The Beatitudes: The Portrait of Kingdom Citizens

Introduction

The pastor opens his message with an article that struck him: in large companies, résumés are now sorted by artificial intelligence software, based on the profile the company expects. The advice given to job seekers was to have an artificial intelligence write their résumé so it would match that profile. And the people interviewed were stunned to discover that the résumé they were so proud of looked nothing like what the company was looking for.

This is the second message in the series "At the School of the King," on the Sermon on the Mount. Last Sunday, the church was reminded of the central message of the Bible: it is a matter of reign and of a king. Jesus does not teach like a mere professor, but like a king. Humanity was created under God's reign, in perfect blessing; it rebelled and chose to decide for itself what is good and evil; and through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God invites humanity to come back under his reign. We therefore have "a life to learn."

In Matthew 5:3-12, Jesus paints the portrait of his citizens. The pastor warns: between the portrait we expect and the one Jesus draws, the gap is huge. It looks like nothing the world values. And unlike a résumé, no artificial intelligence will be able to fabricate this portrait for you to get past the filter.

Message Outline

1. A King Who Begins With the Word "Blessed"

• Jesus is seated, his disciples around him, a crowd behind them. He speaks the eight beatitudes, then a ninth declaration addressed directly to his disciples: "Blessed are you when people reproach you and persecute you…" (Matthew 5:11-12).
• The word that comes up most often is "blessed." In the old Latin version of the Bible, "blessed" is beati: that is where the name "beatitudes" comes from.
• For someone hearing this discourse for the first time, this opening is a huge relief: no new rules, no threat. After all, he is a king, and he could have done so. Jesus begins with a word everyone is looking for, in the first century as in the twenty-first: we all want to be happy.
• Then the reading goes on: blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the poor, blessed are the persecuted, blessed are those who are slandered. "That doesn't really make me happy." If you make a list of what makes us happy (our projects succeeding, good health, finances that keep up, good relationships with your spouse, your friends, your children, peace in the family) and compare it with Jesus' list, there is nothing in common.
• The message is built around two questions: Is Jesus presenting us with an upside-down kingdom? And what portrait does he paint of his citizens?

2. "Blessed" Is Not a Mood, It Is a Declaration From God

• The mistake made throughout history was to read this discourse as a recipe for happiness, "a sort of self-help before its time": here are the nine attitudes, and you will feel good. That is not what this is.
• The form of the sentences shows it. Jesus does not say "be happy," nor "I wish you to be happy." He does not even address people directly: he speaks about them in the third person. It is neither a command nor a wish, it is a declaration.
• The audience, mostly Jewish, immediately recognized the formula from the Psalms, the greatest book they had: "Blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked" (Psalm 1:1). It is not about feelings or emotions. Jesus is saying in essence: I am not describing your mood, I am describing your situation before God.
• For us in the twenty-first century, "happy" sounds like a mood that depends on the day, on how we got out of bed, on how someone spoke to us. But Jesus is not talking about our feelings: he is saying what God thinks. "It is a question of perspective, and it is not mine, it is God's."
• That is why the English commentator John Stott proposed translating it as "blessed." Blessed by God are those who recognize they are spiritually poor. Blessed by God are those who mourn. Blessed by God are those who are gentle. In one case we think we hear a feeling, in the other we hear what it really is: someone is declaring it, and that someone is God. Careful, being declared blessed is not passing an exam.
• Second clue: each beatitude is followed by a "for" and a blessing. The blessing never says "you are going to feel better, you are going to be relaxed." It says: the kingdom of heaven is yours, the earth will be given to you as an inheritance, you will be recognized as sons. It is about a kingdom that is given and a portrait that is being drawn.

3. An Upside-Down Kingdom? No: It Is Our Map That Is Wrong

• We might think we are shocked because we lack the instincts of the first century, or the same knowledge of the Old Testament. The pastor thinks the opposite: Jesus' listeners were even more surprised than we are.
• Two major Jewish movements were listening to him. The Pharisees, the religious elite who knew the law inside out, would have written their own beatitudes: blessed is the one who keeps the commandments, who gives his tithe and offerings, who fasts twice a week, who prays three times a day, who observes the Sabbath scrupulously. A religious performance, "a good résumé before God."
• The Zealots accepted the law but rejected the Roman occupation. For them, the one who has God's favor takes up arms and defends the territory: blessed are the courageous, blessed are those who have strength.
• And in front of them, Jesus sits down and says: blessed are those who recognize they are spiritually poor. The pastor imagines the murmuring: "Did you hear what Jesus said? He doesn't say blessed are the high performers, he doesn't say blessed are those who keep the law. What is going on with Jesus?" The surprise is not a matter of the era. It was intentional: Jesus wanted to challenge, even to provoke, because this portrait conflicts with everything the world values, from the first century to the twenty-first.
• To answer the question, the pastor projects a map of the world. First reaction: "Honestly, Benjamin, you could have made an effort. Greenland is ridiculous, Russia is stretched, South America is bigger than North America, Africa is dominant." Yet this is the true map, with the true proportions. The one we learned at school, the Mercator projection, makes Greenland look almost as big as Africa, when Africa is fourteen times larger.
• The pastor points out that on September 4, the UN adopted a resolution to gradually encourage the use of this realistic map, and that the resolution was not passed unanimously. "Let those who will understand, understand. A map is never neutral in what it wants you to see."
• We too have a map we learned from childhood: one of a successful life, of what gives a person value. The happy person has money; success means health, influence, a life that works. And for those who grew up in church or in other religious movements: keeping the law, observing prayers, fasting, and so on.
• Jesus arrives and says: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the gentle. We want to tell him: "Honestly, your map is strange." But "the problem is not Jesus' map, it is ours that is wrong. It is not Jesus' kingdom that is upside down, it is we who are standing on our heads." We look at the world thinking it is the right way up, and in the end we get a headache.
• In the beginning, everything was the right way up: one king, God himself, a humanity living under his reign as in a blessing. We refused that reign, we wanted to be our own king, and we drew our own map of the world. We live in an inverted world and we call it normal.
• When Jesus describes his citizens, he is not describing strange people: he is describing normal humanity, the one we were created for and have lost. "If what we are about to read offends you, it is not because Jesus is strange, it is because you have become strange."
• The eight beatitudes are not eight kinds of Christians, nor a menu where we pick what we like. It is a single portrait, an identity to inhabit. The pastor would have loved to devote a sermon to each beatitude; he takes them as a block, the way Jesus gave them, so that we feel what the crowd felt: "Wait, where am I in all this? What is my world? What is reality?"

4. The Key to Everything: Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

• "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 5:3). If you do not understand this beatitude, you will not understand the rest, and you will take the others as moralism, legalism, a transaction with God.
• In the crowd, many are convinced they have access to the kingdom through their works. And Jesus opens his mouth: blessed are the poor. Don't you have to be spiritually rich to enter the kingdom? The pastor believes some felt their stomachs knot up, with a sense of scandal.
• To make us feel this in our time, he offers an illustration he himself calls "a bit risky." Imagine you save for six months, cutting back on your food budget, to take your family to Disneyland. On the big day, Mickey ears on your head, you hand your tickets to the attendant, who replies: "No sir, you can only come in if you prove your bank account is in the red." And you watch people walk in who have never saved a penny in their lives. Outrageous. "Bad news, Disney will never do that." But the kingdom of God says: "You can't afford it, come in. You don't feel worthy, it is for you. You know you are far from God, come."
• Careful: it is not poverty that pays our entry. Nothing on our side pays it. It was paid for you in Jesus Christ. Recognizing you are poor means ceasing to think and pretend that you can pay your way into the kingdom with your own good works.
• Reading the Bible, praying, giving to the poor, being a good person, serving in church, giving part of your money: all very good, but none of it will ever get you into the kingdom. What gets you in is recognizing that only God's action, that is, Jesus, gets you in.
• You do not enter this kingdom by opening your wallet before God: "Hey, did you see that, though? I'm a little better than the sister next to me." That is exactly what bars your way. If you are standing there telling yourself "I have nothing worthwhile to present before God," welcome: the kingdom of God is yours. From this starting point, everything else will flow. If you have not understood that it is by grace that we are saved (Ephesians 2:8), you will not understand the rest of Jesus' message.

5. Mourning, Being Gentle, Hungering for Justice

• "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). Jesus is not speaking first of the tears of this world, of grief and trials. He is speaking consistently with what he has just said: first recognizing you are poor, then mourning over it. It is not the same thing. I can admit that I have nothing to give God and that I am a sinner, exactly as I note that I have to pay taxes every year. Mourning, being shaken, is the difference between a simple observation and something that touches your life.
• "Brothers and sisters, when did you last weep over your sin?" We readily weep over what we lack: the job we didn't get, the husband or wife we don't have, the phone we can't afford, the life we would have wanted. Far more rarely over what breaks God's heart.
• Those who mourn over evil and over the world around them will be comforted: starting today through the forgiveness offered in Jesus Christ, and completely when he returns, he who will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4). Take a moment, not to beat yourself up, but to look at one thing you have learned to excuse in your life, and ask God to give you a heart tender enough to weep over it.
• "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). The pastor makes a confession: gentleness, for a man who grew up in the Paris region, "isn't great." He pictured it as a slightly syrupy guy who pats you on the shoulder, and he couldn't grasp it because Jesus is nothing like a syrupy guy. Besides, being syrupy doesn't work for every personality, whereas the virtues of the kingdom must work across every personality.
• An African commentator on the Sermon on the Mount, Joe Kapolyo, helped him: "Gentleness is the ability to master your strength and to use it only for the good of others." A simple definition, which shows that this is a virtue anyone can develop, and which explains why Jesus was gentle: with all his power, he could have crushed us, and he did not.
• Mastering your strength presupposes having some. The gentle person is not the one who stays quiet because he can do nothing: that is a victim. It is the one who could crush and chooses not to.
• "Benjamin, this is getting out of touch with reality. Monday morning at work, it's a jungle. If I say nothing when people walk all over me, I get crushed." True, the pastor answers, but the decisive question is: who defends your interests? If you are the only one taking care of your future, then go ahead, the jungle is the best strategy, be a killer. But the second half of the beatitude changes everything: "for they shall inherit the earth." The gentle person has understood that it is not up to him to grab everything by force, because God will defend his rights and give it to him in due time.
• Concretely this week: the next time someone cuts you off mid-sentence, overtakes you on the ring road, takes what is yours, you will have the reflex (especially if you have, like the pastor, a hot-blooded temperament) to hit back and show that you have the strength to crush. The question is not "can I?", it is "do I believe that God takes care of me?"
• "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6). Who has ever really been hungry and thirsty? We wake up at night because we are thirsty. As long as we haven't eaten, we think of nothing else. This is not about people who do a bit of justice now and then, but about a consuming desire.
• The link with the first beatitude: from the moment we have understood that we are spiritually poor and that righteousness has been given to us freely by God, a citizen of the kingdom can no longer stand justice being trampled around him. It is not a work we manufacture, it is what flows from contemplating that God has given us everything.
• Since his return to France in 2022, the pastor often hears: "What I can't stand is injustice." But when you dig, the injustice we can't stand is the one that concerns me: a late paycheck is intolerable when it is mine. The person looked down on at the town hall desk, the colleague sidelined for no reason, North Kivu in Congo destroyed because of the components in our phones, Haiti destroyed by everyone's competing interests: we get used to it. Yet "hunger does not get used to anything. A hungry stomach cannot be reasoned with."
• One day hunger will end: Jesus will return and the kingdom he establishes will have no injustice at all, from the smallest to the greatest. But right now, we must hunger and thirst for what we will live later. If there is a situation around you that you have gotten used to, it may be time to say or do something.

6. Kindness, Pure Heart, Peacemakers

• "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy" (Matthew 5:7). Depending on the versions, we speak of compassion, mercy, or kindness: a sympathy that acts toward those in need.
• The promise seems to pose a problem: we think we hear a transaction, "I am kind, so God is kind to me." We have to go back to the key from the beginning. We are spiritually poor, we recognize that God has been kind to us and saved us through Jesus Christ, and therefore we are kind. "I brought nothing and I let it flow." The kindness we produce is not what we manufacture, but what we let flow from grace understood.
• It is a real test of our portrait. How many times have we met, or been ourselves, Christians who are hard, brittle, unable to forgive, who keep their accounts up to date? That person should be concerned, not because he failed an exam, but because you cannot have been pardoned and remain pitiless toward others your whole life. Jesus spoke harshly about the servant who is forgiven an enormous debt and then goes and grabs his colleague by the collar over a few pennies (Matthew 18:23-35).
• Being kind is not easy. But do not grit your teeth when it is hard. What Jesus asks is to return to the source: rather than forcing yourself by repeating "I have to be kind," look at what Jesus has done for you, contemplate his work, meditate on it, as Paul urges in Corinthians, perhaps spend a few days in prayer to recharge your batteries, so that it flows naturally. Toward whom must you be kind? The Lord often puts people on your heart: with that one, you must be kind.
• "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). It seems impossible. In the Bible, the heart is not only the emotions: it is what I think, what I want, what I decide in secret. According to the pastor, this is the only place in the New Testament where we are asked to have a pure heart, and it is exactly the right place, because Jesus is explaining how his kingdom will be different.
• The illustration comes from the Los Olmos prison in Argentina, in the 1980s: a hell on earth, the worst criminals sometimes mixed with victims, murders, rapes, abuse. The government multiplied rules, regulations, and measures; it got worse and worse, to the point that no one knew what to do, and the prison was left to itself. Then a pastor who had committed a real crime ended up there, repented, and began to share the Gospel. Gang leaders were converted; they understood they were spiritually poor, they began to master their strength and to show kindness. Twelve years later, out of 3,000 prisoners, 1,400 had been converted. The government sent the twenty best Christians to other prisons, and there was a revival in all the prisons of Argentina. "When the heart is changed, everything changes."
• In the middle of a presidential campaign, people talk about laws, measures, and regulations as if they would change everything. We need them, otherwise we can't cope, but let's not be fooled: "it is not going to change the heart of the French. The heart of the French needs to be changed by Jesus Christ." The pastor's father often said in his sermons: "The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. The law stops your hand, but the Gospel changes the heart and guides your hand."
• They will see God: fully at his return, but already those who let Jesus change their heart deeply see God at work. It is the opposite of Jesus' reproach to the Pharisees, who cleaned the outside of the cup and the dish while the inside was filthy (Matthew 23:25-26). Not only what you show at work or on Sunday morning, but what is deep down. So stop praying things like "God, help me behave better." Pray instead: "Change my heart, Lord, give me a pure heart," exactly as David prayed: "Create in me a clean heart, O God" (Psalm 51:10).
• "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God" (Matthew 5:9). Beware of the misreading: Jesus does not say blessed are those who stay peaceful in their corner, who avoid trouble and harm no one. He speaks of those who spread peace, the peacemakers: those who make it, not those who quietly keep it. The pastor quotes, from memory, a saying attributed to Martin Luther: "You are Christians, so go out, use your feet, use your hands, and make peace around you."
• These are the ones who step between two people fighting at the Porte de Saint-Ouen metro station and say "calm down, guys," the ones who go and see, who take the first step. The pastor spoke the day before with a sister who, he is convinced, has been placed in her company to be a peacemaker in a toxic atmosphere. She takes steps, she tries to tell the truth, and she is tired because she does not see the result. But the result is not in her hands: God placed her there. Where God places you as a citizen of the kingdom, you are placed to make peace. How is it that so many churches split over conflicts, when we are supposed to be making peace?
• Why? "For they shall be called children of God": the son imitates the father, and the Father made peace with us. "He crossed the room." When we are in the wrong, it is easy to apologize. But when I am right, when the other person started it and everyone knows it, am I supposed to be the one who crosses the room? Yes, because God did it for you: you were his enemy, he crossed the room and gave his Son. We drag our feet, the pastor first of all. There may be a person toward whom you know you must cross the room; God is nudging you, and you resist because your map is upside down.

7. Persecuted for Righteousness: "Blessed Are You," and a Single Command

• "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 5:10). Perhaps the hardest one, because it speaks of suffering. Jesus is not talking about every kind of suffering: some people feel persecuted because of their own fault. "You are not persecuted, you are just being punished for your mistakes." It is about being persecuted because you live as the king asks, and that disturbs people.
• The loop closes with the fourth beatitude: the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness ends up paying the price, "because an upside-down world cannot stand someone living the right way up." And the promise repeats exactly the words of verse 3: the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. The portrait began with the kingdom of heaven and ends with the kingdom of heaven.
• Then comes the twist. Until now Jesus had been speaking in the third person: "blessed are those who…" Suddenly he changes: "Blessed are you." The pastor imagines him looking up at his disciples and gazing at them one by one: "Blessed are you, you, you." We can no longer look at this portrait like a painting in a museum and say "yeah, nice." He is talking about us. He is looking you in the eye.
• What does this look like for you? At school, at university, at work, everyone cheats, trades answers, fudges the numbers a bit, lies, bends the truth, "because that is how you get ahead." And you don't do it. You will surely get a lower grade, miss a promotion, have somewhat lower sales, a smaller year-end bonus, you will watch those who did it pass you by, and you may well hear: "Why are you making such a fuss?"
• Or it is the atmosphere at work or school where someone who is not there is always being torn down; you don't join in, you say something or you stay quiet but you don't laugh, and it shows. After a while, the one who doesn't take part in the gossip stops being spoken to. For others, it is simply because you are a Christian: you don't hide your faith, you don't impose it on anyone, but you don't act as if it didn't exist. And you are told: "You've become weird. Keep that to yourself, it's private."
• That is what Jesus is talking about. It does not necessarily mean dying for your faith, even if in some countries people do die for it (the pastor urges us to follow what is happening in Nigeria, where the situation is getting worse and worse). It is "accepting to lose something because you refuse to win in the wrong way." How many compromises have you made in your life? How many has the pastor made in his?
• And Jesus ends with a command. Until then, he had given no command, only declarations. The first command he gives his citizens is: rejoice. Right after speaking of oppression. What joy is he talking about? Not rejoicing because it hurts: "God is not a masochist." Rejoice for two reasons: a magnificent reward awaits you in heaven, and you are being treated like the prophets before you.
• Why speak of the prophets? The pastor sees it as an answer to our "why me?" reflex when we are mocked or pushed aside. Instead of "why me?", say: "I am in the right line," the line of Daniel, of Ezekiel. When it hits you this week, the remark, the mockery, the exclusion, tell yourself: there is a reward, and I am in the right line.
• The question this morning is not "did you like the portrait of the citizen of the kingdom?", but "is it you who has been described? Is it me?" Honestly, none of us is this portrait, the pastor first of all: "Me, Pastor Benjamin, who reflects so little of these beatitudes, I was so sad when I reread them this week." Then he looked up: being sad is rather good news, it is the second beatitude.
• The trap would be to come before these beatitudes thinking "well, that's pretty much my portrait." Then the kingdom is closed to you. Every citizen of the kingdom, reading the beatitudes, sees that he is far from them. This is not a test of your conversion, do not leave with doubts: it is an identity to inhabit and a test of the direction of your life. If you want to live this, you are on the right path.
• How to go about it? Not by going home with a to-do list. Reread the very first sentence: blessed are those who have nothing, and let flow toward others what God has done for you. Last week, the topic was a life to learn; here is the first lesson, and it is not learning to do something. The first lesson is bankruptcy: "You do not enter by showing what you have. You enter by showing that you have nothing, because someone paid, and that person is Jesus Christ."
• Do not leave with eight things to do, but with just one: put yourself before God, alone in your room, door closed, and say: "God, I have nothing to offer you. Make gentleness flow in me. Make kindness flow in me. Let me be touched by the injustice around me. Change my heart." The good news is that Jesus is waiting for you there, and he will tell you: the kingdom of heaven is yours.

Key Takeaways

• "Blessed" in the beatitudes is not a mood but a declaration from God about your situation before him: blessed by God.
• Jesus' kingdom is not upside down; it is our map of the world, learned since childhood, that is wrong.
• The first beatitude is the key: you do not enter the kingdom by paying with your works, but by recognizing that you have nothing and that Jesus paid.
• Gentleness, hunger for justice, kindness, peace: these are not virtues to manufacture, but what flows naturally when we contemplate what God has done for us.
• Living the right way up in an upside-down world costs something; the first command Jesus gives his citizens is then: rejoice, you are in the right line.

Personal Application

1. What is your map of a successful life, the one you learned without realizing it? How does it contradict the portrait in Matthew 5?
2. When did you last weep over your sin, and not over what you lack? Is there something you have learned to excuse and for which you can ask for a more tender heart?
3. Faced with the next injustice that touches you this week, will you choose to hit back or to believe that God defends your interests?
4. Toward whom must you "cross the room" to make peace, even if the other person started it?
5. What compromise are you still accepting so as not to lose something at work, at school, or in your relationships?

Verses Cited

• Matthew 5:3-12
• Psalm 1:1
• Ephesians 2:8
• Revelation 21:4
• Matthew 18:23-35
• Matthew 23:25-26
• Psalm 51:10

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the word "blessed" mean in the beatitudes?

It is not a mood or a feeling. Jesus takes up the formula of the Psalms ("Blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked") to describe the situation of someone before God. The preacher recalls John Stott's proposal: translate it as "blessed," that is, declared blessed by God. Each beatitude is a declaration, neither a command nor a wish, followed by a concrete promise: the kingdom of heaven, the earth as an inheritance, being recognized as a child of God.

Why is the first beatitude the key to all the others?

"Blessed are the poor in spirit" means ceasing to pretend you can pay your way into the kingdom with your good works. The entry has been paid in Jesus Christ. If you do not understand this, the rest of the beatitudes becomes moralism or a transaction with God. From this recognized poverty, gentleness, hunger for justice, and kindness are no longer manufactured: we let flow what God has done for us.

What does it mean to be gentle according to the Sermon on the Mount?

Gentleness is not a syrupy personality. The preacher takes up the definition of an African commentator: gentleness is the ability to master your strength and to use it only for the good of others. The gentle person is not the one who stays quiet because he can do nothing; it is the one who could crush and chooses not to, because he believes that God defends his interests and will give him the earth as an inheritance.