Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach

MATTHEW 5

MATTHEW 5:5

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COMMENT/CONTEXT

I think we would be hard-pressed to find anyone who claims to be born again that does not have some understanding of the Beattitudes, but here is a refresher:

BEATITUDE

A beatitude is a pronouncement of blessing, phrased in a formula that begins with the phrase “blessed is” or “blessed are.” The word blessed has connotations of happiness, felicity, satisfaction and well-being. To pronounce a blessing in the formal rhetoric of a beatitude is to do more than express a wish-it is in some sense to confer the quality of blessedness on a person or group, or to declare the reality of something that is perceived in the person or group.

Beatitudes in the Bible usually confer happiness on a general character type, but sometimes they appear in a narrative context and are directed to a specific person. While a beatitude usually expresses a wish for future well-being, it is sometimes a statement of response for something that a person has already done. Naomi responds to Ruth’s account of Boaz’s generosity with the statement, “Blessed be he by the LORD” (Ruth 2:20 NRSV). Although we customarily think of a beatitude as expressing blessing on humans, an important OT motif is the pronouncement of blessing on God. Taking all of these types into account, the number of beatitudes expressed in the Bible is well over a hundred. Wherever they appear, they are evocative-high points of positive sentiment toward someone and expressive of an ideal toward which others should aspire.

One avenue toward understanding the beatitudes of the Bible is to note the qualities of character that lead to a pronouncement of blessing or happiness in the formulaic rhetoric of the beatitude. When we do so, we find a distinction between the OT and NT beatitude. Who is pronounced blessed in the OT? The person who by discretion prevents an impulsive person from vengeance (1 Sam 25:33 RSV); the wives and servants of a wise king (1 Kings 10:8; 2 Chron 9:7); people who take refuge in God (Ps 2:12; 34:8) and whose sins are forgiven (Ps 32:1–2); the nation whose God is the Lord (Ps 33:12; 144:15); people who consider the poor (Ps 41:1; Prov 14:21), who worship God in the temple (Ps 65:4; 84:4), who keep God’s commands (Ps 119:1–2) and who have many children (Ps 127:3–5). If we are looking for an OT counterpart to the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, with their composite portrait of the blessed person, Psalm 1 will suffice: it is an extended picture of the blessedness of the godly person, beginning with the evocative beatitude, “Blessed is the man,” and including the summary that “in all that he does, he prospers” (Ps 1:3 RSV).

What all these OT beatitudes express is the blessedness of the godly and moral person in this life. They arise from a religious community that values God supremely and views everyday life as a quest to secure God’s covenant blessing, including, but not limited to, its material benefits. OT beatitudes extol the results of trusting in God and praise the prudent person who lives in conformity to God’s rules for living. They confirm rather than challenge conventional wisdom.

By contrast, the overwhelming preponderance of NT beatitudes are revolutionary in their rhetoric and sentiment, and apocalpytic in their vision. They pronounce blessing on the person who will share the coming kingdom, and they reverse conventional values by calling people to a radical lifestyle. The blessed person is now not the person living the moral life and prospering as a result of it, but rather the person whom Christ will find awake when he comes (Lk 12:37–38, 43) and who will eat bread in the kingdom of God (Lk 14:15). The blessed person is the one “who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12 RSV). These beatitudes of the kingdom are also christocentric, pronouncing blessing on “the King who comes in the name of the Lord” (Lk 19:38) and on the disciples whose eyes have seen Christ (Lk 10:23).

The beatitudes of Matthew 5:1–11 can be taken as normative of NT beatitudes. Together they give us a portrait of the ideal follower of Christ, and they consistently conceive of blessing in unconventional ways. The person who is declared blessed is not the earthly success story but those who are poor in spirit, who mourn and are meek, who are merciful and pure in heart, and so forth. Furthermore, the rewards that are promised to these people are spiritual and apocalyptic-receiving the kingdom of heaven, inheriting the earth, seeing God, obtaining a great reward in heaven. Climaxing the NT apocalyptic beatitudes are seven beatitudes scattered throughout the book of Revelation (Rev 1:3; 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7, 14).

BIBLIOGRAPHY. R. A. Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount (Waco, TX: Word, 1982) 62–118.

Leland Ryken et al., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 82.

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STUDY

In today’s devotional, we look at Matthew 5:5 and the attitude of Meekness. My favorite translation of v.5 is from the Amplified Bible: “Blessed [inwardly peaceful, spiritually secure, worthy of respect] are the gentle [the kind-hearted, the sweet-spirited, the self-controlled], for they will inherit the earth.“ The definition below states that meekness is not weakness. Jesus was not preaching a message of fear and helplessness. He was preaching that true strength came not from brute force but from restraint (self-control).

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The key to understanding the virtue of meekness is that it is not a quality of weakness but rather of strength. Meekness is not cowardice, timidity or lack of confidence. In classical Greek the word from which we derive meekness was used to describe tame animals, soothing medicine and a gentle breeze. The word also implies self-control. Aristotle describes it as the mean between excessive anger and excessive passivity, so that meekness can be regarded as strength under control.
The background for understanding the biblical virtues of meekness and gentleness is the disparagement of these virtues in the classical world and the humanistic philosophies that have stemmed from classicism. Most of the world’s literature has exalted the conquering hero who refuses to submit and who exerts his or her interests against anyone who might challenge those interests. Most cultures have reserved their rewards for people who compete successfully through strength of will and superior power. In such a context Jesus’ portrait of the ideal disciple as someone who is meek, accompanied by the promised reward that such a person will inherit the earth (Mt 5:5; cf. Ps 37:11), is a flat contradiction of conventional wisdom.

Meekness and gentleness appear in the Bible among lists of virtues, and two corresponding motifs are associated with them: they are commanded behavior, and rewards are promised to people who display these virtues. Thus the psalmist can claim that God “will hear the desire of the meek” and “will strengthen their heart” (Ps 10:17 NRSV). The meek “shall possess the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity” (Ps 37:11 NRSV). The day will come when “the meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD” (Is 29:19 NRSV). Gentleness is one of the evocative nine fruits of the Spirit against which there is no condemnation of the law (Eph 5:23), and it is one of the virtues that Paul begs the Ephesians to display as they “live a life worthy of the calling” to which they have been called (Eph 4:1–2). Meekness is a virtue that NT Christians are commanded to “put on” (Col 3:12) and “aim at” (1 Tim 6:11), and Christians are repeatedly exhorted to “be” meek or gentle (Tit 3:2; 1 Pet 2:18; cf. 1 Thess 2:7; Jas 3:13, 17). Gentleness is a prerequisite for holding church office (1 Tim 3:3), and “a quiet and gentle spirit” among wives is “in God’s sight … very precious” (1 Pet 3:4).

Yet another motif is that meekness or gentleness is commanded as the spirit in which believers are called to perform certain duties. The list of such duties includes restoring wayward Christians (Gal 6:1), correcting opponents (2 Tim 2:25), receiving the implanted word (Jas 1:21) and making a defense of the gospel (1 Pet 3:15). In many of the passages that enjoin meekness or gentleness as a virtue, it is easy to get the impression that this virtue is displayed especially in speech, a premise made explicit in the proverb that “a gentle tongue is a tree of life” (Prov 15:4 NRSV).

The two biblical characters with whom we most readily associate meekness are Moses and Jesus. We read regarding Moses that he “was very meek, more than all men that were on the face of the earth” (Num 12:3 RSV). If we examine the life of Moses, we find good evidence that meekness is not weakness but strength under control. There is no more heroic and forceful character in the OT than Moses. He is fearless in exercising leadership against unbearable intransigence among his followers. He stands up to Pharaoh. He defends his right to lead when his authority is challenged. He is the most visible and powerful figure in the traveling nation of Israel. Yet he does all of this in the strength of God, and he himself makes no presumption to be self-reliant, nor does he use his position as leader for self-aggrandizement. The major exception is when he strikes the rock instead of obeying God’s command to speak to it, accompanied by a self importance about being the one to bring forth water (“Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” Num 20:10 NRSV). The incongruity of Moses’ behavior on this occasion with the general tenor of his life operates as a foil to highlight the prevailing quality of meekness in Moses’ demeanor.

Jesus is the supreme example of meekness and gentleness. “When he was abused,” writes Peter, “he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Pet 2:23 NRSV). Defiant toward the religious establishment in defending the helpless and diseased, as well as opposing evil, Jesus is self-effacing in regard to his own interests. From the cross he prays that his heavenly Father would forgive those who crucify him (Lk 23:34). No wonder he characterizes himself as being “gentle and lowly in heart” (Mt 11:29 RSV). And it is no wonder, either, that when we search our own longings we find such a person to be the one to whom we would most naturally go to “find rest for [our] souls” (Mt 11:29).

Although meekness and gentleness are robustly positive virtues, not a display of passive timidity, we can nonetheless bring them into focus if we list the behaviors they are not. Meekness and gentleness are the opposite of harshness, a grasping spirit, vengefulness, self-aggrandizement and lack of self-control.

Leland Ryken et al., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 545–546.

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Here are two commentaries on Matthew 5:5:

Men count the hectors of the world happy, whom none can provoke but they must expect as good as they bring, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I tell you these are not truly happy; they are tortured with their own passions; as their hand is against every one, so every man’s hand is against them; besides that there is a God, who will revenge the wrongs they do. But the meek, who can be angry, but restrain their wrath in obedience to the will of God, and will not be angry unless they can be angry and not sin; nor will easily be provoked by others, but rather use soft words to pacify wrath, and give place to the passions of others; these are the blessed men. For though others may by their sword and their bow conquer a great deal of the earth to their will and power, yet they will never quietly and comfortably inherit or possess it; they are possessors malæ fidei, forcible possessors, and they will enjoy what they have, as rapacious birds enjoy theirs, unquietly, every one hath his gun ready charged and cocked against them: but those who are of meek and quiet spirits, though they may not take so deep root in the earth as others more boisterous, yet there will be no worm at the root of what they have, and they shall enjoy what God giveth them with more quiet and certainty; and God will provide for them, verily they shall be fed, Psal. 37:3, 11.

Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1853), 20–21.

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BLESSED ARE THE MEEK. GERVASE BABINGTON: As I say this he knew, so likewise as well did he foresee that there causes public and private of impatience and immoderate affections should arise unto his children, and therefore provided for it also. For cast your eyes about the world a little, and view the course of things, and are not the godly, harmless, and quiet men often in this world rejected and wrung and pinched at for this thing and that, when more contentious natures are let alone as shrews to deal withal?…

But like a wise teacher and a good God, he has done it as I say in the next verse there and commands to us the rule of our nature and the victory over our affections be the provocations never so many to the contrary, setting a crown of happiness upon the head of that glorious virtue in these words: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Now the meek, says a learned person, are those who are not easily provoked with injuries, who are not short and testy upon every offense, but are ready rather to suffer any thing than to do the things that the wicked do, men and women to conclude that resist not evil, but overcome evil with good. Or yet more fully such (as another faith) as are not of nature fierce, and desirous ever of revenge, but mild, tractable, courteous, soft, and gentle, easily forgiving a wrong, if it is done to them, hating chidings, contentions and strife, ready to give place to everybody, and choosing rather with a quiet mind to commit all to God, than with intemperate heat to pursue his own right. Blessed are these men and women, says the Lord, and happy shall they be; the earth is theirs, and the commodities in it, and they shall inherit them. And why so may you either say or think? Surely because this is not flesh and blood in

Jason K. Lee, William M. Marsh, and Timothy George, eds., Matthew: New Testament, vol. I, Reformation Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2021), 59.

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Since today’s devotion is by A.W. Pink, his comments on Matthew 5:3-11 are most appropriate:

DEVOTION

Blessed are the meek