christian living on The Beatitudes

[The beatitudes] serve to clarify Jesus' fundamental message: the free availability of God's rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus Himself... They do this simpl...

In the Beatitudes something of the celestial grandeur breaks through. They are no mere formulas for superior ethics, but tidings of sacred and supreme reality’s entry into the world.

If you could cut one or two Beatitudes, which would you drop from the list? Perhaps the ones about the righteous or the persecuted or those who mourn? What might you add? “Blessed are the driven, for ...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson describes one of the keys to understanding the beatitudes: live faithfully now, experience...

The Beatitudes name nine distinct areas of human struggle that Jesus addresses in his teaching on the hill. Our first instincts are to be anxious, avoidant, competitive, apathetic, judgmental, evasive...

This blog post started as the introduction to a book review (details below), but I rather quickly realized I had two posts on my hands, not one: There are two quotes about the beatitudes that I lov...

Pastor: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. All: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Pastor: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the...

Beatitude is a strange but compelling word. It comes from the Latin word beatitudo, which is a translation of the Greek word makarios, meaning blessed, favored, or flourishing. The Beatitudes show us ...

Just a few minutes spent reflecting on the promises that come attached to the Beatitudes can lift us up like the whirlwind of God’s love in a revival tent meeting: inherit the earth, yours is the king...

Scripture scholars contend that the original language of the Beatitudes should not be rendered as "Blessed are the single-hearted" or "Blessed are the peacemakers" or "Blessed...

A third way of interpreting possession of the earth is that for someone who lives the Beatitudes—a man of humble heart, poor and meek—is well in the end. Every circumstance, fortunate or unfortunate, ...

Too often those characteristics [of the Beatitudes] … are turned into ideals we must strive to attain. As ideals, they can become formulas for power rather than descriptions of the kind of people char...

The beatitudes paint a comprehensive portrait of a Christian disciple. We see him [or her] first alone on his knees before God, acknowledging his spiritual poverty and mourning over it. This makes him...

There is a great sequence [in the Beatitudes]. Experimentally no man [or woman] enters into any of these, save in the order indicated.

When God wants to sort out the world, as the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount make clear, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the broken, the justice hungry, the peacemakers, the ...

[Many Christians] demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. … I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Bless...

I have a nagging sense that when we read the word blessed , we either feel indifferent or suspicious. Both of these responses are likely the result of the way the term is (over)used in our day-to...

It seems important to note that in the beatitudes ‘the meek’ come between those who mourn over sin and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. The particular form of meekness which Christ req...

Becoming a child is living the Beatitudes and so finding the narrow gate into the Kingdom.

If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over the airwaves of North Ame...

I don’t like to be meek. I like to be in control. I like to be right, independent, strong, organized, able to handle whatever happens to me, viewed positively by people and on top of my emotions. I a...

Following Dallas Willard’s line of thinking in  The Divine Conspiracy , we don’t believe Jesus is saying, “Be merciful and you will be blessed.” Rather, his idea is, “As a tender-hearted person you ge...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Wisdom Song It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of thi...

A friend of mine who is an entrepreneur was listening to a CD of a series of messages I had given on the Beatitudes. When he came to meekness, he told me, he skipped over it. He wasn’t interested in b...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson asks an important question: how do you mourn the losses in your life: How do you mourn? ...

Jesus says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.” “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.” Bles...

I never find “Blessed are the rich,” or “Blessed be the noble”’ but Blessed be the meek,” and, “Blessed be the poor,” and, “Blessed be the mourners, for they shall be comforted.”-And yet, O God!, most...

Jesus is not prescribing how to be blessed, but rather describing who is blessed. While the world says the strong, powerful, and happy are “well off,” Jesus turns our expectations upside down by sayin...

The socioeconomic rootedness of the word ‘poor’ does not permit exclusively the spiritual poverty interpretation, and the ‘in spirit’ demands that this be more than simple economic oppression…[neverth...

With every beatitude, the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people, and their call to come forth from the people becomes increasingly manifest.