How do You View the Sermon on the Mount?

The Question in NT this week is “how do you view the Sermon on the Mount?” We were given a list of 8 views. The most common of the eight was that it is a set of impossibilities meant to drive us to Christ, much like the Old Testament law (view 2). Another common view is that the Sermon describes something that can’t be realized until the future millennial kingdom (view 8). Below is my answer which had to be a little long since it didn’t fit within the eight views. What is your view?

Here’s the question:

“First, how do you interpret the Sermon on the Mount? (In other words, do you concur with one or more of the 8 views listed in slide show B, or do you have a different view? I am looking for your overall view of the sermon, not how you apply each verse.”

None of the views listed in our notes explain the way I view the Sermon. My friends have gone with number two, and I can certainly respect that. Two is the closest of the eight. But we do not say that the Epistles are full of impossible standards. We wouldn’t say that Paul serves the same function for us that the law did for Paul, would we? I would contend that every principle of the Lord taught in the Sermon is taught elsewhere in the Epistles. James almost seems to write a parallel to the sermon, but we can also find these same thoughts and themes throughout Paul, Peter, and John.

It’s true that we can’t perfectly live the Christian life. None of us can perfectly live according to any of the Epistles any more than we can perfectly live according to this sermon, yet that does not reduce it to a mere set of impossibilities with the sole purpose of showing us our sinfulness. Certainly that is part of what the Lord was doing. He was showing the Pharisees (and us) that we are sinners; merely keeping certain rules without an over-all converted and regenerate spirit is meaningless and leaves us hopeless. We need Christ.

View number eight takes most of the relevance of the Sermon away from us. Did Matthew spend three chapters on something that won’t apply until the millennium? I doubt it. An extreme form of number eight says that none of the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount applies to us today and therefore we should not consider it or its teachings as authoritative. Some take this one step further and say that none of the Lord’s teaching applies to us at all.

The Lord shows that the Kingdom and true Christianity produce a whole new creature. One that is totally regenerated. Regeneration necessarily produces certain characteristics, which are most clearly portrayed in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes paint a picture of what the true, mature Christian will be, not what we need to strive to be in order to be Christians. The Sermon also shows that Christianity is a spiritual thing rather than an outward keeping of certain rules and morals.

Are you a Christian? Then there was a time that because of your sin you were poor in spirit (and hopefully you still are). Overall, you have meekness like that of your Lord. Your nature is to love not only your neighbor but others. Yes, you may lust, but you know that it’s sinful to lust and it bothers you and you strive against it. Yes, you may at times feel unjustified anger, but you repent knowing that it is sin and inconsistent with your born-again nature. These sins are recognized by you and they are not the normal characteristics of your day-to-day life.

To put it plainly, the Sermon is a description of what true Christianity looks like. If we don’t have these characteristics, or at least desire them, but are content to have merely an outward appearance of morality, then we need to examine ourselves. This view is explained more fully by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, which I heartily recommend.