Jesus’ Greatest Hits

For the longest time, I thought of the Sermon on the Mount as a hodgepodge of wise sayings, a list of proverbs and parables strung together in some loosely coherent fashion. Then, I heard Dallas Willard say that the Sermon actually is a true, complete, and singular sermon. While Jesus may not have actually preached the Sermon in the way that Matthew describes in chapter 5:1-2 of his Gospel and while Jesus probably preached this Sermon in many ways at various times to differing audiences, here in Matthew 5-7, we have what some have called “Jesus’ Greatest Hits.”

What helped me begin to see the Sermon on the Mount as actually a whole and complete, singular sermon was verse 20 of chapter 5, which states, “For I say to you that unless your righteousness abounds exceedingly above that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

This verse I have often read and I have been taught that its meaning is that Jesus is setting the bar super high, saying, in effect, that unless our righteousness is of a kind and caliber so much higher than that of the scribes and the Pharisees (who were purportedly very righteous), then we have no chance at all of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. This kind of thinking has bothered me, seeming to encourage followers of Jesus to work really hard to become the kinds of individuals worthy of the Kingdom, more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. I find such a reading and understanding to be unsettling, as it seems to be out of sorts with the rest of Scripture.

One might argue, however, that we are to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us,” so that grace doesn’t erase the need for works, but empowers us to do that which we before could not. I do believe that works are a necessary part of the faith and the fellowship of the saints in Christ and that grace is the means by which God empowers us to abide in his love and walk in his commandments. However, I find it abhorrent to think that I, by my sole and solitary efforts, might attain unto the righteousness required to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

For this reason, I do not–indeed, cannot–even begin to imagine that Jesus is saying here in Matthew 5:20 that we must try harder or work more diligently or that the bar is so high, we just can’t jump over it. To be sure, Jesus is setting the scribes and Pharisees up as a bar and that in order to enter into the Kingdom, we must get over that bar.  But rather than think that the bar is way up high over our spiritual heads, I am beginning to think it is down at our feet.

Righteousness that is Near

When Paul writes in Romans 10:9-10 that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, he precedes these verses with verse 8, which is a citation of Deuteronomy 30:14. Paul’s very argument about confession and belief hinges not on some pseudo-Lutheran idea to which we today might hold, which is a form of cheap grace that says anything goes, so long as you have heavenly insurance for the wrongs you commit.

Paul’s argument about confession and belief hinges on the very text that many have long obscured by proclaiming a Marcion-like heresy, which is that God is divided between the Old and the New Testaments, that the God of the “Old” Testament, the Hebrew God, is wrathful, angry, and mean; whereas the God of the “New” Testament, that is, Jesus, is full of grace and love and kindness. Nothing could be further from the truth! God is one and never changes, which is to say that his character is stable and secure: God is consistent in that he is consistently full of powerful lovingkindness as well as mighty justice.

When Paul argues based on Deuteronomy 30:14 that salvation is so near as to be in the breath of our lungs or in the beat of our hearts, he is not saying that if we just confess, profess, and believe, then we will be signed, sealed, and delivered into heavenly salvation: salvation is far more costly and much more valuable than a mere flippant profession—or even an emotionally moved one—or even a truly authentic one. Salvation is at the cost of God’s very own life, which is not merely to say that the Son of God had to die so that we might live; indeed, it is to say that the order of the universe had to be turned on its head so that what we had turned upside-down could be set aright. Indeed, there’s no way that a mere profession of faith, however adamant or fervent or authentic, could ever meet the requisite reverence of repentance needed to satisfy the measure of this great gift. In other words, you aren’t going to be able to receive the gift of God with mere words, regardless of how much you writhe or weep or wail. 

To be sure, repentance is the key to salvation, and true it must be, else there is not true salvation. A mock repentance might be done up by some charlatan for the sake of pretense or self-soothing, but such will never pull the wool over God’s eyes, which are ever-roving about the earth, seeking and searching for those repentant and thereby truly righteous.

What Paul writes of in Romans 10:9-10 is grounded in verse 8, which is grounded in Deuteronomy 30:14, which is grounded in Deuteronomy 30, which is grounded in Deuteronomy, and is effectively the last chapter of the Book of the Law. The Book of the Law is begun with both Genesis, as it comes first, and Exodus, as from it come the beginnings of the Law.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, “Don’t think I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to destroy them, but I have come to fulfill!” Two words are of particular import here: “destroy” and “fulfill.” When Jesus says that he has not come to “destroy” the Law and the Prophets, he is saying that it is not his intention to loosen even one of the requirements of the Law or the Prophets. In fact, his intention is to “fulfill” or to complete, satisfy, and fully meet the requirements of the Law—and if he is, then those who follow him must also do so as well.

Imputed Righteousness Requires Work

Here a smart theologian might say, “Well, that’s where imputed righteousness comes in and saves the day, as well as the soul!”

I, however, might stick with Scripture and say that, while an imputation of sorts is to be granted, salvation is not without effort, energy, or dutiful devotion on our part: what God imputes, he expects to be employed. To paraphrase James, who quite rightly states, faith without works has no power to save. Additionally, Paul himself states in Ephesians 2:8-10, those who are saved by faith are saved unto good works of righteous, not evil works of sin.

Thus, we are saved not to live however we will, but in accordance with the will of the One who saved us: we are saved to live as true children of God. The balance of faith and works is such that you cannot have one without the other. To determine which comes first is as good as asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? As faith without works is useless, powerless, and dead, so works without faith are just as much the same.

The truth is, God works and so do we, and God expects that we should work. There are works of faith as well as righteousness. There are works of grace as well as obedience. The main work of humanity is repenting of its independence of God and seeking utter dependence upon God for the ability to do anything good—and then going out and doing that good! It’s very much like having to rely on air for breath: without air, there is no suitable breath to enable us to breathe. Without breathing, we can’t even begin to hope to do anything worthwhile, let alone anything at all—precisely, because we would then be dead.

Now, that is not to say that works righteousness is that by which we’re saved: God alone saves, but he can only save those who are working out repentance in righteousness. What does that mean? Simply this: that to attain unto the righteousness God requires, as set forth in the Bible, then you have to repent of your efforts and depend upon God for his efforts to work in and through you. As the breath you breathe is not divorced from the life you live, but is the very life in which you live, so the works of God are the very works in which you live and by which you live—and to “live” is to “work.” 

All this to say: Deuteronomy, which is rooted in Exodus and the Law, is the root of Romans 10:8-10, upon which so many faithful Christians devote their faith. Romans 10:8-10 then means this: as the lifeblood that courses your veins or the life breath that fills your lungs is so near you, so is God—and with God is salvation, because, as Exodus tells us so clearly, God is a God of deliverance and salvation.

As Deuteronomy 30:14 says, “But the word [or law] is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.” Thus, for Paul to quote this verse in Romans 10:8, right before verses 9-10, he is saying that faith is followed by works: good works ought result from faith.

Obedience of Faith

Jesus repeatedly chides the disciples for their “little faith” and teaches them that if they had faith as small as a mustard seed, they would be able to do miraculous, impossible things. It seems that entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven is not by doing so many great and righteous things, but is really simply by having that mustard seed-sized faith. Yet, how difficult it is to have that kind of faith!

It seems that any true faith, in general, is difficult for most of us to have, let alone mustard seed-sized faith. Our minds are preoccupied with practical matters and we need practical answers to our practical problems: we need money to pay the bills; to feed, clothe, and house our families; to fuel our cars; to fund our extracurricular activities and entertainment ventures; to finance our retirement; to support our children’s education; and on and on goes the list of our pragmatical matters. Where or how does faith fit into all of this?

Jesus calls all of his disciples to the obedience of faith: the one work to which he calls us is to believe, to have faith. From this, of course, ought naturally (in the process and progress of time) flow the fruit of faith, which is manifest profoundly and prominently in love as well as joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. How could we ever conjure up this sort of faith that produces such excellence of character in righteousness? Yet it is into that kind of faith that we are called.

Alternative Righteousness

This, then, is my realization regarding Matthew 5:20: we are called not to attain unto a righteousness so far above us that we cannot reach it, but we are, as Paul affirms in Romans 10, called to attain unto a righteousness that is as near us as are our mouths and hearts, a righteousness by faith unto obedience. For where so many have sought to become righteous by working at it, seeking to attain unto the glory of God in his Kingdom by doing all that which he has commanded, they have failed to attain unto the truth of righteousness, creating in themselves and setting up for themselves a kind of righteousness unlike anything God ever intended. The righteousness required of us by God is that of true faith and faithfulness in faith.

Now, I know this all to be rather elementary, but it strikes me anew in this way: the Sermon on the Mount is about the alternative righteousness that Jesus proffers; whereas the scribes and Pharisees sought to become righteous by doing righteous acts, they failed to truly become righteous, for the acts they did were not done in faith in Christ, but, in a sense, in spite of or against him, however unwittingly. The works of righteousness performed by the scribes and Pharisees were not bad or wrong in and of themselves, but failed to attain unto the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, which is to have faith in him. Thus, the righteous works of the scribes and Pharisees were not righteous works in the sight of God, who holds everyone to the same standard of righteousness, namely, faith in Christ Jesus as righteousness.  The whole Sermon on the Mount is about Jesus’ alternative righteousness.

Thus, when He says that our righteousness must super-surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees (who would be akin to our pastors, theologians, and priests of today), he is not setting them up as a high bar—because they’re not.  He’s setting them up as a bar, to be sure, but not as one high above our heads; it is a bar that is down at our feet, precisely because the kind of righteousness he is talking about, that he requires of us, is not the kind we could ever conjure up. It is the righteousness that he alone has and that he alone imputes to anyone willing to receive it by faith.

Indeed, though the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees appeared to be the righteousness of God, it was, in fact, about as bad as it could get—satanic, even—in light of the hypocrisy and lack of repentance that accompanied it: they set up whorehouses for the men who traveled far from home to worship God at the temple in Jerusalem; they overtaxed worshippers in the temple; they would turn out widows from their homes, which almost surely meant a life of begging or prostitution; they held out double-standards, allowing themselves leniency where they did not allow such to others. Their hypocrisy aside, the scribes and Pharisees appeared to be doing quite well with God: they were blessed with both spiritual wealth in knowledge of the Scriptures as well as social and material wealth in having prominent positions of power and much financial capital.  They were looked up to and were leaders of their day in what was considered righteousness.

In comparison, though, according to Jesus, the tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners were “more” righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees, entering the Kingdom before the scribes and the Pharisees ever would, because they believed Jesus and allowed the power of his love to transform them.  What these outcasts had that most of the scribes and Pharisees failed to have was an awareness of their brokenness and their need for God. Not having all the trappings of wealth or wisdom to blind them, being known for their despicable ways and ungodly lives, they were out in the open, exposed, as it were, as the sinners that they were. The scribes and the Pharisees, on the other hand, could hide behind their pride of place and money and power, the things that tend to blind us to the true condition of our abject helplessness before God.

Thus, when Jesus speaks of the blessedness, the happiness of the poor, the weeping, the meek, the hungering and thirsting, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, the persecuted, he is speaking of his alternative righteousness, one that is not defined by one’s abilities and capabilities, but by the poverty of one’s being, such that one finds no reason in him or herself to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The trappings of this life ensnare us to believe we are better off than we truly are: these tend to blind us to our inabilities and make us believe that God must really like us, since we’re so “blessed.” Entrance into the Kingdom is not by one’s might or abilities, but by the acceptance of the King of the Kingdom—Christ Jesus—and he is willing to accept anyone who will accept him in humble repentance.

Finding Alternative Righteousness

The alternative righteousness of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is one that looks entirely different than anything we usually see. True, it’s been some 2,000 years since Jesus spoke these words and we might find examples of people who have lived out the righteousness prescribed in the Sermon, but we are more apt to find the righteousness of “the scribes and the Pharisees.” Why?  Because our human propensity is to rely on ourselves and make ourselves more than we are, to make much of ourselves. You can easily find it in the world, especially in the workplace, where resumes and references, lists of accomplishments and accolades, achievements and successes are spread about like butter on bread.

Humility and admitting our weaknesses are scarce commodities in the world. There are, to be sure, apologies and remarks of remorse and regret, but these are almost always marked by a tendency to defend oneself as not all that bad. True, honest, humble repentance is a scarce commodity in our society.

In fact, if we were to exercise or practice such in the world today, we would be eaten alive, chided for our impropriety and demeaned for our flaws, even though everyone else has the same exact flaws.  In the world today, it seems, that we are upheld to a standard of righteousness that exalts pride and puts down humility, that exalts unhealthy concepts of the self and diminishes healthy selflessness.

Defining Righteousness

Now, I have been using the word “righteousness” or something of the kind a fair amount thus far, and I want to pause to define what I mean by it. “Righteousness,” as I see it, can be simply defined as “right-ness,” that is, “the correct or proper order of things.” The ancient Hebrews thought of it in terms of shalom, an utter and absolute state of peace and harmony, a kind of utopic state of the perfection of all things and relations.  That is the idea I have in mind when I speak of righteousness: a “right-ness” about things or about the order of things.  We are righteous in God’s sight when we do things as He sees fit, as He deems right.  Conversely, we are righteous in the sight of the world or ourselves when we do things as the world or we ourselves see fit or deem right.

There are basically two kinds of righteousness, then, if you want to look at it that way: God’s right-ness and the world’s right-ness. The scribes and Pharisees fall under the second, and the poor, the impoverished, the sick, the lame, the unhealthy, those dying for life fall under the first. Now, it might be very well argued that the scribes and Pharisees truly are the poor, impoverished, sick, lame, unhealthy, dying for life. The problem with the scribes and Pharisees is that they refuse to get the help they need from the Great Physician.

Instead, they prefer to walk in their lameness and refuse to become as little children to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The scribes and Pharisees ought be pitied most among humankind because they not only fail to see their brokenness and their wickedness, but they also flat out refuse to see it and to allow themselves to be changed into health.

Matthew 5:20 says that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees not because theirs is or was so great, but because theirs was so poor, feeble, impoverished, weak, impotent, worthless.  The scribes and Pharisees sought to become the prominent ones in the Kingdom of Heaven, but failed to do so, because when the King came, they refused to enter into his Kingdom, preferring the one they had built, which is another way to describe hell.

Indeed, righteousness, as required by God, is not some great and large righteousness, but is merely faith the size of a mustard seed, which is very small. Still, to have faith–even such small faith–is almost impossible for us poor creatures! We are apt to rely on ourselves and our wits to get us through this life, rather than the wisdom of God, the foolishness of which is greater than the best human wisdom.

It seems, then, that Jesus is lowering the bar, not raising it, saying, in effect, “Do you really want into the Kingdom? Come on in, then! That’s all you need: the want, the desire to enter!” 

We shy away, however, shrinking back, thinking that there’s no way anything that good could be so easy or so free. Because it’s easy and simple, we can’t accept it. That’s why it’s so hard, so difficult—precisely because it’s so easy.  I can almost imagine Jesus just banging his holy head against the hallowed halls of Heaven, crying out, “How can they not get it?”

The bar, then, is low—really low—for anyone who wants into the Kingdom: you just have to be better than the scribes and Pharisees, which is to say that you have to admit your poverty and impoverishment before God. All you have to do is have faith as small as a mustard seed, and God will see you through. You just have to repent. You just have to die. You just have to take up your cross on the daily and die daily.

If you’re like me, it’s hard to die.

Dying for Righteousness

The hardest thing about dying is losing your breath: just try and hold your breath for a minute or more and you’ll see that your body automatically starts up with the breathing again, almost forcing you to stay alive. Our bodies have a natural knack for keeping us going, as much as is possible, in the face of the ever-impending death that will soon come upon us all. (Now, isn’t that a pleasant thought!) We press on naturally because God has wired us that way. It has before been remarked that if we had to think about breathing, we’d drop dead as soon as a squirrel ran by and distracted us. Yet, we are called to die, to suffocate, to put to death our own selves.

What, though, does that death look like? How can we die without “really” dying? I mean, if we’re dead, we’re dead, but if we’re supposed to be dead and alive, how can we do that? The answer I think comes in the package of the Sermon on the Mount as well as much of Romans, specifically, Romans 6:11.

Romans 6:11 says that we are to “consider,” “reckon,” or “think about” ourselves as “dead.” I find it interesting that in verse 10 before, Paul writes that the death of Jesus was one that he died “once for all,” indicating that it was a death that he had died at one time for all time, so that he never need die again.  As he has died, so death no longer has any claim on him in his humanity; since he has died, he can never again be touched by death or sin. How is that? Because the effect of sin and death had run its course in the death he died; it could no longer do anything more.

Since we have been so identified with Christ in our baptism, as Paul so beautifully portrays in the beginning verses of chapter 6, we are to also identify ourselves with Christ in the death he died. The only problem is that we have yet to die! While Christ has already died and so is forever dead to sin, we have yet to die and so must reckon ourselves dead to sin.

This term “reckon” is an important one: in the Greek, it means “to deduce” or “reason out.” In effect, we must reason out or conclude that since we have been identified with Christ in his baptism, we too will be also identified with him in his death as well as his resurrection and glorification. Not to point out the obvious, but if you’re reading this, you’re probably not dead; if you’re reading this, you’re probably very much alive.

The conclusion we are to draw, however, is that we are dead.  For it is in light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection that we are to live and move and have our being. Since or if we have done the things that Jesus has done, namely, have been by faith baptized in the Spirit and have been by faith empowered by the Spirit, then we will also get what Jesus got: death and then resurrection. If we live with Christ, we will die with Christ, and, then, we will rise with Christ.

As of yet, we are not raised with Christ; we are still here, on this earth, not having died just yet. Jesus, however, has already died.  If we are to be identified with Jesus, we must now enter into a state of being in which we have the mentality that we are dead to sin, until we so enter into fellowship with Christ in such a realm wherein sin no longer has a hold on us, and we are then free to be righteous before God in Christ Jesus.

The entrance into the Kingdom of Life is through the Kingdom of Death. It’s almost mystical, the way that reality functions, requiring us to die first in order to truly live. It seems so backwards and alien to our way of living because it is: in this life, we live first and then we die. We exalt the exalted and put down the lowly. We eat and drink and are merry. We revel in our wealth and accomplishments and shun our poverty and failures. We love those who love us and hate those who hate us. We are, in fact, very practical, utterly pragmatical.

The Kingdom of Heaven is an upside-down kingdom—or so it seems, until we realize that the kingdom of this world into which we’re born and in which we live and move and are is really the truly upside-down kingdom. The upside-down kingdom is simply that kingdom, that realm wherein we find things out of sorts from what we’re used to and utterly unlike anything we’ve ever been accustomed to. Entering into the Kingdom of Heaven is entering into a realm to which we are unaccustomed.

Entering into the Kingdom of Righteousness

The Sermon on the Mount comes right on the heels of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Matthew. It’s almost as if the Sermon is meant to be the anthem of the Kingdom: with the inauguration of the ministry of Jesus comes the inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, one might say that the ministry of Jesus, his work on earth, was to inaugurate the Kingdom—precisely, because he is the King of the Kingdom.  With the advent of Jesus is the advent of the Kingdom, and the King details in his inaugural address how one is to enter into his Kingdom.

As mentioned above, when the bar for entering the Kingdom of Heaven is measured out as the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, it is very low, at our feet, even. When the bar is measured out as the righteousness of Jesus, however, it is very high. To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we must bear the righteousness of Heaven, namely, of Jesus.

Let’s begin our exploration here of how to enter the Kingdom, as expressed in the Sermon, with Matthew 5:17. Here, Jesus says, “Don’t even begin to think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I haven’t come to destroy, but to fulfill.”

When Jesus says that he came to “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets, he means to say that he is the culmination of all that the Law and the Prophets point to. The Law and the Prophets were but shadows of the one to come, even as a shadow precedes a person who is walking with the light shining behind them. This can be seen in that God tells Adam and Eve that one day, down the line of humanity, their seed would crush the serpent; Abraham is promised that through his seed so shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; and Moses spoke of another Prophet, like himself but greater, who would lead the people of God. Additionally, though Elijah was the preeminent prophet of God’s people, Israel, he was but one in a long line of the prophets of God, pointing to the Prophet. Even Isaiah speaks of one coming who would bear the sins of Israel, of God’s people, as well as one who would reign and rule over all God’s people in justice and righteousness.

When Jesus came on the scene, he fulfilled all that which had come beforehand. Now, the fulfillment of Scripture isn’t so much the exact science of finding a one-to-one ratio between Jesus and some prophecy made before, as much as it is about reading the text of the Old Testament and seeing how Jesus fits into it. For example, when Isaiah prophesies about the virgin or young maiden being with child and giving birth to a son, all Isaiah presumably knows is that he’s talking about his very own son from his very own wife; but he’s also, however wittingly or unwittingly, talking about God’s very own Son. Thus, the prophecy of Isaiah 7 has, at the very least, two fulfillments: one with Isaiah’s very own son and one with God’s very own Son. Though Isaiah’s son was important in his own right, the Son of God is all the more important in his own right.

When Jesus says that he came to “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets, he means that he is the culmination, the completion, the ultimate fulfillment, the final realization as well as the original intention of the Law and the Prophets, the whole of the Old Testament. As John puts it in chapter one of his Gospel: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Literally, the Word of God, as expressed in the Old Testament, took on flesh in some mysterious and mystical way, and lived on earth among his people.

In this regard, I kind of imagine Jesus to be like a walking Torah or Bible: the words written down in the text of the Old Testament come to life in Jesus, and as those words are of God, so Jesus is of God; and as Jesus is the Word of God, so Jesus is God. In Jesus, we get to see what it looks like to be in the Kingdom of Heaven; we see how it is that God truly wants us to be, in light of the commands He has given, which are written down in the Old Testament Law and Prophets.

If Jesus came to fulfill the Law and Prophets and not destroy them, he came not to build up a “new” kingdom, but to fulfill the “old” Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom that has its roots in the text of the Torah of ancient Israel. Indeed, he is the fulfillment of the Kingdom of Heaven; in him is the truest realization of the Kingdom. If that is the case, then we are to be like him: he, then, is the bar of righteousness, not the scribes and the Pharisees. He is the bar, in that he fulfills all that by which we are to abide, all that which we are to obey, all that in which God commands us to live. In the person of Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets; in the person of Jesus is all that which we are to be, if we are to attain unto the righteousness of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus as our Righteousness

“Don’t even begin to think that I came to destroy the Law and the Prophets,” Jesus says, “I haven’t come to destroy, but to fulfill.” To reiterate the point, Jesus is saying that he is the fulfillment of all that which came beforehand and he is that which came beforehand, because he is the one who was before all that which was beforehand! It would really be counterproductive, then, for him to undermine what he had established beforehand, especially since that which was beforehand was of him, since it all was, in a very real sense, him. That might all seem very complex and wordy, but suffice it to say that it’s all about Jesus: history, the Old Testament, the journey of the people of God, the “old” Kingdom, the Law and the Prophets. If you miss out on Jesus, then you miss out on God and his Kingdom, which is ruled by Christ Jesus.

The bar is very high, indeed, then, because the bar is Jesus, and Jesus is both the true King and the true fulfillment of the Kingdom. If we want into the Kingdom of Heaven, we must become like God, which is another way to say that we must be godly, or “god-like.” It is interesting that in the beginning, Adam and Eve were tempted with becoming “god-like”—and yet, it seems that it was God’s intention all along to make all or any human being interested in becoming god-like, god-like. I see this in the beginning of Scripture, wherein it states, “Let us make man in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26a). I see it in the Psalms, where it says, “I have called you all gods and you all are children of the Most High God” (Psalm 82:6). I see it in the commentary of Jesus on Psalm 82:6 found in John 10:34, where he says, “Isn’t it written down in your Law, ‘I said you all are gods’?”

Furthermore, I see it all throughout the New Testament (John 17: 21-23; Romans 8:17; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18; Galatians 4:7; 2 Peter 1:4; 1 John 5:4; Revelation 21:7), where we who are in Christ are so identified with him as to be his brothers and sisters, and, hence, coheirs with him of the Kingdom of Heaven. If we are brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus, who is God, and if we are coheirs with Jesus of the Kingdom of Heaven, then, I submit, we, too, are to be god-like.

That is how we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven: we become like God in Christ Jesus, bearing his imputed righteousness, which calls us unto the works of righteousness, lest we fail to prove to be children of God and coheirs with Christ Jesus.

The Bars of Righteousness

How, though, do the bars of righteousness both of the scribes and the Pharisees as well as of Jesus help us understand Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount? The bars are helpful in this way: the Sermon on the Mount is meant to be an introduction to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; if you want into Jesus’ Kingdom, you’ve got to play by his rules, you’ve got to reach his bar of righteousness.

Your righteousness has got to be so much greater than that of the scribes and the Pharisees, so much so that it has got to be just the same as that of Christ Jesus, the God-Man. To attain unto that righteousness, whereby you might enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, you need only have faith in Jesus, full well knowing your own impoverishment of soul and weakness of will: no one strides into the Kingdom of Heaven with proud confidence, without relying on the alternative righteousness of Jesus; and no one continues in faith in Jesus without being faithful in steadfast works of righteousness. Repentance is the key that unlocks the door to faith, which then unlocks the door to good works of righteous of Christ Jesus.

Getting into the Kingdom of Righteousness

Who is invited into the Kingdom of Heaven? Who gets in? From the text of the Beatitudes, from Matthew 5:3 and 10, it is the poor in spirit as well as those persecuted for the sake of righteousness. In the Gospel of Luke, it is strictly the poor who enter into the Kingdom (Luke 6:20b), and the rich are condemned with woe (Luke 6:24).

Today, in the Church, it might seem commonplace or trite to assert that the poor are those who are invited into the Kingdom of Heaven, since the Church has had some 2,000 plus years to read and assess the words of Jesus. In his day, however, when he spoke these words of hope, they would have been as countercultural and revolutionary as if we were to today assert that the nonChristians, the unsaved, the nonbelievers, the unchurched were to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

In Jesus’ day, the rich were considered to have an “in” with God; today, there might still remain such an idea. The disciples held such a belief, asking, “If the rich can’t enter into the Kingdom, who can?” (Matthew 19:25; Mark 10:24, 26; Luke 18:26). Additionally, James writes in chapter 2 of the letter by his own name that to show partiality to the rich and to despise the poor is a sin, indicating that there was a preference for the rich. This evidences that there was (and, perhaps, still is) a temptation to favor the rich and good-looking, those who dress well and are well-groomed, who smell good and who look good, who can play the part and adjust to or fit into society well.

In the same vein, there also seems to be a temptation to demean or belittle or slight or put out the poor, the weak, the improper, the ones who don’t or can’t get it together, the ones who are out of sorts and don’t or can’t seem to figure their lives out.  (I’m not saying that we can’t or shouldn’t have preferences or boundaries; I’m simply saying that the “rich” are not necessarily favored to enter into the Kingdom as much as the “poor” are.)

James continues in his letter in chapter 2:5, arguing for the exaltation of the poor: “Hasn’t God specially chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom that he has promised to the those loving him?” Then, James picks up in the middle of the next verse, verse 6, of the same chapter, writing, “Aren’t the rich oppressing you and aren’t they dragging you into court?  Aren’t they blaspheming the good Name by which you have been named?” In a very real sense, he is arguing that the favoritism of the rich over the poor is about as ludicrous and foolish as hugging a porcupine in the middle of a hurricane.

Indeed, it is the poor or the poor in spirit who own the Kingdom; it is of the poor that the Kingdom is. Verse 3 of chapter 5 of Matthew reads, “Happy the poor in spirit, since of them is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The part that gets me is the “of them.” Grammatically, the term is in the genitive, which demonstrates the ownership of something or the source of something. It seems, then, that Jesus might be saying one or both of these things, namely, that the Kingdom of Heaven is owned by the poor in spirit and the Kingdom of Heaven comes from the poor in spirit. As a realm or kingdom is made up not of bricks and buildings but of people, so the Kingdom of Heaven is made up of people. The kind of people Jesus lets into his Kingdom are the kind of people who are poor and poor in spirit; they both enter into the Kingdom and create the Kingdom.

Poor in Spirit

I have often scratched my head, trying to figure out what it means to be “poor in spirit.” I know what it means to be poor, but I can hardly make sense of what it means to be “poor in spirit.” At a glance, it seems to mean something like “humility,” but humility doesn’t carry the same weight or tone as “poor in spirit” because humility is about knowing who you are and knowing who you’re not as well as knowing whose you are.

Being “poor in spirit” literally means being impoverished of, destitute of, lacking spirit or spiritual wealth or health. It is very much like being poor in money, lacking wealth or the monetary capital or resources to make one’s own financial state better. If this reading is transposed upon the reading of “poor in spirit,” it seems that one who is poor in spirit, is lacking the spiritual capital or resources to make his or her own spiritual state better.

This sounds far more like weakness of the will or impoverishment of the spirit, than it does humility. Humility is not a weak word, but a strong one, whereby a person is able to do that which they know they can do and not do whatever they know they cannot do. In a word, humility is self-knowledge or self-awareness. To be sure, humility is required in knowing and acknowledging whether one is poor in spirit, but being poor in spirit is not the same thing, in my mind, as being humble.

Being poor in spirit is being bankrupt of any spiritual capabilities or resources, being so utterly empty spiritually that one cannot do anything but beg for the spiritual resources of God. The only truly spiritual being there is is God: all other beings share their “being-ness,” their existence in light of the light of God’s being, of his existence. God is primary; all else is secondary. To beg God for the mercy of his compassion, for the benefit of his benefaction is to humbly recognize one’s poverty of spirit and one’s desperate need of God: this is repentance.

The fact is, all are poor in spirit, but not all are humble enough to recognize their spiritual poverty. Humility and poverty of spirit, then, are linked in this regard: if one is to enter into or to own or to create the Kingdom of Heaven, that one must first acknowledge (humility) the state that they already are in (spiritual poverty). This, then, should encourage us: since all of us are poor in spirit, all of us are invited to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Like the bit on dying mentioned above, this bit on humility is much the same: to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, we need only admit our impoverishment and our great need of God. We need only come clean with our utter bankruptcy. We need only confess our tendency toward outright defiance against one another and, ultimately, against God. We need only face the great and mighty, the one and only King of the universe and admit we have rebelled against him. That is, we need only die. We need only forsake our false selves and our own righteousness, entering into his Kingdom bearing the righteousness of Christ Jesus. We must admit our own righteousness to be but filthy menstrual cloths or soiled diapers. In short, we must admit ourselves to be the frauds, the charlatans, the fakers, the imposters that we are.

Indeed, how happy are those who so admit their weakness! To these, God gives the Kingdom of Heaven!