lives are situated in the midst of the lives of others. The meek seek to live out the Golden Rule: they want those around them to live with constrained power that brings about the flourishing of everyone, so they do it too.
The law of meekness is: If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, not only give him drink (which is an act of charity), but drink to him, in token of friendship, and true love, and reconciliation; and in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, not to consume him, but to melt and soften him, that he may be cast into a new mold. (Matthew Henry)
One day the owner of the earth will pass an inheritance on to the meek. The ones who know what it’s like to be stewarded know how to steward well in turn, both in this age and the age to come. [12]
The first three beatitudes lay a foundation:
· honest brokenness over our sin
· humble mourning that leads to repentance and salvation
· harnessed servanthood that leads to flourishing.
We see here three requirements for entering into eternal life with God and building the kind of Kingdom God has planned.
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[1] Consider, for instance, the “everlasting (olam) hills” in Canaan (Genesis 49:26), Aaron’s “everlasting” high priesthood (Exodus 40:15), Phinehas’ “everlasting” priesthood (Numbers 25:11–13), “everlasting” atonement rituals for the Israelites (Leviticus 16:34), etc. These “everlasting” ordinances were only for a time.
[2] In Matthew 25:46, Jesus speaks of “eternal punishment” (kolasin aiōnion) and “eternal life” (zōēn aiōnion). The Greek word aiōnios derives from aiōn, meaning an age or era.
Classical and biblical usage shows that aiōnios often means “pertaining to an age” or “age-enduring.” The New Testament itself speaks of “long ages” (aiōniois chronois, Rom. 16:25) that have come to an end. It often is used in ways in Scripture that clearly do not mean “unending,” such as the phrases zoē aiónios – “life of the Age” (commonly translated "eternal life") or kolasis aiónios – “punishment of the Age.
[3] “In the New Testament the history of the world is conceived as developed through a succession of aeons. A series of such aeons precedes the introduction of a new series inaugurated by the Christian dispensation, and the end of the world and the second coming of Christ are to mark the beginning of another series. . . . He includes the series of aeons in one great aeon, ὁ αἰὼν τῶν αἰώνων, the aeon of the aeons (Eph. 3:21); and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes the throne of God as enduring unto the aeon of the aeons (Heb 1:8). The plural is also used, aeons of the aeons, signifying all the successive periods which make up the sum total of the ages collectively. . . . This plural phrase is applied by Paul to God only.” (Vincent’s Word Studies)
[4] Psalm 10:4 “In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”
[5] The kingdom of heaven, where self-sufficiency is no virtue and self-exaltation is a vice, belongs to such people. (Believers Bible Commentary)
[6] They mourn over both personal and corporate sins (see Ezra 9:1–4 as an example from the Old Testament).
[7] Ezra 10:6; Psalm 51:4; Daniel 9:19-20)
[8] Orthodox Study Bible
[9] There is a weird flex right now in evangelical circles in which empathy is considered a sin. That feels like the fruit of pride to me.
[10] It’s not like God doesn’t know about our repentance and salvation. It’s an earthly analogy (the biblical audience knew what a parakletos was and did in society) to illustrate a spiritual reality.
[11] The same Greek word is translated “gentle” elsewhere.
[12] “The ultimate fulfillment of the promise to Abraham and his offspring that they would be ‘heirs of the world’” (Romans 4:13). (ESV Global Study Bible)