The Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount
The best known sermon in history opens by saying who is blessed — and the list is strange.
The Sermon on the Mount fills three chapters of Matthew, 5 to 7, and holds a good share of the things Jesus said that people know by heart: the salt of the earth, the other cheek, the Lord's Prayer, the lilies of the field, the house on the rock. It opens with the Beatitudes.
They are eight sentences of the same shape — "blessed are the..., for..." — and almost none of them describes someone that age, or ours, would call successful.
The eight Beatitudes
- Matthew 5:3"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven"
- Matthew 5:4"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted"
- Matthew 5:5"Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth"
- Matthew 5:6"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled"
- Matthew 5:7"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy"
- Matthew 5:8"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"
- Matthew 5:9"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God"
- Matthew 5:10"Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven"
- Matthew 5:11–12And a ninth, said straight to the disciples: when people insult you for my sake
The first, which opens them all
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
The sermon begins with people who have nothing to offer. "Poor in spirit" is not a lack of intelligence or of spirit; it is someone who comes before God with no resources of their own, and knows it. And notice the tense: the first and eighth Beatitudes are in the present — "theirs is" the Kingdom. The ones between are future. The Kingdom is given now, to those who know they need it.
What runs through the sermon
"Blessed" translates a word that can also be read as "happy" or "fortunate", and some translations put it that way. But it is not a feeling. It is a statement about where someone stands before God: those who mourn, in this logic, are not happy to be mourning — they are in a place God promises to comfort.
After the Beatitudes the sermon keeps the same movement: "You have heard that it was said... but I tell you". It does not abolish the Law; it takes each commandment inward, from the act to the heart — from murder to anger, from adultery to the look. And it ends with a picture of building: whoever hears and does is the house on the rock.
His words, one each morning
Everything this page quotes was said by Jesus — and that is what Walking with Jesus is made of. One teaching a day, with the moment around it, a short reflection, a prayer and one thing to carry into the day.
It is a one-time purchase, about five minutes a morning, and it never asks you to catch up on days you missed.
Questions people ask
- What are the Beatitudes?
- The eight statements that open the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:3–10: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the gentle (or meek), those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted for righteousness' sake. Matthew 5:11–12 adds a ninth, addressed straight to the disciples.
- Where is the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible?
- Matthew 5–7. Luke 6:20–49 has a similar, shorter discourse, sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain, with four Beatitudes followed by four "woes".
- What does "blessed" mean in the Beatitudes?
- Literally, someone in a happy or favoured situation. In the Beatitudes the word does not describe a mood but a standing before God: people in these situations have a promise on their side.