Quotes about Beatitudes

The work of the kingdom, in fact, is summed up pretty well in those Beatitudes. When God wants to change the world, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the mourners, those who are hungry and thirsty for God's justice, the peacemakers, and so on.

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 America.

To put the issue bluntly, are the Beatitudes true? If so, why doesn't the church encourage poverty and mourning and meekness and persecution instead of striving against them? What is the real meaning of the Beatitudes, this cryptic ethical core of Jesus' teaching?

The late Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical American author, wrote: "For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the beatitudes. But—often with tears in their eyes—they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

The gospel of the kingdom is that no one is beyond beatitude, because the rule of God from the heavens is available to all. Everyone can reach it, and it can reach everyone. We respond appropriately to the Beatitudes of Jesus by living as if this were so, as it concerns others and as it concerns ourselves.

The Beatitudes simply cannot be "good news" if they are understood as a set of "how-tos" for achieving blessedness. They would then only amount to a new legalism. They would not serve to throw open the kingdom—anything but. They would impose a new brand of Phariseeism, a new way of closing the door—as well as some very gratifying new possibilities for the human engineering of righteousness.

As I've heard my old mentor Tony Campolo say, "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 America.

The Sermon on the Mount is God's formula for revival. The Beatitudes are His recipe for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on the earth as it is in heaven.

When we are compelled by love, when we embrace the life of the Beatitudes, we are truly blessed. Truly we are filled with inexpressible joy knowing we dwell in the shelter of the Most High God. We rest in the shadow of the Almighty. He is our refuge and our fortress; we put our trust in Him. He covers us with His wings of love, and we find safety in Him.

Ministry is simply you loving like Jesus. It is the Beatitudes manifest through your life. Missions are when you have the love of God so that He can demonstrate His very life and nature through you. Missions are intended to be the Sermon on the Mount played out on Earth.

Jesus makes it clear that the way to God is the same as the way to a new childhood. The innocence that is reached through conscious choices. The Beatitudes offer me the simplest route for the journey home, back into the house of my Father. And along this route I will discover the joys of the second childhood: comfort, mercy, and an ever clearer vision of God. It's a place where I can live in freedom without obsessions and compulsions.

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