Commentary on Matthew 5:1-12

Challenges abound for interpreters of this opening section of the Sermon on the Mount. 

How does the sermon function, and for whom? Does it set out entry standards for encountering God’s empire, or does it set out practices for committed Jesus-followers? Does it establish impossible standards that force people to cry out for divine mercy, or does it provide an interim ethic ahead of Jesus’ return but which, with the passing of time, is no longer relevant? In other words, what is the interaction between grace and works, the indicative and the imperative? Does the sermon reveal God’s will, persuade compliance, construct identity, train for discernment, empower followers?  

How to decide among these options?

As obvious as it sounds, the Sermon on the Mount occurs within Matthew’s Gospel. The sermon is not a free-standing unit. Chapters 5–7 follow chapters 1–4, particularly 4:17–25 in which Jesus begins his public ministry.

Having been commissioned to manifest God’s saving presence (1:21–23), Jesus affirms his identity and allegiance as God’s Son, or agent, through his baptism and his testing by the devil (3:17; 4:1–11). Jesus then begins his public activity at 4:17. His proclamation, “Repent, the empire of the heavens has come near,” expresses his commission from 1:21–23. To manifest God’s saving presence is to manifest the empire, or rule, of God. 

What does the empire, or rule, of God accomplish when it comes near as Jesus proclaims in 4:17? Verses 18–22, the calling of the first four disciples, provide a first answer. It claims human lives and allegiances. It redirects commitments and actions. It constitutes a new identity and community. 

A second answer follows in verse 23a. This activity of teaching and preaching is mentioned briefly here. Jesus proclaims the good news of God’s empire, though just what content is in view is not yet developed. It will be in the sermon.

A third answer follows in verses 23b–25. Jesus heals sick folks. The Roman Empire benefited the ruling elites in multiple ways but imposed pervasive poverty, food insecurity, high stress, and widespread diseases of deficiency and contagion on the majority poor. Jesus repairs people damaged by the inequities and oppressive structures of Roman societal injustice. 

Now Matthew’s Jesus sits on a mountain to teach his disciples (5:1), as well as the crowds drawn by Jesus’ healings (7:28–29). 

This sequence clarifies the sermon’s functions. It addresses this audience with visions, elaborations, illustrations, and examples about life in the empire of God. This is the central motif of the sermon (5:3, 10, 19–20; 6:10, 33; 7:21). It constructs the identity of disciples in relation to God’s empire. It reveals perspectives and practices that faithfully express the divine empire. In the context of Rome’s empire, it empowers such living with plural language that emphasizes communal support and motivates with eschatological accountability. 

The sermon’s opening section sets out nine beatitudes (5:3–12). Interpreters face another decision: whether to read the beatitudes as character ethics setting out qualities of individual piety (be humble, et cetera), to read in terms of human emotions (“happy are…”), or to read them as ways in which God acts in the imperial world to favor not the privileged powerful but the oppressed poor, deprived of but struggling for justice. 

The beatitudes employ plural language, not singular, individualistic language. The context of verses 4:18–25 indicates Jesus’ concern with and participation in society. And the content of the beatitudes concerns societal visions, structures, and practices. 

Accordingly, the first four beatitudes (5:3–6) name oppressive situations in which God’s empire is at work to reverse the damage imposed by imperial policies, structures, and practices. This transformative work is underway in the actions of Jesus and his followers but is yet to be completed, as the second clauses indicate.

The first beatitude, for example, blesses “the poor in spirit.” The language designates not characteristics of being humble and patient, but people who are materially poor and whose spirits are crushed by economic injustice, deprivation of resources, and few options.

Population mapping of the Roman Empire indicates high percentages of folks who knew varying levels of poverty. Perhaps as many as 70–80 percent of the population lived near, at, or below subsistence levels. They struggled for material resources, experienced food insecurity, faced diseases of deprivation and contagion, knew economic deprivations and pressures, lived in urban overcrowding, encountered natural disasters and occupational accidents, observed status differentials (especially those who were enslaved), experienced considerable stress, and knew violence in household and societal contexts. 

The corrosive effect of poverty and stress on mental and somatic health is well documented. This beatitude does not romanticize poverty. Rather, it recognizes poverty’s corrosive and crushing impact on human lives even as it also declares that God’s empire or rule is at work with the socioeconomic poor in their struggle for justice by transforming the imperial world.    

The third beatitude continues this emphasis on both human misery and divine activity. The beatitude’s blessing on the meek derives from Psalm 37, where four times, the meek are promised that they will inherit the land (verses 11, 22, 29, 34). The psalm defines the meek not as the humble or wimps but as the literal powerless and poor who lack the life-giving resource of land. The wealthy powerful have plotted against them (verse 12), used violence (verse 14, 32), and oppressed them (verse 35). God promises to remove the wicked (verse 9–10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 28b) and to give the land to the meek (verses 11, 22, 29, 34).

These first four beatitudes declare divine favor on situations and practices of exploitation. They promise divine reversals in both the present and the future. 

The next five beatitudes (Matthew 5:7–12) name human actions that express God’s transforming and challenging work for a just world. They identify distinctive practices—doing mercy, being pure in heart, making peace, being persecuted and reviled—that further God’s justice. These actions mark the identity of the community of Jesus’ followers that variously coopts, challenges, and redefines dominant cultural commitments.