Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 5:1

"And seeing the multitudes, he went up into the mountain: and when he had sat down, his disciples came unto him:" — Matthew 5:1 (ASV)

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:

MATTHEW	LUKE
(1)Matthew 5:13	Luke 14:34
(2)Matthew 5:18	Luke 16:17
(3)Matthew 5:25–26	Luke 12:58
(4)Matthew 5:32	Luke 16:18
(5)Matthew 6:9–13	Luke 11:2–4
(6)Matthew 6:19–21	Luke 12:33–34
(7)Matthew 6:22–23	Luke 11:34–36
(8)Matthew 6:24	Luke 16:13
(9)Matthew 6:25	Luke 12:22–23
(10)Matthew 6:26–34	Luke 12:24–31
(11)Matthew 7:7–11	Luke 11:9–13
(12)Matthew 7:13	Luke 13:24
(13)Matthew 7:22–23	Luke 13:25–27

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.