You Haven’t Murdered Anyone. But Is That the Point?

There are some commandments most of us can read with a certain amount of confidence.

You shall not murder.

✅ Check.

Whatever other spiritual shortcomings we might have, most of us haven’t killed anyone!  If all God wanted was for us not to murder anyone, we can feel pretty good about ourselves.

Then Jesus started talking: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’” (Matthew 5:21)

So far, so good.

“But I tell you…”

And suddenly murder wasn’t quite as simple as not killing somebody.

Jesus Took It Deeper

This was the first of six teachings in Matthew 5 where Jesus said some version of, “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you.”  So we might want to pay attention.

Jesus had just insisted that he had not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them. Now he began showing his listeners what fulfillment looked like.

Jesus affirmed the command, then took his listeners deeper.  “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.”

He began with anger, then named two insults….

(1) “Anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court.” Raca was an Aramaic insult. Something like “empty one,” “worthless,” or “good for nothing.”

(2) “And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

Jesus had moved from murder to anger to name-calling. That seems like an odd progression.

Is Anger Really the Same as Murder?

It can be tempting to summarize Jesus this way: Being angry with someone is just as bad as murdering them.

But I’m not sure that was his point.

Jesus certainly knew the difference between feeling anger toward someone and ending that person’s life. The consequences are obviously different.

He was refusing to allow the absence of murder to become our definition of righteousness. “I’ve never killed anybody” turns out to be a remarkably low bar for the kind of life God is forming.  

The command said not to take another person’s life. Jesus went deeper: What happens inside us before violence ever becomes possible?  What happens when another human being becomes, in our minds, worthless? Someone whose dignity no longer matters?

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard drew attention to contempt in this passage. He suggests that contempt does more than disagree with someone – it assigns them a lesser value.

Maybe that is the connection Jesus wanted his listeners to see.

Murder says, ‘Your life doesn’t matter.’ Contempt whispers the same thing long before anyone picks up a weapon.

Who Made You the Judge?

Something happens when I hold another person in contempt.

I place myself in the position of evaluator. I decide what you are worth, whether you deserve respect, whether you can be dismissed with a word.  That exposes what lies underneath the command against murder.

It is a dignity issue. The person standing in front of us bears God’s image. We don’t get to decide what they’re worth.

That doesn’t mean everyone gets a pass. Jesus confronted people when they were wrong. There is room for disagreement in kingdom life. But a person’s worth is not up for debate.

That sounds much closer to the righteousness Jesus had been describing – the kind of life that does right by God and by people.

Jesus’ Strange Sentencing Guidelines

There is something else strange about Jesus’ words.  The consequences seemed to increase while the offenses seemed to decrease…

Commit murder: face judgment in court. Say Raca: appear before the Jewish council. Call someone a fool: face the fire of Gehenna.

Hmmm.

Gehenna took its name from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place associated with idolatry and violence, including child sacrifice. Jeremiah condemned what had happened there and warned that the valley would become a place of judgment.

The connection is hard to miss: people had treated human lives as disposable, and God had not looked away.

If Jesus was creating a new legal code, it was a peculiar one.  More likely, he was challenging their confidence that they had kept the command simply because they hadn’t killed anyone.

Jesus was pressing a deeper question – not simply, What have I done? But what kind of person am I becoming toward the people around me?

And Then Jesus Said, “Therefore…”

Jesus didn’t stop with anger, insults, or warnings about judgment.

He said: “Therefore…”

He told his listeners that if they were bringing a gift to the altar and remembered that someone had something against them, they should leave the gift there.

Go.  Be reconciled.  Then return and offer your gift.  That “therefore” matters.

Reconciliation wasn’t a new topic. It was where Jesus had been heading all along.  Jesus envisioned people who took relationships seriously enough to move toward reconciliation when those relationships fractured.

Even worship could wait.

Apparently, we can’t separate our worship of God from how we treat people.

More Than Not Murdering

Most of us will probably go through our entire lives without murdering anyone. That doesn’t necessarily mean we have understood the command.

Jesus asked more of his listeners than keeping their anger in check. He told them to go and make things right.

The opposite of murder in Jesus’ kingdom isn’t merely not killing someone.

It is learning to seek the good, dignity, and reconciliation of the person standing in front of us.

You Have Heard It Said

We live in a world of things we have heard.

I heard someone say it on a podcast. I saw a pastor explain it on Instagram. There was a TikTok about it. Someone posted it on Facebook.

Pretty soon a statement gets repeated often enough that it begins to feel true. We may not remember where we first heard it. We may never have checked the original source. But somehow it becomes part of what “everybody knows.”

Maybe we’re not as different from Jesus’ first listeners as we might imagine.

Six times in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus used some variation of a striking phrase:

“You have heard that it was said…”

And then: “But I say to you…”

I’ve read those words for years. But recently this word caught my attention…

Heard.

A World That Heard Scripture

Jesus did not say, “You have read…”  He said, “You have heard…”

That distinction matters.

We live in a culture where Bibles are everywhere. Many of us have several in our homes, another on our phone, and dozens of translations available within seconds. We can easily assume people in Jesus’ world were engaging Scripture just like we do.

They didn’t.

Literacy estimates for the first-century Roman world vary widely, partly because literacy itself is difficult to define. Someone might have been able to recognize a name, read a short inscription, or conduct basic business without being able to read and interpret a Torah scroll.

What seems much more certain is that sophisticated reading ability belonged to a minority. For most people, Scripture was something they heard.

The synagogue played an important role. People gathered, Scripture was read aloud, and teachers explained what had been read. Torah was heard, interpreted, remembered, discussed, and passed along.

So when Jesus said, “You have heard…,” he was speaking into a world in which people’s understanding of Scripture was intertwined with what they had been told Scripture meant.

Does that sound familiar?

What God Said – and What We Say God Said

There was also a developing body of interpretation surrounding Torah.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus described traditions the Pharisees had received from previous generations – teachings and practices not found explicitly in the written law of Moses. The Gospels referred to something similar as the “tradition of the elders.”

That doesn’t make those traditions necessarily sinister. Any community that takes Scripture seriously has to interpret it…

What does this command mean here? How do we apply it there? What happens when two principles seem to collide?

Over generations, interpretations accumulate. Practices develop. Teachers explain what earlier teachers taught. Eventually it can become difficult to tell where the biblical text ends and our explanation of it begins.

We still do this.

  • “The Bible says…”
  • “Christians have always believed…”
  • “My pastor taught…”
  • “I’ve always heard…”

Sometimes what we hear is actually Scripture. Sometimes it is a fair and thoughtful interpretation of Scripture. Sometimes it is an inference built on an interpretation that someone else handed down. And sometimes an idea has simply been repeated so often, for so long, that we stop asking whether God actually said it at all.

When Interpretation Starts Sounding Like Scripture

Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 were more complicated than simply, “You’ve been taught incorrectly, so let me tell you what the Bible really says.”

Much of what followed Jesus’ “You have heard…” came directly from Torah:

  • Do not murder.
  • Do not commit adultery.
  • Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
  • Love your neighbor.

But one example stands out. Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’”

The first half came directly from Leviticus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”(Leviticus 19:18)

The second half did not. Nowhere did Torah command, “Hate your enemy.” Nowhere.

Yet ideas like it were circulating. The Qumran Community Rule found among the Dead Sea Scrolls instructed members of that Jewish community to “love all the sons of light” and “hate all the sons of darkness.”1. 

It shows how easily interpretation can begin to sound biblical.

Love your neighbor.  That is Scripture.

But if “neighbor” simply means my people, my group, my tribe, then maybe those outside the group are another matter.  Before long, we end up with Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

The first part was God’s command. The second part could sound like a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Until Jesus said: “But I say to you, love your enemies.”

Suddenly the assumption was exposed.

Our Own “You Have Heard” World

We may own more Bibles than any generation before us, yet we still live largely in a world of things we have heard.

Today “our synagogue” fits in our pocket. Thus, a 45-second reel explains a difficult passage. A meme summarizes a theological debate that has lasted centuries. A podcast clip gets separated from a two-hour conversation. Context gets lost, and a single verse becomes a stand-in for the whole story.

We share it. Someone else repeats it. Soon thousands of people “know” something few of them have actually investigated.

The technology has changed. Apparently the human tendency hasn’t.

We can confuse what we have heard about Scripture with Scripture itself. Christians can be especially susceptible to this. Once an idea is labeled “biblical,” challenging it can feel dangerously close to challenging God.

“But I Say to You…”

Which makes Jesus’ next words all the more striking: “But I say to you…” Jesus was not simply adding another interpretation to the pile.

Matthew wrote that the crowds were astonished because Jesus taught “as one who had authority.” Again and again, he took what his listeners had heard and urged them to listen more closely – to Torah, to their assumptions about Torah, and ultimately to him.

That may be where these words still confront us. Some of the most difficult misunderstandings to recognize aren’t outright lies. They’re the things we’ve heard so often – from pastors, parents, churches, books, podcasts, and now social media – that we no longer stop to ask: Did God actually say that?

Or maybe the harder question: Is that what God meant?

Jesus’ invitation remains: You’ve heard what people say…

But listen to me.

1Community Rule (1QS 1:9–11), Dead Sea Scrolls

A Higher View of Scripture

Beyond defending the Bible to encountering the God who speaks through it

I have long wondered whether our modern conversation about biblical inerrancy sometimes asks too small a question. “Is Scripture without error?” is certainly a legitimate theological question. But answering it does not, by itself, tell us what Scripture is for – or what kind of book it is. We can affirm its inspiration and still approach the Bible primarily as a repository of correct information, theological propositions, or moral teachings.

Maybe a higher view of Scripture begins somewhere else: not with Scripture as an object to defend, but with Scripture as the living, God-breathed means through which God encounters his people. Hebrews says that “the word of God is living and active” (Hebrews 4:12). Paul describes Scripture as theopneustos – “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). And Jesus can speak of an ancient text as something God is saying to people in the present (Matthew 22:31–32). The words were written long ago, but the voice is still heard.

That perspective also helps explain something distinctive about the Bible itself. God did not give us a neat theological textbook. He gave us four Gospels, each with its own emphases. He gave us Samuel and Kings alongside Chronicles. He gave us Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Psalms – voices that sometimes seem to conflict with one another. He gave us lament alongside praise, questions alongside answers, and people who argue with God. Scripture contains tension, poetry, ambiguity, memory, story, wisdom, prayer, and mystery.

Maybe mystery is not a defect in revelation. It may be one of its main characteristics. Biblical truth is not always something we can reduce to a tidy system. Scripture can be clear and mysterious at the same time. We can know something truly without being able to explain it exhaustively. The fact that Scripture sometimes leaves us wrestling may be part of how it forms us.1

This is why we want to distinguish between a text’s meaning and its continuing significance. Psalm 23 had a historical and literary meaning for ancient Israel. But when someone reads “The LORD is my shepherd” beside the bed of a dying spouse, the significance of those words can become almost unimaginably larger. The words have not changed, and their original meaning has not disappeared. Rather, the living God has brought an ancient word into a new moment, a new circumstance, and a new human heart.

So when we say that God continues to speak through Scripture, we do not mean that God keeps changing what Scripture means or that we can make the text say whatever we want. The words remain. Their meaning matters. But the Spirit who inspired Scripture also illumines it. Scripture can address us, confront us, comfort us, unsettle us, and transform us in ways that cannot be reduced to extracting information from the page.

Perhaps the irony is that a genuinely high view of Scripture may make us less anxious about defending it. If the Bible’s authority depends upon our ability to resolve every apparent difficulty, we may feel compelled to protect it. But if Scripture is the living, God-breathed word through which God encounters his people, we can afford to sit with it. We can allow Job to remain uncomfortable, Ecclesiastes to unsettle us, the Psalms to teach us how to lament, and the Gospel writers to emphasize different things. We can even say, “I don’t know,” without believing that Scripture has failed.

The real question, then, may not simply be, “What does the Bible say?” That question is essential. But alongside it is another: “What is God saying to us through what the Bible says?” The second question must never be detached from the first. Yet the first alone can reduce Scripture to information.

And perhaps this is the deepest point: the goal of Scripture is ultimately not Scripture. The goal is God. Jesus told people who searched the Scriptures diligently that those very Scriptures testify about him (John 5:39). The Bible is not ultimately a book designed to make us better at knowing the Bible. It is a book through which we come to know the One to whom the Bible points.

A high view of Scripture may not be one that makes Scripture smaller, neater, and easier to control – but one that allows it to remain alive, mysterious, and capable of speaking into every generation.

1 Jacob had to wrestle with God to know God and to understand himself, and mostly his own limitations (Genesis 32). It’s also possible that our “wrestling with Scripture” is what we need to encounter God and to come to terms with our own (mental, philosophical, intellectual, spiritual) limitations. (Offered by Kevin Thomas, September 2026)

Note: I wrote this a couple of months ago. It seemed fitting to publish it in light of Jesus and the Law.

Jesus and the Law

The Beatitudes described the people of the kingdom. Salt and light described their vocation in the world. Now Jesus turned to what may have been an obvious question:

If these people were to embody Israel’s calling in the world, what becomes of Torah?

Israel already had a way of life. God had given them the Law centuries earlier. Torah shaped their worship, relationships, community life, and understanding of what it meant to be God’s covenant people.

But Jesus had already begun raising eyebrows.

His approach to the Sabbath, his association with the wrong kinds of people, and his willingness to challenge accepted interpretations of Torah could easily have created the impression that he was playing fast and loose with Scripture.

So, Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets.” (Matthew 5:17)

The opening almost sounds defensive: Whatever else you have heard about me, don’t misunderstand this.

Jesus had not come to dismantle Torah. But neither had he come simply to preserve an inherited system of interpretation that could obscure the very purposes Torah was meant to serve.

He had come to fulfill it.  He came to bring out the real meaning of the Law, its original intent.

Not Tearing It Down

The Greek word Matthew used for “abolish,” katalyō, could mean to tear down, destroy, or dismantle.

Jesus said plainly: That is not what I am doing.

“The Law and the Prophets” was a common way of referring to Israel’s Scriptures – the story of what God had done and what God desired for his covenant people.  That matters in light of what Jesus had just said about salt and light.

Centuries earlier, Israel had been called to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) – a people through whom the nations could see what life with Yahweh looked like.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “You are the light of the world.”

He wasn’t abandoning Israel’s calling. He was bringing it forward.

The question was still the same: What does a people who represent God in the world actually look like?

And Jesus pointed them back to Torah – not simply to repeat what they had heard, but to show them the kind of life God had intended it to form.  That was the purpose of the Law.

“I Came to Fulfill It”

But Jesus did more than defend Torah. He said he had come to fulfill it.

But “fulfill” does not simply mean “keep” or “obey.” Jesus was claiming something larger: that in him, the Law and the Prophets were being brought toward their intended purpose.  Think consummation, which is the meaning of the Greek word plēroō (fulfill).

Maybe we could say it this way: Jesus didn’t come to erase the story. He came to bring the story where it had always been going.

That makes Matthew 5:17–20 a hinge in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus had described the people of the kingdom and their vocation. Now he began showing them what life under God’s reign actually looked like.

Not One Dot

Jesus continued: “Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law…” (Matthew 5:18)

Whatever people thought Jesus meant by “fulfill,” he clearly did not mean that Scripture no longer mattered. The sky and earth may have seemed like the most permanent realities imaginable, yet Jesus said God’s purposes were more dependable still.

Not even the smallest stroke could simply be brushed aside.

That same idea continued in the next verse. Jesus warned against setting aside even the “least” of the commandments.

There were plenty of debates in Jesus’ world about greater and lesser commandments. Which mattered most? Which carried less weight? What was central to Torah?

Jesus himself would later speak of the “greatest” commandments.  But lesser did not mean disposable.

The question was not, Which commandments can I safely ignore?

A better question was emerging: What kind of people was God seeking to form through Torah?

A Righteousness That Surpasses

Then Jesus dropped the bombshell: “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  (Matthew 5:20)

That must have sounded nearly impossible. The scribes and Pharisees took Torah seriously. They studied it, debated it, and worked hard to understand how it should be applied to everyday life.

And Jesus said his disciples needed a righteousness that surpassed theirs.

He wasn’t simply calling for more religious requirements, more effort, or stricter behavior. He was pointing toward something deeper.

We have already encountered this word: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” (Matthew 5:6)

And Jesus would use it again: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness…” (Matthew 6:33)

Righteousness in the Sermon is not merely commandment-keeping. It describes a life aligned with God and God’s way of doing things – doing right by God and doing right by other people, as the BibleProject folks put it.

This was the righteousness Jesus was about to describe.

The Kind of Life God Was After

The temptation with any law is to ask: What exactly am I required to do? Where is the line? What counts as obedience? Or the age-old question: How much can I get away with?

Jesus seemed interested in a different set of questions.

What kind of people was Torah intended to form? What does life look like when God’s desires become more than commands written on a page – when they begin shaping the kind of people we are becoming?

Jesus had not come to set Torah aside. Nor had he come merely to tell people to keep it more carefully. He had come to fulfill it – to bring the story of the Law and the Prophets to its intended destination in himself.

And now he was about to show what that meant for the people of the kingdom.

This is where his words about a “surpassing righteousness” begin to come into focus. Jesus had not lowered the demands of Torah. In some ways, he was about to take them farther than his listeners imagined.

The first commandment he chose was one almost everyone would have assumed they understood: Do not murder.  Most of us can read that one and feel pretty good about ourselves.

But Jesus didn’t stop with murder. He went underneath the act itself—to anger, contempt, fractured relationships, and reconciliation.

The command was not smaller than they thought.  It was larger.  And the question was no longer simply, Have I kept the command?

Jesus was leading them toward an even deeper question:

What kind of person is God forming me to become?

Your Father in Heaven

I had read the Sermon on the Mount more times than I can count before I noticed it.

I was working on my last post about Jesus’ words, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world,” when I came to Matthew 5:16:

“Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

“Your Father.“

This was the first time in Matthew that Jesus referred to God as Father. Jesus hadn’t used the word while delivering the Beatitudes. But beginning here, he used Father seventeen times before the Sermon ended – ten of them in Matthew 6:1–18 alone.

Once I noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it. I began to wonder if Matthew was giving us another important lens through which to read the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe we haven’t paid enough attention to the Father.

Jesus Didn’t Invent the Idea

It is sometimes said that calling God “Father” would have been completely foreign – or even unthinkable – to Jesus’ Jewish audience. That’s overstating the case.

The Hebrew Scriptures occasionally described God as Father. Moses asked Israel, “Is he not your Father, your Creator?” (Deuteronomy 32:6). Isaiah prayed, “You, LORD, are our Father” (Isaiah 63:16). Other Jewish writings before Jesus also used Father-language for God.

Jesus didn’t introduce an entirely new idea. But the frequency and familiarity with which he used it in the Sermon were striking.

Jesus repeatedly talked with his disciples about “your Father.” Not just my Father, but your Father!

Your Father sees. Your Father knows. Your Father forgives. Your Father feeds. Your Father gives.

And right in the middle of the Sermon, Jesus taught them to pray to their Father: “Our Father in heaven…” 

Father became part of the vocabulary through which they understood their life with God.

Children Look Like Their Father

We encountered this a couple of weeks ago in “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” I called it the Family Resemblance.

Jesus returned to that idea only a few verses after mentioning “your Father” for the first time. He told his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them “that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44–45).

Then Jesus pointed to the Father. The Father caused the sun to rise on both the evil and the good. He sent rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The point wasn’t simply that God had issued an extraordinarily difficult command to love enemies. Jesus grounded that kind of love in the character of the Father. And that children bear the family resemblance.

I won’t belabor the point, but it’s worth remembering as we continue. Maybe Jesus wasn’t merely telling his disciples what to do. He was showing them what their Father was like.

Who’s Watching?

Then we get to Matthew 6, and Father-language suddenly appears everywhere.

Jesus addressed three familiar Jewish practices: giving to those in need, prayer, and fasting. He assumed his disciples would practice them.

The problem was the audience. “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them,” Jesus said (Matthew 6:1).

That phrase may unlock the entire section: Who’s watching?

Jesus described people who gave, prayed, and fasted so others would notice. He repeatedly redirected their attention away from the crowd: Your Father sees what is done in secret.

That changes everything. Kingdom righteousness isn’t performance. It doesn’t require applause or even recognition. The Father’s attention is enough.

And that raises an uncomfortable question for those of us who have spent a lifetime around Christianity: How much of my spiritual life depends upon someone else noticing?

Our Father in Heaven

Right in the middle of this discussion, Jesus taught his disciples how to pray:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done…”

Notice the tension.

Our Father.

There was intimacy there, but Jesus didn’t make God smaller to make him approachable.

He is our Father in heaven. His name is still holy. His Kingdom is still coming. His will is still to be done. Intimacy didn’t replace reverence. Jesus held the two together.

And given everything we’ve been exploring over the past year, something else jumps out: Father and Kingdom belong together.

The God whose Kingdom Jesus announced was the God he taught his disciples to call Father.

 The King is Father.

That means living in the Kingdom isn’t merely submitting to a different set of moral teachings. It’s learning to live in relationship with the Father whose Kingdom has come near.

Your Father Knows

That became especially important when Jesus talked about worry. He didn’t simply say, stop worrying. He said, “Your heavenly Father knows what you need” (Matthew 6:32).

The birds are fed. The flowers are clothed. Your Father knows what you need.

Then, in Matthew 7, Jesus compared God with earthly parents who knew how to give their children good gifts: “How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (7:11)

The Father Jesus described isn’t merely watching to see whether his children measure up. He sees, knows, provides, and gives.

And His children can learn to trust Him.

Maybe We’ve Been Reading the Sermon Wrong

This matters as we move into the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

It’s remarkably easy to turn Jesus’ words into another version of what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism1, the assumption that Christianity is largely about being a good person, with God somewhere in the background helping us when we need him.

Read that way, the Sermon becomes a particularly demanding collection of moral teachings: Don’t get angry. Don’t lust. Keep your promises. Love your enemies. Give. Pray. Forgive. Don’t worry. Don’t judge.

Try harder. Do better. Be good.

But what if we have missed the Father standing behind all of it? Jesus wasn’t simply describing how good religious people behaved. He was describing a people learning to live under God’s reign as children of their Father.

So as we continue through the Sermon, maybe we should keep asking two questions:

What does this tell us about the Father?

What does a people increasingly bearing his family resemblance look like?

Before we go any further into the Sermon on the Mount, maybe we need to notice who has been standing behind it all along.

Your Father in heaven.

1Smith, C., & Denton, M. L. (2005). Soul searching: The religious and spiritual lives of american teenagers. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Salt and Light: The Town Just Ahead

The first time I drove across the prairies at night, I learned that a town’s lights can be deceptive.

Far ahead, on the horizon, a small glow appeared. It looked close – just over the next rise, perhaps. But mile after mile of road passed beneath me. The lights remained ahead of me, steady and unmistakable, while the town itself was still far away.

A city on a hill can do that. Long before you arrive, its light tells you that someone is there.

That may be part of the force of the words Jesus spoke in Matthew 5:13–16: You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Jesus had just finished the Beatitudes. He described those who were blessed in God’s kingdom: the poor in spirit, the merciful, the peacemakers, those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness. Then, as he turned to his followers, he told them what this kind of life meant beyond the hillside where they were listening.

“You are salt. You are light.”

Not, “Try harder until you become salt and light.” Not, “Make yourself more visible.” Jesus spoke in the present tense. He named what his people were becoming because they belonged to him and to his kingdom.

An important detail is hidden by English translations: the “you” was plural. Jesus was not handing each person a private assignment in spiritual influence. He was speaking to a people – his followers.

That mattered. A single lamp could light a room, but a city’s glow came from many lamps, many homes, many lives gathered in one place. Jesus imagined a people whose shared life would become visible.

What Followed the Beatitudes

Within the Sermon, the salt-and-light discourse was a hinge, carrying Jesus’ listeners from the Beatitudes into his unfolding vision of kingdom righteousness.

The Beatitudes describe what kingdom-shaped people look like. Salt and light showed what happened when that kind of life entered the world. The rest of the sermon gives the picture greater detail: reconciliation instead of contempt, truthfulness instead of manipulation, mercy instead of retaliation, even love for enemies.

In other words, Jesus was not calling his followers to a vague kind of cultural influence. He was describing a life so different that it became recognizable.

As N. T. Wright observes, Jesus’ language echoed Israel’s calling to be God’s light for the world. Jesus gave his followers a share in that vocation.1  They were to embody God’s arriving kingdom in the places where they lived.

Salt That Still Tastes Like Salt

Salt carried several associations in the ancient world. It flavored food (Job 6:6), and it was part of Israel’s worship: every grain offering was to include “the salt of the covenant” (Lev. 2:13; cf. Ezek. 43:24). Numbers referred explicitly to an “everlasting covenant of salt” (Num. 18:19; cf. 2 Chron. 13:5), language that evoked permanence and faithful covenant relationship with God.

Jesus may have allowed those associations to echo in the background, but his warning kept the main point close at hand: salt had to remain salt.

“If the salt loses its saltiness,” he asked, “how can it be made salty again?”

The image is not merely about Christians making the world better. It is about remaining distinctively faithful. Salt that has become useless cannot do what salt is for.

That is an uncomfortable question for any Christian body. We can be active, vocal, busy, and even admired, while gradually taking on the same habits Jesus confronted: contempt, dishonesty, retaliation, status-seeking, indifference to a neighbor’s need.

His point was not to make his followers strange for strangeness’ sake. It was to keep the character of the kingdom.

Mont Saint-Michel off the coast of Normandy, France

A Light for the World

Jesus then gave his second image: “You are the light of the world.”

The words echoed Isaiah’s expansive vision of God’s light reaching the nations: God’s instruction would go out from Zion and bring peace (Isa. 2:2–5); the servant would bring justice and become “a light for the nations” (Isa. 42:1–7); and God’s salvation would reach “to the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). Isaiah called God’s people to “walk in the light of the Lord” (Isa. 2:5) and portrayed the nations coming to God’s light and glory (Isa. 60:1–3).

Jesus then said something astonishing: his followers shared in that vocation.  Their light was not their own brilliance. It was the reflected brightness of a life shaped by Jesus.

That was why the image of the city was so fitting. Jesus did not say that every believer had to become famous. He said that a city set on a hill could not be hidden. The point was not celebrity. It was presence.

A people who forgive, practice mercy, welcome the overlooked, tell the truth, seek peace, and love their neighbors will become visible – irresistibly visible.  Their life will tell the world that another kingdom is possible.

Jesus then narrowed the image from city lights on the horizon to a lamp in a house. Nobody would light a lamp and put it under a bowl. A lamp was placed on its stand, where it gave light to everyone in the house.

Light is meant to help someone see.  It is meant to make a place more livable. It serves the people nearby.

Perhaps that is a good test for our witness. Does our presence make it easier for our neighbors to see the goodness of God? Does it bring more clarity, mercy, justice, courage, reconciliation, and hope?

Or does it mostly draw attention to us?

Jesus ended with the purpose of it all: “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

The goal is not that people would be impressed by Christians. The goal is that they would catch a glimpse of the Father. Like a town glowing across the prairie, the church is meant to be a sign that there is life ahead – a place of light, welcome, and hope.

The question is not simply whether we are visible. It is whether, when people see us, they can see the Father.

1N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–15 (London: SPCK, 2004), discussion of Matthew 5:13–20.

When Kingdom Living Creates Friction

10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.  Matthew 5:10-12

Jesus ends the Beatitudes with a statement that may be the hardest of all to understand.

Blessed are the persecuted?

We understand blessing when things go well. We can even understand Jesus calling the poor in spirit, those who mourn, or those who hunger and thirst for righteousness blessed. But persecution? Insults? False accusations? How could any of that possibly be called blessed?

Maybe we’re asking the wrong question.

The final Beatitude isn’t really about persecution, but about what happens when people become so thoroughly shaped by the kingdom of God that its values collide with those of the world around them.

And in that sense, the final Beatitude brings the whole series full circle.

Where the Beatitudes Have Been Taking Us

As we’ve discussed, the Beatitudes were never intended as a list of moral teachings for earning God’s favor. Jesus has been describing a particular kind of person – a person whose life is being reshaped by the reality of God’s kingdom.

Dallas Willard helps us hear the Beatitudes in precisely this way. In The Divine Conspiracy, he argues that Jesus isn’t giving us instructions for how to become blessed. Rather, the Beatitudes announce the present availability of God’s kingdom – even to people whose circumstances would lead us to think they are anything but blessed.1

That matters here. Jesus isn’t saying that persecution itself makes someone blessed. The blessing comes from belonging to the kingdom – a reality that cannot be taken away even when following Jesus becomes costly. 

  • The poor in spirit recognize their dependence on God.
  • Those who mourn allow themselves to be affected by the brokenness around them.
  • The meek relinquish their need to grasp power.
  • Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness develop a deep desire for things to be made right.
  • The merciful extend God’s loyal love to others.
  • The pure in heart become increasingly undivided in their devotion to God.
  • The peacemakers participate in God’s work of reconciliation.

And then comes the final Beatitude.

What happens when people live this way? Sometimes, they encounter resistance.

That’s what makes this Beatitude different. The first seven primarily describe the character of kingdom people. The eighth describes what can happen to those people when that character becomes visible in the world.

Kingdom life creates friction.

“Because of Righteousness”

Jesus is careful about the reason for that friction: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.”

That qualification matters.

Jesus isn’t saying that everyone who experiences opposition is blessed, nor is he suggesting that we should seek persecution. Being difficult, argumentative, or unnecessarily provocative isn’t evidence that we are living faithfully.

The issue is righteousness.

In Matthew’s Gospel, righteousness isn’t simply about possessing the right beliefs or conforming to religious doctrines. It has to do with living rightly before God. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows what that looks like: reconciliation instead of contempt, truthfulness instead of manipulation, generosity instead of self-interest, and love for enemies instead of retaliation.

This kind of life can be disruptive – not because kingdom people are looking for a fight, but because the values of the kingdom differ from those that often govern human life. Live that way long enough, and the difference becomes visible. Sometimes, visible differences create resistance.

N. T. Wright offers a helpful way of understanding what Jesus is doing here. The Beatitudes, he argues, are a summons to “live in the present in the way that will make sense in God’s promised future,” because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus.2

This helps explain the friction. When the values of God’s future shape the way people live in the present, they can collide with the assumptions, priorities, and power structures of the world around them.

Then Jesus Made It Personal

Verse 11 takes the Beatitude a step further: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

Notice the shift.

Jesus moves from “those who are persecuted” to “you.” He is preparing his followers for what it may cost to identify with him.

And that last phrase matters most: “because of me.”

The issue isn’t righteousness as an abstract ideal. The righteousness of the kingdom is inseparable from the King of the kingdom.  Following Jesus means becoming the kind of person Jesus describes in these Beatitudes. That can put us at odds with the ways of the world.

But Why Rejoice?

Then Jesus said something even more surprising: “Rejoice and be glad.”

Surely Jesus didn’t mean that suffering itself is something to celebrate.  He didn’t.

The blessing isn’t found in pain. Jesus didn’t call his followers to stoicism – to grit their teeth and pretend they aren’t hurting – or to spiritual masochism.

The reason for rejoicing lies elsewhere: “Because great is your reward in heaven.”

Jesus changed the horizon.

The world tends to measure life by what is immediate: comfort, reputation, acceptance, security, success. Jesus asks his followers to live from a larger reality. What appears to be loss in the present may not be loss in the kingdom of God.

And then Jesus added: “For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

You’re in good company. The prophets experienced this. God’s messengers have long discovered that speaking and living God’s truth can provoke resistance. To experience opposition because of allegiance to Jesus is to find yourself in an old and honorable company.

The Beatitudes Come Full Circle

One of the most remarkable things about the final Beatitude is where Jesus placed it.

Go back to where he began: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Now listen to where he ends: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The same promise frames the Beatitudes. I don’t think that’s accidental.

The people who began by recognizing they had nothing to bring to God are the same people who, by the end, discover that the kingdom belongs to them – even when belonging to it becomes costly.

The Beatitudes aren’t a ladder we climb to become worthy of God’s kingdom. They are a portrait of what happens when God’s kingdom begins to shape a human life.

And when that life takes shape – when mercy replaces retaliation, humility replaces self-importance, purity replaces divided loyalties, peacemaking replaces hostility, and righteousness matters more than approval – the difference becomes impossible to hide.

Jesus doesn’t promise that such a life will always be easy. He promises that it is blessed.

Not because persecution is good, but because the kingdom of heaven is still theirs.

That may be where the Beatitudes finally bring us: not to a set of moral teachings to master, but to a way of life shaped by a kingdom already breaking into this one.

The question at the end isn’t simply, “Will following Jesus cost me something?” It is:

 “What kind of person am I becoming – and what kingdom is shaping me?”

1 Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, chap. 4, especially pp. 97–106.

2 N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One: Chapters 1–15, pp. 37–38.

Family Resemblance

“You must be here for Remy.”

Our grandson, Ephraim – Remy to everyone in the family – just turned thirteen. When he was younger, everyone said he was my “spitting image.”

I remember one Sunday when he was about four or five. We were visiting Remy and his family and had attended church with them. After worship, I volunteered to pick him up from Sunday School. I was prepared to explain to the Sunday School “gatekeeper” who I was and why it was okay for me to take him.

Before I could say a word, she looked at me and said, “Oh, you must be here for Remy.”  Apparently, no explanation was necessary.  She recognized the family resemblance.

I wonder if Jesus had something like that in mind when he said: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.  (Matthew 5:9)

What if peacemaking is one of the ways God’s children become recognizable?

What does a peacemaker actually make?

The word Jesus used for “peacemaker,” written in Greek by Matthew, is eirēnopoios. It is a compound of eirēnē, “peace,” and poieō, “to make” or “do.”  That’s worth noticing. 1

Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are those who love peace,” or even, “Blessed are the peaceful.”

He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” There is something active about the word.

And what kind of peace did Jesus have in mind?

His Jewish listeners would have heard eirēnē through the rich Hebrew concept of shalom. Shalom meant much more than the absence of conflict. It carried the idea of wholeness, well-being, flourishing, and restored relationships.

Peace, in other words, isn’t simply what happens when people stop fighting. Peace is what happens when what is broken begins to be made whole.

That changes the picture considerably.

Peacemakers aren’t necessarily peacekeepers

There’s an important difference between keeping the peace and making peace.

A peacekeeper may be primarily concerned with stopping the conflict. Keep things quiet. Don’t rock the boat. Avoid the difficult conversation. Preserve the appearance of harmony.

A peacemaker wants something deeper. A peacemaker moves toward what is broken with the hope of restoration.

Sometimes that means listening. Sometimes forgiving. Sometimes telling the truth. Sometimes confronting injustice. Sometimes having the conversation everyone would rather avoid.

Biblical peacemaking isn’t built on pretending that everything is fine. Jeremiah confronted those who proclaimed, “Peace, peace,” when there was no peace (Jer. 6:14; 8:11). Jesus told his followers to pursue reconciliation with those they had offended (Matt. 5:23–24).

A peacemaker isn’t someone uncomfortable with conflict.

A peacemaker is someone who is committed to what lies on the other side of conflict: reconciliation, wholeness, and shalom.

“They will be called children of God.”

This, I think, is where Jesus’ Beatitude becomes especially interesting.

The Greek word translated “children” in the NIV is huioi, literally “sons.” In the ancient world, being identified as someone’s son communicated more than family status. It also communicated identity, representation, and resemblance.

Children look like their parents.

Sometimes it’s physical. Sometimes it’s in their mannerisms. Sometimes it’s in the way they talk, laugh, or respond to people.

And sometimes it’s in their character.

Jesus makes this connection explicit just a few verses later. After telling his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them, he says, “that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

Why love enemies?

Because that’s what the Father is like.

God’s children begin to look like their Father.

And what does the Father look like?

He is a God who makes peace. As the visible expression of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), Jesus showed us what the Father looks like. And Jesus was a peacemaker.

Paul described what God had done through Christ this way: God was reconciling all things to himself, “making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20). The verb Paul used there is the related Greek word eirēnopoieō – to make peace.

When we participate in peacemaking work – when we move toward reconciliation, when we refuse retaliation, when we seek wholeness rather than simply winning – we begin to look like him.

Family resemblance

Maybe that’s why Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are the people who keep things peaceful.”

He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Because peacemaking is more than a behavior. It is evidence of an identity.

God is at work making all things new. His Kingdom is breaking into a world fractured by hostility, resentment, injustice, and fear. And the people who surrender themselves to that Kingdom begin participating in what God is doing.

They become people who make peace. Not perfectly. Not easily. And certainly not without cost.

But increasingly, they look like their Father.

And perhaps that’s what Jesus meant when he said they would be called children of God. Not simply that God gives them a title. Not that peacemaking earns them a place in the family. Rather… 

…their lives begin to make the family resemblance visible.

The Sunday School teacher didn’t need me to explain who I was. She saw Remy in me.

I wonder what people see when they look at us.

When we’re hurt.  When we’re angry.  When someone disagrees with us.  When relationships break down.  When we’re given the opportunity to retaliate – or reconcile.

Do they see someone who simply wants to keep the peace? Or do they see someone willing to enter the broken places and work toward shalom?

Because every time God’s peace passes through human hands, the family resemblance becomes a little easier to see.

1 See Woodworking and God’s Poiema focused on Ephesians 2:10: For we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.  The root Greek word for workmanship is poiema – it describes God’s creative activity. It’s the word from which poem and poetry are derived.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Dishwasher 

My friend Kevin – whom I’ve mentioned [here] and [here] – recently shared something he wrote that I really liked. I liked it enough to invite him to be this week’s “guest columnist.” Enjoy!

On a perfectly typical Tuesday morning, while standing by the dishwasher and stacking clean dinner plates, a completely unprovoked memory emerges: 

All five feet, one inch of seventh-grade Kevin is standing in front of his English class. It’s time for the annual season of poetry recitation. For my contribution, I had chosen the wildly popular, annoyingly overused Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. (Note to seventh-grade self: Jabberwocky would have been a far superior poetic art form.) After absolutely nailing the opening three lines with confidence and aplomb, my mind goes blank. I gaze at the floor tiles beneath my feet, look nervously around the room, and stare back at my teacher, desperately waiting for her to throw out the lifeline of a prompt. 

There’s a truly good reason my mind went blank. I didn’t prepare. Thus, an awkward liturgical call-and-response ensues: Ms. English Teacher recites each line, and I mumble it back with decreasing volume and enthusiasm. As this public ordeal mercilessly comes to a humiliating conclusion, my teacher states the obvious: “You need to prepare more diligently next time, Kevin.” She’s not wrong. 

As this scene spins across my consciousness, an emotional trigger-fest ensues: 

  • Embarrassment: Yep, there’s pathetic little Kevin, stammering in front of a jury of his middle school peers. 
  • Indignation: Why the heck didn’t I spend ten minutes each evening memorizing the @#$% poem? I’m good at memorizing things. Why didn’t I employ my mnemonic powers for good?
  • Resentment: Why do English teachers coerce their students into this tortuous form of public humiliation? Don’t they understand the permanent damage this could cause? 

I gotta wonder: Of all the memories stored in my data banks, why did THAT memory suddenly reemerge? It hadn’t crossed my mind in 48 years. Why now? What is this memory attempting to say to me? 

I will spare you the boredom of trying to explain neural pathways and frontal-lobe recall. Recalling this memory wasn’t a science experiment. It turns out it was a rather mystical experience. I’m left wondering:  what does this all mean for 5’9¾”, 60-year-old Kevin? 

For those few moments, the dishwasher became my own Narnian wardrobe—a passageway back into my land of past memories. Though these memories have certainly morphed over time, they somehow remain alarmingly fresh and alive. 

Through this scene in my personal Narnia, my first encounter was all too predictable: The Witch grabbed me by the ear, yanked me down the classroom aisle, and dumped me into a chair at the front of the room. 

“Take a close look, you little turd,” she jeered. “See how you respond to pressure? You caved. 

Again. You can’t be trusted, can you?” 

With this terse accusation, she slipped away—her voice still echoing in my little heart. “Yep, she’s right,” I say to myself. “I cave under pressure. I don’t prepare adequately. I’m always disappointing people.” OUCH. Ouch. ouch. 

As my head drops and I gaze into those ubiquitous gray 12-by-12-inch classroom floor tiles, I sense a large shadow brushing up behind me. Turning slowly, I catch sight of what’s moving: a very large Lion, obviously quite capable of eating a 5’1” middle schooler. 

“Hello?” I say, trying to be polite. 

“Hello,” says the Lion in return, staring me straight in the eyes while his tail swishes happily. 

“Um, may I help you?” I ask. 

“Oh, I was just curious,” the Lion offers. 

“Curious?” 

“Yes, curious. What do you think of that little guy in front of the classroom?” 

“Him? Honestly? I’d rather not think about middle school Kevin at all. It’s all rather embarrassing, don’t you think?” 

“Not to me. I really like that little guy.” 

“Really? You really like him?” 

“Yes, of course.” 

And with this declaration of deep, quiet confidence, the very large Lion slowly turns and begins to walk away, almost as if inviting me to follow him into a future of grace, love, and acceptance. 

I’d rather not undersell the poetic irony of this seventh-grade English scene. That insecure little dude somehow grew up to love standing before groups and reciting what he had carefully prepared. It’s quite true that the Lion may, at times, appear solemn. Yet the Lion also possesses a rather wicked sense of humor, somersaulting past failures into present-day breakthroughs. 

Whether standing at the dishwasher, mowing the lawn, or staring into a mirror, unexpected memories might emerge for each of us. With each recollection, the Witch lures us into a world of shame, embarrassment, despair, and defeat, while the Lion invites us toward insight, courage, strength, and peace. The Witch revels in a good ol’ walk of shame, but the Lion enjoys a peaceful stroll through his patience, compassion, and kindhearted joy. 

We may all soon inhale a past memory before our minds can adequately process it. We might then ask: “Where did that memory come from? Why now? What does it mean?” 

My simple prayer for us all: 

May we brush aside the voice of the Witch and calmly enjoy the presence of the Lion. 

Blessed Are the Pure in Heart…

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
— Matthew 5:8

I have to admit that “pure in heart” is one of those phrases that can make me a little nervous.

It sounds like Jesus is describing people who have somehow managed to get their inner lives completely cleaned up. Their motives are pure. Their thoughts are pure. Their desires are pure. Their hearts are free of all the clutter that seems to characterize mine.

If that’s what Jesus meant, I’m probably in trouble!

But perhaps we’re hearing the word pure through a modern lens that misses what Jesus was actually saying.

The Greek word Matthew used was katharos. It could describe something clean or pure, but it could also describe something unmixed, genuine, or free from contamination. And Jesus didn’t simply say, “Blessed are the pure.” He said, “Blessed are the pure in heart.”

The Greek word here for heart is kardia. In biblical understanding, the kardia encompassed far more than our emotions; it was the center of thought, desire, intention, will, and character.

Jesus was getting beneath the surface.

And that shouldn’t surprise us. The Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes, is not simply a collection of moral teachings about how to become good religious people. It is Jesus’ announcement of the kind of people we become when God’s Kingdom takes root in us from the inside out.

Purity beyond appearances

Jesus lived in a religious culture deeply concerned with purity.

The Hebrew Scriptures contained legitimate commands concerning ritual purity, cleanliness, sacrifice, food, and worship. But by Jesus’ day, traditions had also developed around those commands. Some of these traditions were intended to help people faithfully live out the Torah, but they could also become ends in themselves.

We see this tension dramatically in Mark 7. Some Pharisees and scribes questioned Jesus because his disciples were eating without performing the customary handwashing. Mark explicitly identified these practices as the “tradition of the elders,” and Jesus challenged the way such traditions could end up overshadowing God’s actual commands. 

Jesus’ concern wasn’t that purity didn’t matter. It was that purity could never be reduced to what happens on the outside.

That is why “pure in heart” is such an important phrase.  For Kingdom people, it isn’t simply about clean hands. It’s about a clean heart.  It isn’t primarily about appearing righteous. It’s about becoming righteous from the inside.  It isn’t about carefully managing what others can see while leaving the interior life untouched.

The King wants the whole person.

A pure heart is an undivided heart

Perhaps one way to understand purity of heart is an increasingly undivided heart. Not a perfect heart.  Not a heart that never struggles.  Not a heart that has somehow eliminated every wrong desire or selfish motive.

An undivided heart is a heart whose deepest allegiance is becoming increasingly clear.

Psalm 24 asks a question that would have been familiar to Jesus’ Jewish audience:

“Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD?
Who may stand in his holy place?”

The answer?

“The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol
or swear by a false god.”

Notice what happens here. A pure heart isn’t simply about having nothing bad inside. It is connected to where our allegiance lies. The opposite of purity is not merely dirtiness. It is divided loyalty – trusting something other than God, allowing something else to become the object of our deepest allegiance.

And that makes Jesus’ words particularly relevant to Kingdom life.

The question isn’t simply, What needs to be removed from my life? It is also: What has my heart’s allegiance?

What competes for my trust?  What occupies my imagination?  What do I fear losing?  What are the things that can cloud the heart and obscure our vision of God?

David understood something about a pure heart

This is where David becomes an interesting companion to Jesus’ words. David was called a man after God’s own heart, but David certainly wasn’t a man whose history could be described as morally spotless.

After his devastating failure with Bathsheba and Uriah, David prayed:

“Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” 

David wasn’t asking God to help him manufacture a pure heart. He was asking God to create one. Notice what David connected to that prayer: “Do not cast me from your presence…”

A pure heart and God’s presence belonged together.

That sounds remarkably close to Jesus: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Purity isn’t about achieving a state in which we feel like we have become worthy of God’s presence. It is about becoming the kind of people who are increasingly able to recognize, receive, and live in God’s presence.

Seeing God

And this brings us to the promise: “They will see God.”

That may be the most extraordinary promise in all the Beatitudes.

Psalm 24 moves from the person with a pure heart to those who “seek your face.” The longing of the Psalmist was not merely to know about God. It was to encounter God – to seek God himself, his presence, his relationship.

And Jesus says that those whose hearts are pure will see God. There is certainly an ultimate, future dimension to that promise. But Jesus’ words suggest something we can experience now.

A crowded heart can cloud our vision of God.  Fear, resentment, ambition, self-protection, and competing loyalties can make it harder to recognize his presence and activity – not because God is absent, but because something has gotten in the way of our seeing.

The People the Kingdom Is Forming

Jesus isn’t promising that the pure will suddenly have supernatural eyesight. He’s describing people whose inner lives are being reordered by the Kingdom – and whose ability to recognize the King becomes clearer.

Perhaps that’s the blessing of a pure heart…

Not that God becomes more present, but that we become more present to him.