He came to transform and fulfill the Old Covenant Law of Moses. He accomplished this transformation through His death, burial and resurrection and through the transformed hearts of Yahweh's faithful remnant of covenant people who will be empowered at Pentecost to be sent out to heal and transform the world in His name.
Instead of the negative commands of the Ten Commandments, the positive blessings of the Beatitudes are His promise that that the curse of the Law would be replaced by God's blessings. The day was coming when we would obey the demands of the Law, not as a condition of salvation, but as the fruit of a transformed heart and life. The blessings or Beatitudes Jesus taught in the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount are a plan for that transformed life. We accept the commitment to live this transformed life not in order to be redeemed but because we are redeemed.
However, we cannot achieve this blessedness on our own; it is only through Christ that we can live the blessings and reap the promises of the Beatitudes. Separate yourselves from the cares and concerns of this world. Travel mentally back in time 2, years and place yourself on that hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Picture in your mind a muscular, tanned 30 year old carpenter turned rabbi standing on the slope of the hill.
Preserved in the ancient monastery of Monte Casino, Italy is a copy of an ancient letter from a Roman official to the Emperor Tiberius which was discovered to contain a description of a Jewish rabbi from Nazareth who had been condemned by the Roman authority. The Emperor Tiberius was interested in the stories about this miracle worker, especially after the news had come to him concerning the rumors that this Jewish teacher had actually been resurrected from the dead.
Some scholars dispute the letter's authenticity but history does confirm that there was a Roman named Lentulus who was named Consul in the 12 th year of Tiberius' reign and who was in the Roman province of Judah during the time of Jesus' trial and crucifixion.
This letter is the only description of Jesus of Nazareth known to exist. In the letter of the Roman Consul Lentulus to the Emperor Tiberius, Lentulus described Jesus as having: a noble and lively face, with fair and slightly wavy hair; black and strongly curving eyebrows, intense penetrating blue eyes and an expression of wondrous grace. His nose is rather long. His beard is almost blonde, although not very long. His hair is quite long, and has never seen a pair of scissors His neck is slightly inclined, so that he never appears to be bitter or arrogant.
His tanned face is the color of ripe corn and well proportioned. It gives the impression of gravity and wisdom, sweetness and good, and is completely lacking in any sign of anger Holy Land Magazine, Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, vol. Jesus turns to you and to His other disciples as He ascends the slope gesturing to you to come up the "holy mountain" "to come to Him. He speaks in a gentle voice.
You feel that something momentous is about to happen but you cannot understand that you and He are beginning a journey that will change the entire world. Unlike the revelation of God at Mt. Sinai, instead of being ordered to keep a distance from God, now you and the others are invited to draw near to God the Son.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus will be preparing the shepherds of His Church for the transformation of New Covenant believers from the sons and daughters of Adam to the adopted sons and daughters of God and for the revelation of the second great Pentecost when God the Holy Spirit will come down on the New Covenant Church in tongues of holy fire, filling and indwelling the New Israel "the Universal, Catholic Church.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God enfleshed, is taking you and His disciples up on to the sacred ground of the mountain. He is taking you away from the crowds that had come to hear the teachings and witness the healing miracles of this new rabbi. He is calling you to receive not words written on stone tablets, but He is instead calling you to witness the miracle of God the Living Word transforming hearts of stone into living Temples of the Holy Spirit.
He has come to take you away from the world and its mundane, temporal kingdoms and cares. He takes you to the holy mountain on this earth to begin to teach you that one day you will be able to reach the holy summit on the next "the eternal bliss of the heavenly Kingdom of God.
In each discourse, on the Mount and on the plain, Jesus centers His teaching on the giving of "blessings. Question: Look up the word "happiness" in the dictionary. What is the general meaning of this word?
How does it differ from the way in which the word "blessing" is used in the Old and New Testaments? For some examples see Genesis , 28; ; ; Numbers ; Psalms ; ; Isaiah ; Jeremiah ; Daniel ; Proverbs ; Ephesians ; Hebrews ; 1 Peter Answer: The Hebrew and Greek words for "blessing" in the Old and New Testaments do not equate to our English word "happiness" "a feeling of general well-being.
A "blessing" in Sacred Scripture evokes the supernatural creative power of God and can only come from God "either directly from God or through the mediation of His priestly representative who requests on behalf of the people, God's divine blessing. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word barak expresses this supernatural creative power but in the New Testament the word used for "blessing" is the Greek word makarious ma-car'-e-os , which means the state of bliss experienced by the Greek gods or upon the mortals who receive their special favor becoming themselves semi-divine.
Like other Greek words the Christian community will transform this Greek word into one which carries a distinctive Hebrew-Christian meaning.
In this case the "blessings" of the Beatitudes will give us the unique divine vitality, the bliss of God living in us! Please turn to Matthew chapter 5 in your Bible. The Sermon on the Mount Matthew 2. The Missionary Discourse Matthew 3. The Parables Discourse Matthew 4. The Homily to the Church Matthew 5.
The Beatitudes Matthew 2. The Christian and the world Matthew 3. Teaching on the private and public lives of Christians and the practice of righteousness Matthew 5. There are three major theories that Bible scholars have developed to account for the differences between Matthew's Sermon on the Mount and Luke's Sermon on the Plain: Both Gospels give accounts of the same discourse. The Gospels reflect two different homilies spoken at different times during Jesus' teaching ministry.
In the Latin church beatitudo was used not only as an abstract term denoting blessedness, but in the secondary, concrete sense of a particular declaration of blessedness and especially of such a declaration coming from the lips of Jesus Christ.
Beatitudes in this derivative meaning of the word occur frequently in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms Ps ; ; , etc. But apart from individual sayings of this type the name Beatitudes, ever since the days of Ambrose, has been attached specifically to those words of blessing with which, according to both Matthew and Luke, Jesus began that great discourse which is known as the Sermon on the Mount.
When we compare these Beatitudes as we find them in Mt and Lu , we are immediately struck by the resemblances and differences between them. To the ordinary reader, most familiar with Matthew's version, it is the differences that first present themselves; and he will be apt to account for the discrepancy of the two reports, as Augustine did, by assigning them to two distinct occasions in the Lord's ministry.
A careful comparative study of the two narratives, however, with some attention to the introductory circumstances in each case, to the whole progress of the discourses themselves, and to the parabolic sayings with which they conclude, makes this view improbable, and points rather to the conclusion that what we have to do with is two varying versions given by the Evangelists of the material drawn from an underlying source consisting of Logia of Jesus.
The differences, it must be admitted, are very marked. Assuming that both Evangelists derived their reports from some common Logian source, the question arises as to which of them has adhered more closely to the original. The question is difficult, and still gives rise to quite contrary opinions. One set of scholars decides in favor of Matt hew, and accounts for Luke's deviation from the Matthean version by ascribing to him, on very insufficient grounds, an ascetic bias by which he was led to impart a materialistic tone to the utterances of Jesus.
Another set inclines to theory that Luke's version is the more literal of the two, while Matthew's partakes of the nature of a paraphrase. In support of this second view it may be pointed out that Luke is usually more careful than Matthew to place the sayings of Jesus in their original setting and to preserve them in their primitive form, and further that owing to the natural tendency of the sacred writers to expand and interpret rather than to abbreviate an inspired utterance, the shorter form of a saying is more likely to be the original one.
It may be noted, further, that in Mt the Beatitude takes the direct form, which suggests that this may have been the form Matthew found in his source in the case of the others also. On the whole, then, probabilities appear to favor the view that Luke's version is the more literal one. It does not follow, however, that the difference between the two reports amounts to any real inconsistency.
The first three beatitudes in Luke indicate that those who suffer poverty, hunger or misfortune will have their suffering removed. Luke's fourth about persecution is the same as Matthew's eighth. Luke's "poverty" and Matthew's "poverty of spirit" are similar, even though Matthew qualifies his to a greater degree. Matthew presents Jesus as Messiah in word in his first discourse chapters five to seven , the Sermon on the Mount, and in deed in chapters eight and nine.
Matthew's beatitudes give rewards for each. In conclusion, Matthew offers persecution, like the persecution of prophets before Jesus' time. Luke counterattacks four Beatitudes, with four woes 6.
These woes cast Jesus in a prophetic role with condemnations for those absent. The last woe blames those who fail to acknowledge comfort from Jesus while the disciples are addressed as "having" comfort. Luke chooses to present a different order, often reversing Matthew's order. They often use different terminology to express the same situations as, for example, Matthew identifying wrongdoers as "publicans and gentiles" while Luke simply uses "sinner.
Why the differences? Different speakers, different audiences, different listeners, different personalities and different writers who penned the Gospels. What was presented to specific audiences caused the evangelist to choose certain stories instead of others. This doesn't mean one is right but rather that both are good teachers, adjusting to the needs of their listeners.
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