Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 5

The Sermon on the Mount is obviously placed by St. Matthew (who appears in the earliest traditions as a collector of our Lord’s “Oracles” or discourses) at the forefront of his record of Christ's work. It serves as a great model discourse, the one that best represented the teaching with which He began His ministry. Few will fail to recognize the fitness of its position and the influence it has exercised wherever the gospel record has gone. More than any other part of that record, it impressed itself on the minds of people in the first age of the church, and it is quoted more often than any other by the writers of that period: St. James, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp.

In recent times, more than any other portion, it has attracted the admiring reverence even of many who do not view the Preacher of the Sermon as the Christian faith does. Its teaching, being purely ethical, has often been contrasted with the more dogmatic character of the discourses in St. John's Gospel. How far that contrast really exists will appear as we interpret it.

Two preliminary questions, however, present themselves:

1. Have we here the actual verbatim report of one single discourse?
2. Is that discourse the same as the one we find in Luke 6:20-49, which, for the sake of distinctness, we may call the Sermon on the Plain?

Following the method used until now in dealing with problems that arise from comparing one Gospel with another, the latter inquiry will be postponed until we address it when writing on St. Luke’s Gospel. Here it will be enough to state the most probable conclusion: that the two discourses are quite distinct, and that each has a traceable purpose and method of its own. The other question calls for discussion now.

At first sight, much evidence favors the belief that the Sermon on the Mount is a kind of model discourse, framed from the fragments of many similar sermons. Not only is there a large element common to it and the Sermon on the Plain, but we also find many other portions of it scattered throughout St. Luke's Gospel. For example:

In most of these passages, St. Luke reports what served as the starting point of the teaching. It comes as the answer to a question or the rebuke of a specific fault. This might lead us to think that the two Evangelists, having come across a collection of our Lord’s words (a term I use to include more than just discourses), each used them in his own way. St. Matthew sought to fit them together as much as possible into a continuous whole, while St. Luke tried to trace them to their sources and connect them with individual events.

However, this line of thought is countered by other facts that lead to an opposite conclusion. In chapters 5 and 6 of the Sermon on the Mount, there is strong evidence of a systematic plan and therefore of unity. The Beatitudes and the verses that immediately follow (Matthew 5:2–16) set forth the conditions of blessedness, the ideal life of the kingdom of heaven. Then comes the contrast between the righteousness it requires and the righteousness that was common among the scribes and Pharisees. This contrast is developed first through their way of handling the Commandments (Matthew 5:17–48), and second, through the three great elements of the religious life: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting (Matthew 6:1–18). This is followed by warnings against the love of money and the anxieties it brings, which are fatal to the religious life in all its forms (Matthew 6:19–34).

In the precepts of chapter 7, the sequence is less traceable. However, its absence is as natural on the assumption of missing links in a chain as it is on the idea of pearls threaded on a string or a mosaic made of fragments. The sermon, as it stands, could have been spoken in thirty or forty minutes, and there is no reason to think that this was the necessary or even customary limit of our Lord’s discourses.

Imagine a discourse somewhat longer than this, heard by a multitude. No one was taking notes at the time, but many people, perhaps years later, tried to record what they remembered. Then, consider a Gospel writer coming to collect these scattered fragments—the disjecta membra that all held so precious—with the aid of the Spirit (John 14:26). If he had heard the sermon himself, he would compare what others had written or could tell him with his own recollection. He would then arrange what he found with a visible order where the main points were clear, and with a more subtle order where the lines of thought had been too nuanced for the original hearers to grasp. The natural outcome of such a process is what we find here.

On these grounds, then, we may reasonably believe that we have substantially the report of a single discourse, perhaps with a few additions from other similar ones. It is the first great prophetic utterance, the first full proclamation of the perfect law of liberty (James 1:25), and the first systematic protest against the traditions of the Pharisees and scribes. In this protest, we find the foundation of holiness and see the life of Jesus translating itself into speech.

The sermon was not more than this. It did not reveal doctrines that we, from our Lord’s own teaching and that of His apostles, rightly hold to be essential to the true Christian faith. Therefore, it is wrong to make it the limit of theology, as some would like to do. This is all explained by the fact that our Lord spoke the word as people were able to hear it. This was the beginning, not the end, of His disciples’ training, and the events on which the fuller doctrines would rest had not yet happened. And so He was content to begin with earthly things, not heavenly (John 3:12), and to look forward to the coming of the Comforter to complete what He had begun.

Those who would follow His method must begin as He began. The Sermon on the Mount, in both its negative and positive elements, is therefore the eternal inheritance of the Church of Christ. At all times, it is “the milk for babes,” even though those who are mature may be capable of receiving the food of higher truths.

Blessed — The word used here differs from the one in Matthew 23:39 and Matthew 25:34. It expresses a permanent state of blessedness, rather than the passive reception of a blessing given by another.

The poor in spirit — The limitation, like in “the pure in heart,” points to the area of life where this poverty is found. In Luke 6:20, there is no such qualifying phrase; there, the words speak of outward poverty as a state that is less dangerous and therefore happier than that of riches.

Here, the blessedness belongs to those who, regardless of their outward circumstances, recognize in their inner life that they have nothing of their own. They understand they must receive before they can give and must be dependent on another’s generosity. They are, so to speak, the humble petitioners of the great King. To this disposition belongs the “kingdom of heaven”—the eternal realities of that society, in this life and the next, of which Christ is the Head.

Things are sometimes best understood by their opposites. We can point to the description of the church of Laodicea as an example of the opposite character: thinking itself “rich” in the spiritual life when it is truly “the pauper,” destitute of the true riches, blind, and naked.

Those who mourn — The verb is commonly coupled with weeping (Mark 16:10; Luke 6:25; James 4:9; Revelation 18:15–19). Here, as before, there is an implied, though not an expressed, limitation. The mourning is not the sorrow of the world that worketh death (2 Corinthians 7:10) for failure, suffering, and the consequences of sin, but the sorrow that flows out in tears that cleanse—the mourning over sin itself and the stain it has left upon the soul.

They will be comforted — The pronoun is emphatic. The promise implies the special comfort (including counsel) that the mourner needs; he will be “comforted” with the sense of pardon and peace, of restored purity and freedom. We cannot separate the promise from the word that Christendom has chosen (we need not now discuss its accuracy) to express the work of the Holy Spirit the Comforter, still less from the yearning expectation that then prevailed among those of our Lord’s hearers who were looking for the “consolation”—that is, the comfort—of Israel (Luke 2:25).

The meek — The word translated this way was probably used by Matthew in its popular meaning, without any reference to the definition that ethical writers had given it. However, it is worthwhile to recall Aristotle’s account of it (Eth. Nicom. verse 5), where he defines it as the character of one who has the passion of resentment under control and is therefore tranquil and untroubled. This understanding helps explain both the popular use of the word and the meaning of this beatitude.

They shall inherit the earth — The words may be partly allusive to the “kingdom of the saints of the Most High” in the prophecy of Daniel (Daniel 7:27), which did so much to shape the Messianic expectations of the time. They have, however, a wider and continuous fulfillment. In the long run, the influence of the meek and self-controlled is greater than that of the impulsive and passionate. Their serenity helps them find the maximum of true joy in all conditions of life, for to them the earth is not a stage for self-assertion and the graspings of desire, but an inheritance they have received from their Father.

Many of the best manuscripts invert the order of Matthew 5:4-5, and this arrangement, in any case, has the merit of bringing out the latent antithesis between the kingdom of heaven in its unseen greatness and the visible inheritance of the earth.

Those who hunger and thirst—In this, we seem to hear the lesson our Lord learned from His recent experience in the wilderness. The craving of bodily hunger has become a parable of that higher yearning for righteousness, a thirsting for God, like a deer desires the water brooks. This yearning is certain, in the end, to reach its full fruition.

Desires for earthly goods are frustrated or end in satiety and weariness. To this spiritual hunger alone belongs the promise that those who hunger and thirst in this way will surely be filled. The same thoughts meet us again in the Gospel of John, which in many respects is so different from that of St. Matthew (John 4:32).