Each beatitude links with the other beatitudes and each protects the others from being wrongly interpreted. For example, if righteousness is read wrongly as just living a good clean life and nothing else, it’s correcting beatitudes would show that it must be preceded by contrition and repentance (i.e., mourning for sin) and meekness, and then followed by mercy and purity. So, no beatitude remains alone.
There is a great need for them all to be taught in churches today, even in society or in educational institutions. Are they for believers only? Many say, yes. Or are they for everyone? The point is that ‘everyone’ includes all those who will at some point in their lives choose to become a believer in Jesus. So, they are for all, but naturally all will not accept them. Those who do - who become believers - can claim them as their own, as specific directions to and descriptions of who they will be as followers of God, and blessed people as a result. Those who embrace them, memorize them, study them, and build their lives around them, will be blessed. That is what the Beatitudes say. It’s a good challenge for a Christian to keep coming back to them and see whether, or how much, they are operative in their life—all to be by faith.
Each beatitude signals redemption. Each ultimately points us to the cross. While that cross may cause offence (as Paul states in Galatians), breaches in the manifestation of a beatitude in a believer’s life may also cause the wrong type of offence. For that reason, we need to be diligent that they, as together a précis of the gospel, remain our standard—as with all other Scripture.
It could be argued that this single, poetic passage is one of a number of summaries of the gospel message within scripture. Another would be the two greatest commandments, also a synopsis of everything taught in the Old and New Testaments. Or even shorter, Jesus being called the “Alpha and the Omega”. Such summaries link together, and can be starting points for our lives and our learning.
Each beatitude on its own can also be the starting point for sharing the gospel - first to live it so it becomes like a fragrance in our life; then, starting from even just one of them, the whole gospel may be shared. Peoples’ reactions to that fragrance determine their responses, but some will be and should be drawn toward the ‘fragrance’ and the beauty of the Beatitudes and hence to their ultimate divine Source.
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