At the close of every Lord’s Day, the minister is afforded the tremendous privilege of pronouncing the benediction of our triune God on his assembled people: “May the Lord bless you, and keep you . . .” What beneficence! What boon! What bounty! to become the recipients of the divine favor and protection of the Maker and Redeemer of heaven and earth!

But then Monday comes, and once more we find ourselves engulfed in a seemingly endless wave of tragedies, both personal and corporate: an ailing father, a failed engagement, a divided congregation, a people in turmoil. Have the blessings failed? Has God forsaken his people?

Many of us recognize that divine favor is not materialistic, for the Scriptures never promise a life of influence, ease, or pleasure. At the same time, the sorrows we endure can so overwhelm us that we are left feeling confused and helpless. Bearing under the fury of a world that hates us from without, and the terrors of a conscience awakened to the depth of our own sin from within, such circumstances leave us utterly humiliated and exposed to our own inadequacy. And we ask: where is the blessing?

It is within this context that our Savior addresses his own, a people wounded and wearied under the weight of their estate of sin and misery. Matthew recounts to us those glad tidings Christ has brought as he pronounces the inauguration of the long-awaited kingdom, the blessings conferred upon the recipients of that kingdom, and the mode in which such blessings come as we await its consummation.

A Conflict of Kingdoms

The opening chapters of Matthew’s gospel narrate the irruption of the heavenly dawn into the earthly realm of sin and darkness. Against the backdrop of yet another mock Pharaoh comes one greater than Moses, the virgin-born Davidic Son, upon whose shoulders rest the government of an ever-increasing, unshakable kingdom (Isa. 9:6–7).

For sure, the nation had long awaited a deliverer, but their expectations were too small, too earthly. As Jesus travels from town to town, heralding the kingdom’s arrival, the people expect a political Messiah who will expel the Roman legions from their midst, not the demonic hordes. They hold to delusions of grandeur—of earthly power and prosperity—not spiritual liberation. The citizens want a theonomic revolution and festal buffets, while the rulers want only parlor tricks and magic shows. Yet Jesus’s message of the kingdom, summarized in the Sermon on the Mount, proclaims, not simply a better kingdom, but a different kind of kingdom. As Daniel portended, and as Luther recognized at Heidelberg in April 1518, the difference between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms of men was not a difference between dwarves and giants, but between light and dark. It was a difference not simply of size, but of kind. It was the difference between heaven and earth. And as this heavenly kingdom has irrupted into the earthly plane, it operates according to a different set of principles. The Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1–12) describe what life as a citizen of heaven looks like here on earth, as that light shatters and scatters the darkness. These blessings take on a particular form, upending Israel’s, and our, expectations.

The Blessings of the Heavenly Kingdom

When we consider the Beatitudes, we must first recognize what they are not. They are not natural dispositions. The great nineteenth century novelists—Hugo, Dickens, and Tolstoy—wrote of the poor, almost as if poverty itself was an unqualified virtue. Today, others do the same, but with respect to particular personality traits. Our Savior, however, does neither. He does not pronounce favor on a particular economic class; nor is he declaring that God’s grace is restricted solely to the morbid, the introvert, or the blissfully naive. Rather, the blessings of the kingdom befall those who have been subjugated by grace and reconciled through the mediation of the Son.

Likewise, the Beatitudes are not commands: they are blessings. That is, in fact, what beatitude means: blessedness, happiness, or joy. Yet how many of us treat the Beatitudes as if they were some sort of meritorious prerequisite to obtaining the blessing? To read Christ’s blessings as imperatives is to divest the Beatitudes of their power: they render the blessings contingent upon one’s own moral striving rather than God’s gratuitous favor. Note that the only commands found in the Beatitudes are not given until the very end, and they are this: “rejoice and be glad” (v. 12). In other words, the blessings Christ pronounces are glad tidings given to lift burdens, not to impose new hardships.

But if these are neither natural dispositions nor moral imperatives, what are they? They are what Christ calls them—blessings, freely bestowed on a particular people, the citizens of heaven. We see this in the “bookends” of the Beatitudes. In these verses, Christ pronounces a series of benedictions. But note the promise attending the first (v. 3) and last (v. 10) of these blessings: “. . . for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” As these blessings bookend the whole of the Beatitudes, so should we see the totality of these blessings as the gift of the heavenly kingdom.

Furthermore, we ought to recognize that it is an unbroken blessing. In other words, the blessings are not restricted simply to the “latter half” of each beatitude. The whole matter is a blessing. Our Savior does not say, “Blessed shall be,” but “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” He does not simply say, “theirs will be,” but “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Yet how can we say that poverty of spirit, mourning, humiliation, spiritual hunger, or persecution are blessings? To have our lives derailed in the affairs of providence, to feel our own spiritual inadequacy, to suffer burnout, sickness, and grief—none of these feel like a blessing. From an earthly vantage point, they are the exact opposite of divine blessedness. Why, then, does our Savior pronounce such a blessing upon his own?

In these blessings, we find the description of the citizen of heaven (Phil. 3:20–21), and with it, a heavenly pattern, for it marks the man who recognizes that this world cannot truly satisfy and reminds us that true blessedness is not found in the fading pleasures of all that this fading world offers. And it is here that we see the greatest blessing of all: that this pattern makes us ready for heaven, by molding us into the image of the King of this heavenly kingdom.

The King of This Kingdom

Without fail, each of the eight blessings follow the same pattern. The first half of each describes the citizen of heaven in this life on earth. And although each blessing is marked by humiliation, despite the fact that they are all attended by suffering, each blessing finds its resolution in a state of exaltation and glory. Such is the pattern of the heavenly blessing: it is a cruciform pattern, a pattern of suffering unto glory. Poverty gives way to heavenly reward; the hungry are satisfied; the merciful receive mercy; the humiliated inherit, not only heaven, but earth as well.

The blessings our Savior pronounces upon the citizens of his kingdom contain the promise that he has come to redeem us; and in redeeming us, he has come to make us look more like himself. The great blessing of the kingdom consists in this: that as Christ has ascended on high, he has poured out upon his church his Holy Spirit, who forges us through the crucible of affliction to make us look like the dearly beloved of the Father. Just as the King of heaven had nowhere to lay his head; just as he was dependent upon the Spirit to provide him with his daily needs; just as he mourned the sin of the nation and man’s present plight; just as he wept over the grave of his own friends; even as he was ever merciful, and ever pure in heart; even as he came to make peace, yet was slandered, persecuted, and slain, so, too, are the citizens of heaven molded into the same pattern, with the mark of the King branded on our very souls. Jesus pronounces you blessed, because he is at work to wean you off of this world and shape you for the world to come.

Preparing for Heaven

Perhaps we fail to grasp the nature of these blessings because we, like Israel in Christ’s day, are too earthly-minded. What we need is a reinvigorated, thoroughgoing heavenly-mindedness, to remind us that we are but pilgrims and strangers passing through this earthly wilderness. How can a life bookended by poverty and persecution ever be counted blessed? It is because the blessings take the shape of a cross. It seems so foolish to the outside world. But such are the blessings of the topsy-turvy kingdom: that in being conformed to Jesus’s death in this life, we might be made ready for the resurrection unto life in the world to come. We may at present be under a cross, but we are not under a curse; nor does that cross mark the end. For there will come a day when the suffering will give way to glory, on the Day when the Kingdom is consummated, and the cross is exchanged for a crown.

In the interim, we continue to count ourselves blessed, for Christ calls us blessed; that though afflicted in every way, we are not crushed; though perplexed, we are not driven to despair; though persecuted, we are not forsaken; though struck down, we are not destroyed: for we bear in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Christ may also be manifested in our bodies (2 Cor. 4:7–10).

The author is an OP minister. New Horizons, June 2023.