Jesus was preaching, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” But He didn’t just leave it at that. He now goes into a long discourse about the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s one thing to say the Kingdom is near. It us another thing to describe the Kingdom.
The discourse starts with happiness, lots of it. To be blessed is to be happy. We may search this list of what makes for happiness and we won’t find a single material possession listed that brings true happiness. What we do find are six things that deal with the inner life.
We also find two things that concern the outward life. One of these outward blessings concerns how we are to deal with the way others treat us. We can control how we react to others but we can’t control how they treat us. We often try to control how they treat us by trying to please them. The blessed way is to simply love others but strive to please God.
The outward action we can control in this list is to be a peacemaker. It is sometimes necessary to be a warrior, and we tend to gravitate toward warrior imagery in Western Christianity. But we have completely jumped track if we lose sight of the fact that our ultimate aim is to create peace. God is the God of Peace (Rom. 16:20) and has called us to live in peace (1 Cor. 7:15). As far as it depends on us we are to live at peace with everyone (Rom. 12:18)
This is how we become salt and light in the world. This is how the law is fulfilled. The Kingdom of Heaven is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14:17).
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