You Have a Place at Grace - 10/29/2025

The Beatitudes of Jesus: Matthew 5:1-12

A quick glance might conclude the Beatitudes are just more ethical requirements for Christians seeking blessing before God. This would make them Law, another “do this and you shall live” demand on the Christian. We can’t dismiss this entirely, for their function as Law really hits home when we see our failures to be meek, pure, or peacemakers. However, a simple reduction of the Beatitudes to pure Law might be missing much of what our Lord is saying.

David Scaer’s work in Matthew shows a scholar’s passion for this Gospel and deep concern for underscoring the chief testimony of this Word to be Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Matthew talks a lot about the person of Jesus prior to chapter 5 and thus shifting suddenly from Christology (words about Christ) to Christian behavior may not be what the evangelist is doing. Writes Scaer: “it would seem strange at this point that he would move abruptly into rules for Christian living. The reader would hardly be prepared for such an abrupt literary tactic at this point.” Matthew also makes clear salvation is extra nos, “outside of us” and not dependent on any sort of works righteousness. It’s Jesus Who says “the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt.20:28). The trajectory of this Gospel is towards the crucifixion. Atonement is the goal of Jesus’ ministry accomplished at the cross not to be lost on the reader as he journeys through this Gospel.

When seeing the Beatitudes in light of Christ and His saving work at the cross, these words of our Lord take a shape different from simply being mere Law. Blessedness before God comes not by our fulfillment of the Law but faith in the One giving Himself as the all-availing ransom atoning for all sin. This means a life in Christ, a life of faith in the Holy One Himself and a blessedness described by Jesus in the divine Beatitudes. Scaer’s summary is this: “the Beatitudes are markedly Christological, but not in an isolated sense. They are descriptions both of Jesus and of those who have been joined by Jesus’ Father to His Kingdom.” Our comfort in conviction resides only in Christ, and the baptized life is one being “poor in Spirit.” Our poverty is evident and we cry to God Who says to His Church “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” Thus crushed, we’re not destroyed but washed and redeemed, poor but blessed possessors of a Kingdom only Jesus gives.

The One Who becomes poor for our sake, the One Who mourns for a fallen world, Who hungers and thirsts to fulfill all righteousness even through death, the merciful One, the pure One, the One Who makes peace by His cross and blood, the One persecuted for righteousness’s sake—Christ is the One Who obtains a Church by His blood as the sinless sacrifice, the fulfillment of the Law in the One Whose perfect obedience means our justification. Our lives in Him mean this identity herein the Beatitudes declared by the One again on a mountain teaching His people.

The Beatitudes are an example of Holy Scripture deep and sublime, causing us to think about ourselves in relation to Christ. They not only teach us how to live, but even more important they describe the Church in Christ by faith even now as we anticipate those promises of comfort, inheritance, and true satisfaction on that Day the Lord of Peace takes us to be with Himself. May God grant us such faith to see these promises, labor in our vocations, and find comfort still in the One Who calls the baptized “blessed.”

-By Rev. Ryan J. Ogrodowicz, “You Have a Place at Grace,” October 29th 2025

Grace Lutheran Church - Brenham, Texas

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod