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Matthew 5:3-12 – The Beatitudes: Accomplishments or Acknowledgements?
The Beatitudes are not to be seen as moral achievements but the acknowledgement of the exact opposite – moral depravity, moral emptiness, and moral needs. The Beatitudes are not philosophical idealism but the idea that we are not spiritually ideal. Self-righteousness looks at the qualities of poor in spirit, moral mourning, and such as achievements above and beyond, and better than the mass of sinners. Self-righteousness is where one becomes righteously indignant because others are not righteous like themselves. The Beatitudes teach that these are not achievements or even self attained acknowledgements. They are a divinely awarded awareness of how we are not like the Father, but need and desire to be. While in the Sermon on the Mount, righteousness is not a bestowed status as in Romans, it is a bestowed awareness. The Beatitudes lived out set up the conflict between living like “You have heard” and living like “But I say to you.” Acting out the Beatitudes leads us to be perfect as the Father is perfect (5:48) not because we are ever perfect, but because we are striving with God’s help to act like God. Why set up the impossible standard? Because being poor in spirit we acknowledge we are imperfect and we mourn that truth. The righteous are blessed, not because they are perfect, but because they know they are not. The attitude of the Beatitudes is not gleefully and gloatingly, “look what we have become” but rather glaringly aware, “look what we have become.”
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