beatitudes: Jesus’ practical plan for flourishing
So far, we’ve looked at the two ways you can try to flourish. Either by following our culture’s approach, by building a big enough kingdom to satisfy all of your desires. Or, by following Jesus’ approach, by being born again and living according to God’s kingdom.
Many Christians want to follow Jesus’ approach to flourish, but there’s one major problem: we have no clue what that looks like in real life.
Because we’ve treated Jesus only as our Savior and not also as our teacher, we assume the Bible doesn’t say much about how to flourish. This causes us to blend the two approaches: we trust Jesus with our eternal flourishing in heaven, but when it comes to flourishing in this life, we spend our lives trying to build a bigger kingdom.
The result? The lives of Christians and churches don’t look any different than the world around them. We’re good at going to church and saying all the right things, but deep down, we’re trying to flourish through our kingdoms, which causes all sorts of conflict, brokenness, and fear.
Jesus’ plan for human flourishing
But Jesus doesn’t allow His followers to take this blended approach towards flourishing. You can’t serve two masters, after all. You can’t expect to flourish if you entrust your spiritual life to Jesus and the rest of your life to our culture’s strategies.
Fortunately, Jesus gave us a set of teachings to challenge our blended approach thinking and show us how to flourish in our ordinary day-to-day lives. This teaching is found in the Beatitudes, found at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
“Really?” you might be thinking, “The Beatitudes are Jesus’ plan for human flourishing?” We usually see the Beatitudes like an old celebrity from a previous generation: we’ve heard of them, but we’re not exactly sure why they’re famous or what they’re good for.
part 1: how do we naturally see the beatitudes?
If we’re honest, nobody naturally sees the Beatitudes as a flourishing life. They are strange statements that don’t make a lot of sense. That’s why almost everyone in our society sees the Beatitudes in one of the following three ways:
Irreligious people think the Beatitudes are idiotic: many atheists and secular people hate the Beatitudes. They see them not only as not flourishing but as inherently abusive and oppressive towards the human spirit, proving the dangers of organized religion and the stupidity of Christians.
Religious people think the Beatitudes are idealistic: many cultural Christians see the Beatitudes as Jesus’ ideals for human behavior. They believe that things would be better if everyone followed the Beatitudes. But in practice, since the Beatitudes are so uncomfortable and hard to obey, they just become options commands for super-Christians.
Christians think the Beatitudes are irrelevant: many church-going Christians see the Beatitudes as irrelevant in our lives today. After all, we’re saved by grace and not works, so following the Beatitudes is unnecessary. Many churches treat the Beatitudes as unimportant, since it’s all about getting people to understand the cross, and to talk about following Jesus’ teachings could promote legalism.
While each of these groups has different reasons for how they view the Beatitudes, they all come to the same conclusion: the Beatitudes are no longer useful to our day-to-day lives. When we take this approach, though, we, unfortunately, reject the Son of God’s teaching on how much beings can truly flourish.
part 2: why don’t we think of the beatitudes as flourishing?
So why does everyone miss that Jesus’ Beatitudes are actually about human flourishing? It happens because we’ve made two mistakes in how we view them.
mistake #1: we misunderstand the key word
The first mistake we make in understanding the Beatitudes is in translating the first word. Jesus begins each Beatitude with the Greek word makarios, which almost always gets translated as “blessed” in English.
But that’s not what makarios actually means.
When we use "blessed," whether in a casual conversation or on a social media post, we’re saying that we've received an undeserved gift from God. Whether it's a healthy family, beautiful home, or comfortable life, we use blessed to describe when God has given us something we didn't do anything to earn.
There are times when the Bible uses “blessed” this way, like when God promised in Genesis to bless Abraham. But there’s a problem: that’s a completely different Greek word than what Jesus uses to start each Beatitude.
When Jesus chose to begin each Beatitude with makarios, he wasn’t telling his audience, “This is what you need to do if you want to receive God’s unearned favor.” That wouldn’t make any sense.
Instead, Jesus used makarios because he was telling this crowd: this is how you should live if you want to flourish. That’s what makarios means in English. It’s a word, according to Dallas Willard, “Refers to the highest type of well-being possible for human beings. Transcendent bliss.”
Another commentator put it this way:
Makarios isn't happiness in its mundane sense, but rather the deep inner joy of those who have long awaited the salvation promised by God and who now begin to experience its fulfillment. The makarion are the deeply or supremely happy.
Again and again, the Bible uses makarios to describe someone who is in an active state of joy, satisfaction, and flourishing. We see this in Psalm 1 when the psalmist begins the Psalm with makarios:
Makarios is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.
The psalmist isn’t telling his audience that they will be passively blessed by God if they avoid the wicked. Instead, he’s telling them that this is how you should live if you want to flourish.
Because of this, when Jesus uses makarios at the beginning of each Beatitudes it shouldn’t be translated as “Blessed are…”, but rather as “Flourishing are…” Jesus isn’t teaching his audience what to do to receive God’s undeserved blessing; he’s telling us how we should actively live if we want to flourish.
mistake #2: we misunderstand their format
This leads us to our second mistake. When we translate the first word “blessed,” it causes us to misunderstand the format of the Beatitudes. We think that Jesus is giving us his version of the law; that the Beatitudes are conditional statements: if you are poor in spirit, then God will bless you.
Many Christians avoid the Beatitudes because they think that to obey them would be legalistic: you’d be trying to force God to give you his blessing.
But when Jesus taught the Beatitudes, he wasn’t giving us a new version of God’s law but was using a rhetorical device, the kind of vocal flourish that teachers in oral cultures used to engage their audiences.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus, like other speakers of his day, was using a rhetorical device called a makarism (based on the word makarios). A makarism isn’t a rule that you have to obey to get a reward, but, as defined by theologian Jonathan Pennington, is:
A vision of human flourishing that is meant to effect change in people’s lives by inspiring them to the good and the benefits that come from living a certain way.
A makarism isn’t a law, but rather an invitation to actively live in a new way. Those who follow the Beatitudes don’t merit God’s favor, but rather flourish because they live in alignment with God’s kingdom.
And so, in the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to act, but not to earn. The Beatitudes are us responding to the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and don’t teach us how to earn God’s grace, but rather how to participate in it.
Jesus is not saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit because they will be seen as a good person and thus get the reward that good people deserve." Not at all. Instead, Jesus is telling the listeners: "Because God is gracious, He will deliver the poor in spirit into a state of flourishing."
We are called by Jesus to obey the Beatitudes not to merit our salvation, but to participate in God’s redemptive work in the world through the coming of His kingdom.
the implications
When we understand these two aspects of the Beatitudes correctly, we can say that the Beatitudes are not a roadmap to prove that we deserve God’s blessing, but rather: Jesus' grace-filled invitation into the flourishing of God's kingdom.
And when we correct for these two common misunderstandings, we can read the Beatitudes as:
Flourishing are the poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Flourishing are those who mourn because they shall be comforted.
Flourishing are the meek because they shall inherit the earth.
Flourishing are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because they shall be satisfied.
Flourishing are the merciful because they shall receive mercy.
Flourishing are the pure in heart because they shall see God.
Flourishing are the peacemakers because they shall be called sons of God.
Flourishing are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus is refuting every other human attempt at trying to live a flourishing life and declaring: this is the life of true flourishing, true joy, true happiness, and it's available to you right now!
Part 3: so how do the Beatitudes lead to a flourishing life?
There’s just one problem: how do the Beatitudes lead to a flourishing life? Being poor in spirit, meek, persecuted? If we’re honest, following the Beatitudes sounds like a great way to be miserable!
But the reason the Beatitudes don’t sound like flourishing, is because we read them through our secular approach. We’re come to the Beatitudes and try to fit them into our personal kingdom building approach. But they won’t work that way.
Jesus’ Beatitudes are intentionally paradoxical: they’re meant to challenge our existing framework for what we see as a flourishing life. And if we try to run them through our culture’s approach, like putting diesel in a hatchback, they only lead to misery.
The Beatitudes lead to a flourishing life because they bring you deeper and deeper into God’s kingdom, the ultimate place of flourishing. That’s where they get their power.
Dallas Willard puts this well:
The Beatitudes, in particular, are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings.
No one is actually being told that they are better off for being poor, for mourning, for being persecuted, and so on, or that the conditions listed are recommended ways to well-being before God or man.
They are explanations and illustrations…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.
The Beatitudes create flourishing in our lives solely because they describe life in God’s kingdom. Let’s be clear: the Beatitudes are not advice on how to build our own kingdoms, but rather the way we participate in the redemptive life of God’s kingdom.
Jesus is not saying, “You’ll flourish because you’re poor in spirit,” but rather that, “The poor in spirit are flourishing, despite their current circumstances and struggles, because they’re in God’s kingdom.
The Beatitudes aren’t Jesus’ eight tips on how to build your dream life. Instead, they are his teaching on what it looks like to live in God’s kingdom, the place of true flourishing, and live according to his Kingdom values.
But why is God’s kingdom a place of flourishing? Because through the Beatitudes:
You align with the coming of God’s kingdom: God’s kingdom was started when Jesus came to earth, and as we follow the Beatitudes, we align with this kingdom and facilitate its coming. As we align ourselves with how God designed the world to work through the Beatitudes, our desires are transformed, our actions are changed, and we are increasingly able to live in peace and prosperity, as individuals, families, communities, and countries.
You anticipate the consummation of God’s kingdom: When we follow the Beatitudes, we flourish because our hope is not in our present circumstances, but rather in the second coming of Christ, when he consummates his kingdom. When this happens he will renew all things and restore the entire creation back to its original perfection.
The reason Jesus can proclaim that anyone who follows the Beatitudes will flourish, is because these people, no matter how the world views them, are the eternal citizens of God’s heavenly kingdom. They flourish not because they have good circumstances or an easy life, but because they are spiritually living in God’s kingdom and looking forward to their eternal home.
Dr. Derwin Gray summarized the Beatitudes in this helpful way:
"The Beatitudes are a description of how God's kingdom enters man's realm and transforms it. The Beatitudes are a picture of what God's people, under his rule and reign of grace, live like on earth. They are the ethos of heaven invading earth."
But this leaves one final question:
where do you get the power to follow the Beatitudes?
At this point, it would be tempting to say, “Go get ‘em!” and rely on hard work and willpower to follow the Beatitudes. But that won’t work. If you treat the Beatitudes as a way to earn God's flourishing you'll struggle. You'll never be able to do enough.
It’s only possible to follow the Beatitudes when we understand what Jesus did to bring us into his kingdom life. We can only participate in God’s kingdom because Jesus came to earth and perfectly lived out the Beatitudes, but instead of receiving a kingdom, he received a crown of thorns.
Jesus was poor in spirit, yet received a kingdom of suffering
Jesus was a person of mourning, yet was not comforted by God on the cross.
Jesus was the most meek person who ever lived, but died with no land, status, or possessions.
Jesus hungered and thirsted for righteousness, but was left unsatisfied as he died.
Jesus was always merciful, yet did not receive God’s mercy.
Jesus was pure in heart, yet his Father turned his face away from him.
Jesus was a peacemaker, yet was crucified like a criminal.
Jesus was persecuted, yet was his only prize was the condemnation that we deserved.
When we see the lengths that Jesus went through so that God might invite us into God’s kingdom, it should melt our hearts. Jesus took our penalty, yet gave us his prize: a flourishing life with God in his kingdom. And as we let Jesus’ love for us change us, we’ll find that we become more and more like Him, increasingly living out his teachings on human flourishing.
