DownshoreDrift: Dallas Willard on the The Blessedness of the Beatitudes

It is taking me awhile to get through The Divine Conspiracy, primarily because of busyness. Check out my previous installments of this series:

Today I am going to tackle Chapter 4: Who Is Really Well Off - The Beatitudes. This was a powerful chapter and I worked through it for about a week. Of all the chapters that I have read so far, it might be the easiest to summarize and it might have made the most impact on me. Willard is saying that we have gotten the Beatitudes listed at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 all wrong. He says that we have used the Beatitudes as a checklist of spiritual attainment. In other words, we have tried to become spiritually poor so that we would in turn, inherit the Kingdom of God. Trying to create a spiritual condition within ourselves so that we will be rewarded by God is not the point, Willard says. He is saying that Jesus is describing the actual position of those who are blessed by God. If you find yourself in spiritual destitution, do not worry, because God is coming to you. Jesus was speaking to the crowd and was describing what he saw. He saw a lot of spiritually poor people. He saw the misfits and outcasts. He saw those who did not have it together. They were blessed because God had come to THEM right in that moment. Basically, Willard is saying that Jesus was turning everyone's expectations upside down. They had thought that if they were rich or did everything right, then that was the sign that God was blessing them. But, Jesus said no to that. Our state of blessedness is not dependent upon what we do but upon who God is. The facts are, He has come to all of us, even the spiritually destitute - even those who mourn.

Unfortunately, we have taken these words of grace and have turned them around into another "law." We have tried to be spiritually poor. We have tried to mourn, believing that if we do, THEN we will experience God's comfort. Some have even gone so far as to court persecution so that God will bless them. In all of this, we show our self righteousness in believing that the blessings of God can be courted by our merit or behavior. No, we are blessed in the fact that we know Jesus. All blessing comes through faith in Christ, not in any merit of our own. If we know Jesus, we know God and that is what is important. We are to seek after Him. The good news of the Kingdom is that Jesus has come to all of us, even the brokenhearted - even the poor. There are no distinctions that keep us from knowing Christ except for our own unbelief.

Willard says:

Instead of denying the relevance of Jesus' teachings to the present, we must simply acknowledge that he has been wrongly interpreted. The Beatitudes, in particular are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings.

No one is actually being told that they are better off for being poor, for mourning, for being persecuted, and so on, or that the conditions listed are recommended ways to well-being before God or man. Nor are the Beatitudes indications of who will be on top "after the revolution." They are explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship to Jesus. They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope . . .

The Beatitudes simply cannot be "good news" if they are understood as a set of "how-tos" for achieving blessedness. They would then only amount to a new legalism. They would not serve to throw open the kingdom - anything but. They would impose a new brand of Phariseeism, a new way of closing the door - as well as some very gratifying new possibilities for the human engineering of righteousness.

The chapter continues with a look at Jesus' teaching style and how he taught to change lives instead of just to pass on information. Throughout his teaching on the Kingdom and His coming, He continually asserted to the people that his ministry was authenticated by the blind seeing, the lame walking, the captive being set free, and good news being preached to the poor. The Kingdom of God is now open to everyone through Jesus Christ. No one, no matter how bad they are or how much they have done is left out. He went to the forsaken, the spit on, and the bedraggled. He brought God to them and they were changed.

I was challenged with the truth that I do not go to those who are on the margins of society to bring the good news of God's love and acceptance to them. I am much too often looking for those who make me feel better about myself or who are easier to minister to. I too often look on the surface of things and try to ascertain if someone has proven themselves worthy of the message of salvation. But, Jesus wasn't like me. He went to everyone, no matter how offensive they were. And, he loved them. The same Jesus lives in me and the only reason that I do not love the unlovable the way that He did is because of my own sin and shortcomings. May God live and love through me. May I also freely receive His grace without trying to merit it through my spirituality.