What Are the Beatitudes?
Jesus begins His most famous teaching, commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, with eight blessings for believers that represent the nature of life in God’s Kingdom. Similar to the fruit of the Spirit, these blessings are characteristics that Kingdom citizens have as new creations in Christ, and are continually developing through the lifelong process of sanctification.
Through the Beatitudes, Jesus was setting an expectation—My followers should demonstrate these traits, and promising blessing—living this way is countercultural, but you will be greatly rewarded for it. In highlighting traits like meekness and humility rather than strength or wealth, Jesus subverts any pre-conceived ideas that hearers of the sermon may have had about what qualities a Kingdom citizen should possess.
What Does It Mean to Be Blessed?
Most people, when they hear the word blessed, probably think of it in terms of good fortune or luck. Get a good job? Blessed. Find a twenty dollar bill on the ground? Blessed. Don’t run into any traffic on your morning commute? Blessed. It’s become such a common refrain in Christian culture that it’s easy to breeze past it when reading these verses.
But what does blessed really mean, particularly in the context of the Beatitudes?
The Greek word used for blessed in Matthew 5:3-11 is makarios, and it doesn’t mean fortunate, or lucky, or even “held in reverence” [1]—it means happy, in the truest sense of the word. Other uses of makarios in the New Testament can be found in Romans 4:7 (“Oh, what joy [happiness] for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight”), 1 Timothy 1:11 (“...that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed [happy] God”), and James 1:12 (“God blesses [happy are] those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him”).
So Jesus is really saying: happy are those who mourn, happy are those who are persecuted. And why should they be happy? “...for a great reward awaits [them] in heaven” (Matthew 5:11 NLT). This is a promise we can bank on: when we live out the qualities laid out in the Beatitudes, even if it’s challenging sometimes, our efforts will be rewarded.
