beatitudes and the kingdom

There are some things in the Bible that I just haven't taken enough time to really understand - common and in your face things. I guess I just let myself get too busy and don't take time to reconcile what the Scriptures are really saying. As I continue in The Divine Conspiracy, Willard helped clarify for me what is being said by Jesus in the beatitudes.

Alfred Erdesheim, in The Life and Times of Jesus Messiah,

The Sermon on the Mount's "great subject is neither righteousness, nor yet the New Law (if such designation be proper in regard to what in no real sense is a Law), but that which was innermost and uppermost in the Mind of Christ - the Kingdom of God. Notably, the Sermon on the Mount contains not any detailed or systematic doctrinal, nor any ritual teaching, nor yet does it prescribe the form of any outward observances... Christ came to found a Kingdom, not a School; to institute a fellowship, not to propound a system. To the first disciples all doctrinal teaching sprang out of fellowship with Him. They saw Him, and therefore believed; they believed, and therefore learned the truths connected with Him, and springing out of Him. So to speak, the seed of truth which fell on their hearts was carried thither from the flower of His Person and Life."

The beatitudes are not instructions to live a certain way but rather a pronouncement for all that were there that the Kingdom of God is readily available. Willard says, Christ's "teaching in the Beatitudes is a clarification or development of his primary theme in this talk and in his life: the availability of the kingdom of the heavens." He "used the method of show and tell to make clear the extent to which the kingdom is on hand to us." And therefore, as an example, the poor in spirit are blessed as a result of the kingdom of God being available to them in their poverty and not that they were blessed because of their poverty.

Willard further clarifies, "precisely in spite of and in the midst of their ever so deplorable condition, the rule of the heavens has moved redemptively upon and through them by the grace of Christ." The beatitudes are "explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship to Jesus. They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope."

Yesterday on the flight to Cincinnati, I was able to share with the man in the seat next to me the reality of God's presence. God is not far off. His rule and reign is here in our midst. Now this may seem obvious but the more I see it, the more I see it. I'm looking forward to even more tomorrow.

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