The Nine Beatitudes and the Nine-fold Fruit of the Spirit

There are nine Beatitudes. What is the internal unity of these nine? Notice an important principle that Paul is a commentator extraordinaire of the teaching of the lord Jesus. In other words, what we have in the NT is the text which is the teaching of the lord Jesus, and the commentary which is Paul’s exposition and application of the words of the lord Jesus. When you are having difficulty understanding precisely the meaning of what the lord Jesus is saying, you will find somewhere in the teaching of Paul the matter well expounded and much more clearly set forth than we could do ourselves.

There are nine Beatitudes, Let’s see whether Paul has written about something that has a nine-fold application. Immediately most will be aware that the fruit of the Spirit has a  ninefold application Galatians. 5: 22-23. Is this a coincidence?

When you put the Beatitudes, nine of them on this side, and the fruit of the Spirit, nine on the other side, you will immediately be inclined to say: “No, I don’t see any correspondence. One starts ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’ and the other says ‘the fruit of the Spirit is love’.” Well, not so fast, because Paul is a commentator and he does not simply repeat the Beatitudes, he explains their content.

Is the Correspondence Coincidental?

First, let us consider the question whether this matter of nine in each case, is purely coincidental. We do not have very far to go to look for a confirmation because in Galatians 5, in the same chapter, a few verses earlier, the apostle Paul speaks of the works of the flesh.

Let us turn to Galatians 5:19: “Now the works of the flesh are plain”; they are: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, [party spirit, envy, drunkenness,] carousing”.

He goes on to say, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” So we understand that any professing Christian who does the works of the flesh, no matter how often they go to church, no matter how big a Bible they lug around, this kind of person, the apostle Paul says, will not enter into the kingdom of God, that is, they will not inherit age upon age lasting life.

Notice that the subject here is the kingdom of God, exactly as in the Beatitudes.

The first beatitude begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God” and the eighth beatitude also says, “Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake”; these are the people who shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Did you count how many works of the flesh there are? How many does Paul mention? He mentions 15 categories of this kind. 15 categories! Now again I was interested to see whether Paul has simply, more or less, made up these 15 categories, simply from his mind or whether these 15 categories were also based somewhere on the lord’s teaching. Immediately, of course the lord’s words in Matthew and Mark come to mind and so let’s  look at the lord’s teaching in Mark 7:21-22 where you will see a list there which says, “For from within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.” How many did you count? 13. “Aha!” you say, “13! Paul got 15. 2 are missing!”

Not so fast because, we have what is known as synoptic parallels. This same message is also recorded in Matthew but interestingly enough with 2 - notice 2 - differences, and if you add these two differentiations from the parallel passage in Matthew, what do you get? You get a list of 15.

What a surprise! Paul was a very thorough man. He missed nothing. What are the two things in Matthew that are not mentioned in Mark? Well, in the Matthew list (in Matthew 15:18-19), which is shorter than Mark’s, you will find two things that are not mentioned in Mark. One of these is in v. 19 which is a ‘false witness’. The term ‘false witness’ does not occur in Mark’s list.

Now If you depend on an English translation, you will completely miss that. The English translations have obliterated an important difference by their translations. You see in Matthew 15:18 the word there is “evil thoughts” and here you have “dialogismoi poneroi”, that is, their thoughts are evil, but in Mark the word is quite different in Greek. The word is not “poneros” but “kakos”. It is a different word. Yet, if you look at the RSV, you will find both translated as evil thoughts as though the original had exactly the same word. That is why a bible student cannot depend upon English translations;  because important distinctions are obliterated, with no regard for the difference in the words.

The difference is not only that there is a different word there; the difference extends to the fact that one has the article and the other does not have the definite article. That is, in Matthew the word is anarthrous, it occurs without the definite article, whereas in Mark you have the definite article occurring in that section. So there are two important distinctions and yet you would not gather from the English translation that there was any distinction at all.

Anyone with some degree of familiarity of Greek will know that there is a distinction between evil and bad in Greek, i.e., that these words are not at all the same. The words are used differently and advisedly differently.

Archbishop Trent states in his study of the synonyms of the NT. He says the distinction between the word “kakos” in Mark and the word “poneros” in Matthew can be summed up like this: the word “kakos” means ‘bad’ [but the word “poneros” means evil]. The bad person (i.e. the one used in Mark) may be content to perish in his own corruption, but the evil person (i.e. the one used in Matthew) is not content unless he is corrupting others as well and drawing them into the same destruction with himself. So what you have in Mark is the word that somebody is bad. He is content just to corrupt himself or let himself be corrupted. But in Matthew the word is ‘evil’, that is, somebody evil is distinct from somebody who is bad in that he wants not only to be corrupt himself but he wants to corrupt somebody else. He wants to drag somebody else into sin. That is a big distinction there.

You cannot, like the RSV, translate the 2 different terms simply both equally with the same words - “evil thoughts”. That is not correct.

From this we see that both lists have the same number of items. Paul’s list has 15 items. Mark and Matthew put together (because they are parallels and belong together) in fact also have a net total of 15 items. Could that be a coincidence?

So, the fruit of the Spirit and the Beatitudes, both have 9 things mentioned, and the works of the flesh have 15 items, in each case. I think you must begin to realize there cannot be a mere coincidence there.

We have already noticed the reference in Galatians, and in the Beatitudes, to the kingdom of God. This is all the more significant when you realize that the term ‘kingdom of God’ is not that frequent in Paul, occurring only 14 times.

Now having established this, let us return to the Beatitudes to search for an internal unity, an internal spiritual element that connects together all of 9 Beatitudes. What might it be? What could it be?

Works of the Flesh Are the Consequences of the Thoughts    of the Heart

Well, we have already noticed that, if you put these two lists of 9 side by side, you will see that, of course, they do not correspond to each other.

Why? It is very important. When you study the Bible, look very carefully at the words. These two lists are distinct from each other; that is the teaching of the lord Jesus and Paul have an internal connection but are distinct from each other in a very important way. What way? Well, if you looked at the lists of evil, what did you see?

Did you read carefully there? The lord Jesus said, “Out of the heart of the natural man proceeds 15 kinds of evil things.” These are not just 15 evil things; these are just categories.

There are 15 categories which include all kinds of different evils under those same names.

Now out of the heart is what the lord Jesus is talking about, the heart attitude. That is what Paul is speaking about. Paul said, “The works of the flesh are”, and 15 categories follow. Now do you follow what happens?

You see what the lord Jesus is talking about is the inward thoughts, but Paul as an expositor is explaining what will be the consequences of those evil thoughts. Therefore you do not expect the two lists to correspond exactly because one is speaking about what you comes from within, your heart; is concerned with your inner attitude when you are unregenerate – unconverted; when God has not come into your life to change you. Paul is talking about what happens when these thoughts bear fruit in action, when the thoughts become works of the flesh.

Bear this important distinction in mind. The nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit correspond numerically and otherwise to the nine beatitudes. This is the fruit that God bears in the regenerate - converted person when He enables them to express these nine holy and beautiful attitudes, these nine godly inner attitudes are called the fruit of the Spirit.

The lord is talking about inner attitudes. Paul is speaking of the results of those attitudes, what fruit they produce. When we come to the spiritual parallel we see exactly the same point. When you look at the Beatitudes, you see it is talking about the inner attitude. “Blessed are the poor in spirit?” “Blessed are the pure in heart....”

Again the lord Jesus is talking about the heart attitude; He is talking about the internal attitude of a spiritual man/woman. Paul is speaking about the fruit of the Spirit, the counterpart of the works of the flesh.

You cannot take a man’s inner being away from him; his thoughts, his feelings, his attitude; but you see his works, that is, the fruit his inner attitude produces. These are two very important things. In each case the lord is speaking about inner attitude. Paul is expounding and explaining what happens when you have this kind of inner attitude. If you have sinful inner attitudes then you will have the works of the flesh which he describes in these parallel 15 items.

Paul is not going over the Beatitudes and repeating them. He expects his hearers, who are believers, to have been instructed in the teaching of the lord Jesus already. He is expounding to them the works that come out of these kinds of evil thoughts and what fruit is produced that comes out of these holy thoughts.

Paul as a commentator has the task of explaining; explicitly what are the things that will follow either in the result of holy thoughts or evil thoughts. Once you perceive all these, I think you will begin to see that in this whole matter something very wonderful happens.

Poor in Spirit and Love Are Foundational

Let us now try to follow through this observation, and see whether our observation is correct.

The first beatitude says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” and the first fruit of the Spirit is love.

I would like you, first of all, to notice that the first beatitude is a foundational statement that in a way includes in itself the other eight beatitudes which follow.

The same is true for the fruit of the Spirit. The first fruit ‘love’ is in a way a fruit that contains all the other eight within itself.

That is why Paul did not say ‘the fruits of’ (plural). He said, “fruit of the Spirit”, a single fruit which has an eight-fold manifestation, like a cluster of grapes. There is just one cluster, but has 9 grapes on it. They are all part of the one thing. There is an internal unity in all these.

So to be poor in spirit [to realize that one is helpless and unable to carry out what God requires of an by themselves] is a foundation statement from which all the other Beatitudes derive, and love is the foundation fruit from which the other 8 follow.

If you do not have love, you will not have, joy, you will have not peace. None of the others will follow. If you are not poor in spirit [realize your spiritual poverty], neither will you mourn for sin; neither will you have this hungering and thirsting for righteousness; neither will you have  meekness; all these things follow from that foundation element: love.

But now look at it like this: the way to study the Bible is to ask one question. And the reason why Paul is so remarkable a commentator, so profound in his insight into the meaning of God’s word is that when he reads the Bible and looks at a passage, he applies to it himself, to see what fruit it will produce. When you study the Bible, think of it like this. The lord Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Say to yourself, “Lord, help me to realize that I am poor in spirit and thus unable on my own to do what you ask of me in your word. Lord, by your grace, I will understand what it really means to be poor in spirit. What will happen to me when I realize that I am poor in spirit, that I can do nothing of and by myself to please you?” The answer will come.

If you come to Him realizing the poverty of your spirit, you will know from experience what God will do with you, when you come to Him with the sense of utter dependence: “come to Him in poverty of spirit”, that is, “I come to you, Lord, having nothing in myself. Have pity upon me a sinner, spiritually impoverished, unable to carry out Your plan and purpose for me in my own strength”.

Do you know what God will do? He will pour forth His graceful kindness and love upon you! That is what He will do. And you will experience Him! You will experience the in pouring of His love into your life. Then you will  come to the understanding that you are poor in spirit and have no means to do God’s will, and therefore need to have His Spirit to indwell you, in order that His love will be poured into your heart!” That is why Paul said that, exactly those words in Romans 5:5 that “God has shed abroad His love into our hearts by His Holy Spirit.”

Paul is speaking about experience. He says, “I know it because He has shed abroad, He has poured forth His love into my heart by the Holy Spirit.” You see how perfectly there it follows.

If you will come to Him as a sinner realizing your poverty of spirit, unable to do His will on your own power, you will experience His grace, His loving kindness, and His spiritual bounty that He will pour forth upon you.

Mourning and Joy

Now if you study the Bible not academically, but spiritually, you will see that Paul’s conclusion is exactly borne out by experience. The same is true if you go right through the Beatitudes. What happens to those who mourn; who mourn over their own sins; who mourn over the sins of other people; who mourn over the sins of the called-out Assembly – the Israel of God; just as Ezra and Nehemiah mourned over the sins of Israel. When Ezra said; “Lord, we have sinned. We, your people Israel, have sinned wretchedly. Have pity upon us.” What happened?

What happens when you mourn for sin? Well, He because of the sin offering sacrifice of His son Jesus, He grant unto you, forgiveness of your sins What happens when you are forgiven of your sins? You will be filled with joy. That is exactly what the parallel passage in Luke says. In Luke 6:21  “Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.” You shall laugh. You will be filled with joy.

Do you see what Paul is doing? He is drawing forth the consequences of applying the Sermon on the Mount into your life. If you come forth mourning for sins; mourning for the sins of others; mourning for the sins of the called-out Assembly – the Israel of God; but never forgetting mourning over your own sins; then as the Lord Jesus also said in Luke 6: 21: “Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh”, that is, you will be filled with joy. There you find that the second fruit of the Spirit corresponds exactly with the inner attitude of the disciple that mourns. You mourn for sin; that is what you need to do; and God will, on His part through His Spirit, fill you with joy.

Meekness and Peace

We proceed to the third beatitude. “Blessed are the meek....” What happens if you think to yourself, “What will happen to me if I come before God in a meek, humble and, contrite [having sorrow and remorse for sinning] attitude; what will happen is that you will experience God’s peace being poured into your heart. You are going to see what God will do in your life. You will experience a peace that you never understood before. Of course, that is exactly what the lord Jesus said in Matthew 11: 28-29: “Come unto me all of you who are weary and heavy laden. Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of spirit and you shall find rest; peace unto your soul.” That is the consequence of meekness: peace unto your entire being.

Paul did not fail to notice this connection between meekness and peace in the very words of the lord Jesus. Besides, his own experience confirms it.

Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness... and Patience

What happens if you hunger and thirst for righteousness? When you hunger and thirst for God?

“Hungering and thirsting”; notice the present continuous tense. You keep on hungering and thirsting for righteousness. What will that do for you? That will build in you a spiritual endurance where it is translated sometimes as steadfastness, sometimes as endurance.  So many believers do not have endurance. They run into difficulties and immediately the white flag goes up. They say to Satan, “Okay, okay. I surrender. Don’t kill me now. I surrender.” We have so many surrendering Christians. They have not experienced what Paul says concerning the life we can have in the lord Jesus that: “God always gives us the victory through His anointed one Jesus our lord.”

Paul did not experience spiritual defeat because he implemented spiritual endurance in his life and trusting completely in God’s anointed one always gained the victory.

Okay, sometimes you get knocked down but that is not defeat. Paul said, he got knocked down, but he always got up and moved forward towards the goal set before him by his lord and master, Jesus. That is the way to do it! We too often get knocked down, but not knocked out! No, no, because God’s anointed one always gives makes a way for us to be victorious. Left to ourselves, Satan would wipe the floor with us. He would make a doormat out of us; he would trample us. But in God’s anointed one we always gain the victory. So what happens to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness? They learn endurance. What trains us so well in spiritual endurance as learning to persevere in our hunger and thirst for righteousness; all through our spiritual lives? We are never to be complacent, never satisfied to even think, “Well, I have already reached spiritual stature. I do not need to press on anymore.”

No! The reason why you press on is because you have developed spiritual endurance by continually hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Those who do not press on are the ones who give up. Don’t be a static believer, keep moving on!

Merciful and Kindness

Let us go to the next point: the merciful. In the Beatitudes you have, “Blessed are the merciful” and the counterpart in the fruit of the Spirit is kindness. These two words are so close in meaning that there is hardly a need for drawing a connection. In fact the words ‘merciful’ and ‘kindness’, are constantly linked in the NT. Take for example Titus 3:4 where you have this word for ‘kindness’ which is in the fruit of the Spirit here, and in v. 5 you have the word for ‘mercy’. Kindness and mercy; one is simply the consequence of another. One is simply so internally linked with the other that no fuller definition is required. Or take for example, Ephessians 2:7; there you have ‘kindness’. In v. 4 you have ‘mercy’. Kindness and mercy are constantly linked. In 1 Peter 2:3 you have ‘kindness’ and in v. 10 you have ‘mercy’. These are constantly linked to each other.

Pure in Heart and Goodness

In the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart”, we see the correspondence to the fruit of the Spirit of ‘goodness’ very easily. The connection is so obvious that there is hardly need for anything to be said. The connection is even explicitly stated, for example, in 1 Timothy 1:5 where you find the word ‘pure’ just as you have here in the Sermon on the Mount, directly connected with the word ‘good’ as is in the fruit of the Spirit; the pure in heart, the good of conscience. Pure and good, they are simply synonymous terms.

Peacemakers and Faithfulness

When we come to the seventh one, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, the corresponding fruit of the Spirit is faith, more specifically, faithfulness. The Greek word for ‘faith’ is the same word for ‘faithfulness’. There is in fact no difference in the Greek. You will find that for example the RSV sometimes translates the word as ‘faith’, sometimes as ‘faithfulness’. There is not any real distinction from the point of view of the lexicon. The peacemaker is a person who can be described as faithful because such a person is one who is walking faithfully in the footsteps of the Master. Why did the lord Jesus take up the cross? In order to be a peacemaker; to reconcile us to his God and his Father Yehovah. Why does the lord Jesus call us to take up the cross? Well, when we studied this beatitude we saw it already! Because, we are also, as Paul says, given “the ministry of reconciliation”. So when you are following in Jesus footsteps, doing the work that he did, being a reconciler, a peacemaker, that is the test of faithfulness. It is so obvious, so clear. And in fact the words ‘faithfulness’, ‘faith’ and ‘peace’ are linked together in 2 Timothy 2:22.

Persecution and Gentleness

So we press on to the eighth beatitude, “persecuted for righteousness’ sake”. What is the corresponding fruit of the Spirit? Well, the corresponding fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. Persecuted for righteousness’ sake; gentleness. The correspondence is extremely clear. Why? How should a Christian behave when he is persecuted for righteousness’ sake? Should he shout back? Should he revile back? Should he behave in an aggressive manner? No! His attitude is to be one of gentleness. As Peter says in 1 Peter 2:23, when Jesus was reviled He did not revile again, that is, when He was abused, ridiculed, laughed at, He did not retaliate in any way. He was gentle. He was meek. That is what meekness is about; one does not strike back. When he was reviled, he reviled not again. Peter said to the disciples, you be like him. When you are ridiculed, when you are mocked, when you are trampled upon, you do not revile back again. You do not shout back; you do not talk back. You will be like Him: meek, gentle. That is why Paul speaks of the meekness and patience of God’s anointed one in 2 Corinthians 10:1.

This was the pattern of Paul’s own life under persecution. We can look at what Paul says about how he behaved when he was persecuted for righteousness’ sake in 1 Corinthians 4:12. I find this passage so like God’s anointed one, Jesus. I would like to read this to you from v. 11: “To the present hour we hunger and thirst (you need a lot of endurance for that as we have noticed), we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless (like God’s anointed one who had nowhere to lay His head), and we labour, working with our own hands. When reviled” - what did he do? He did not revile again; “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate (that is, make peace); we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things.” We are treated like garbage and we take it meekly, gently. Now this I find so beautiful.

There you see the parallel between this beatitude and the fruit of the Spirit. “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and then the fruit of the Spirit. What is the blessing? The spiritual blessing comes forth now in the form of gentleness, then in the form of inheriting the kingdom of God. The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness under persecution. Where can we see the true gentleness of a person, his true character? It will be under persecution. We can all smile when times are good. What we really are will appear when times are hard.

Being Reviled and Persecuted and Having Self-Control

What is the last beatitude? “Blessed are you,” the lord Jesus says, “when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account”. You are slandered; false stories are told about you; all kinds of lies are repeated about you. There is no truth in them at all and you are just having your reputation blackened. Your name is sullied; you are falsely treated in this way, how should you behave? You see the fruit of the Spirit? When ever did you need more desperately that fruit of the Spirit under those circumstances in self-control? How easily when we are falsely accused that we fight back. We are willing to take it when we deserve to be reprimanded. We can still be gentle because we feel that we are suffering justly. We wanted to suffer like this; it is a nice to have the feeling of being a martyr in some ways. When we are suffering for God’s anointed one, we can take it gently. But the one time we cannot take it and we will not take it is when people slander us and say false things about us. Then our anger arises; then we are going to strike back, because we feel, “This is not right! This is not true! Because I did not do this and you have not the right to say that about me.” Paul says, “No, no. Do not worry. The fruit of the Spirit when you endure false accusations is self-control.” It is during those times when you most desperately need that fruit of the Spirit of self-control, that you do not allow yourself to get angry, to lose your temper. None of these will be glorifying to God. Rather, exercise self-control. Let the Spirit of God help you so to live that you show forth the beauty of His anointed one.

Which Comes First - The Beatitudes or the Fruit of the Spirit?

I think you have seen by now how obvious, how clear is the connection between the fruit of the Spirit, on the one hand, and the Beatitudes on the other. We see this internal spiritual connection right there, but we cannot finish at this point if we are going to understand the matter correctly.

We have noticed already so far that the Beatitudes have to do with internal attitudes whereas the fruit of the Spirit is something that God indwelling Spirit does in us. The Beatitudes come first because we have to put them in practice in our lives in order to experience the fruit of the Spirit of the living God Yehovah.

We Reap What We Sow!

Let us read what Paul has to say, as we return to Galatians again. In Galatians Paul is continuing to expound his point about the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh. This is what he says in Galatians 6 and we read from v. 7. He says to the Galatians, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will he reap.” What will you reap? It depends on what you sow! That is very obvious. You do not have to be a genius to understand that. You want to reap the fruit of the Spirit?

Then you have got to sow something to the Spirit. Do you want to become a person who is spiritually powerful and that can be used by God? That depends on what you sow to the Spirit. Now that is what he goes on to say in the next verse, in v, 8: “For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” Eternal life is something that we are to reap. But in order to reap, we have to sow something, because you do not reap anything if you do not sow anything. If you sow the wrong thing, you reap the wrong thing. If you sow to the flesh, you will reap corruption and death. If you sow to the Spirit, you will reap age upon age lasting life. It depends on what you sow.

You cannot go on to become a spiritually productive servant of the lord Jesus by sowing to the flesh. All that you will reap from sowing to the flesh is corruption and death. So then in v. 9 Paul goes on to say: “let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap (a harvest), if we do not lose heart.”

There is the patience. You keep hungering and thirsting for righteousness, you have to have the endurance. You do not lose heart. So then, as we have the opportunity let us do good to all men.

Now I hope that you can see which comes first, the harvest, or the sowing? The fruit of the Spirit is the outward manifestation of what God does in us, but to get fruit, you have to sow something; the fruit is the harvest. You do not get any harvest if you do not do the sowing. So Paul is going on to say, “If you sow to the Spirit, you shall reap the fruit. If you do not sow anything, you get nothing. And if you sow to the flesh, you reap corruption.” “If you sow sparingly,” he said in another place, “you will reap sparingly. If you sow abundantly you will reap abundantly.” Whether you get a big harvest or a small harvest depends on what you sow, and how much you sow. Paul, is putting the responsibility on you and I. He will not allow us to say, “Lord, we did not get a big harvest because You did not do much work in me.” That would be an insult to God. God’s power is sufficient for big harvests and is fully available to each person. It depends on what you sow. That is very important.

Learn from Paul - Pursue Spiritual Things!

What does it mean to talk about sowing? What does it mean to sow to the Spirit? Well, it depends, in other words, on what your spiritual input is? The harvest is the output. What you reap is the output. What is your input and where did you put the input? The sowing is something we do. That is very obvious if we are going to get any harvest. It is something we must do. There is a word that Paul uses time and again; the word is to pursue, to make it your goal. The reason why Paul is a spiritual man of God is not at all accidental, nor is it a question of predestination. It is a question of what kind of a person he was by the grace of God. What kind of a person he was becomes obvious when you study his writings, his letters.

There are so many words you could study but notice one particular word, it is the word ‘pursue’. The Greek word is “dioko” - pursue, which is sometimes in the RSV translated rather weakly by the words “make it your goal”. The word “dioko” means pursue. It expresses a certain intensity. It expresses a straining of every nerve in order to get to the prize, the goal. This word is used many times, at least 8x in the letters of Paul, for example, in Romans 12:13; or Romans 14:19; or 1 Corinthians 14:1 to pursue love, to make love your all; Philippians 3:12 which is so characteristic of Paul. “I pursue - I press forward, towards the mark.” There is intensity! That is the intensity of the input.

The reason why we have a generation of feeble Christians is because there is no intensity of input. I see Christians who are absolutely unmotivated, who have no goal, no pressing forward, no striving in the spirit. Nothing! They sit back waiting for a harvest when they have sowed absolutely nothing. No wonder they go through life with nothing. How can we expect God to give us a spiritual harvest when we have sowed absolutely nothing? I beg you to really think on this point very deeply.

That is why the Beatitudes comes first! That is the attitude of your input, that is what you sow. Come to God as somebody who is wholly committed to Him, fully yielded to Him, entirely open to Him,that He may fill you with all His fullness.” If you come with that kind of an attitude, if you pursue this kind of an attitude with steadfastness, and steadfastly pursue such an attitude, you shall be filled with the fullness of God. “He shall pour His love into you in overflowing measure by His Holy Spirit because now you have opened your heart wide to Him, as He is your all. I have sowed with a God enabled spiritual attitude which makes it possible for Him to give me a spiritual harvest. It is all of God and none of me!

God’s Part and Ours

This then is what the lord is teaching us in the Sermon on the Mount: what we are to sow, what our spiritual direction should be, what we are to pursue, what is the direction of our high calling that we must press forward to. Paul did not say, “Well, we have a high calling and I am waiting to be lifted up by the scruff of my neck to the high calling. I have a high calling but I am waiting for God to attach the booster jets to my back so that He can shoot me to the high calling.” No, he says, “I press forward”. This is what we should be  doing; pressing forward so that God, by His grace, will then empower us onwards. God cannot do anything in you unless you have the right attitude of mind and heart.

God looks on the heart and then act accordingly. I am sure that as a Christian you have discovered that already. You have to have the right attitude. For example, if you do not repent to begin with, then He cannot forgive you. His forgiveness is there like a vast ocean ready to forgive your sins. But if you do not repent, that impenitence is like a dike that holds back the ocean of His forgiveness. That ocean of forgiveness cannot come into your life. That water cannot fertilize the fields of your life because of the lack of repentance on your part holds back the whole of God’s grace. Now if we can comprehend this principle as regards repentance, it is easy to understand this on any other level.

Strive to Be the Kind of Person Blessed by God!

The same principle holds true. God cannot do anything for you until you open your heart to Him. It is said, for example, that right at the beginning of the ministry of the lord Jesus, the he could not do many mighty works in Nazareth because of their unbelief. Their unbelief held back the grace of God. The same is true all the way through your spiritual life. These Beatitudes then, brothers and sisters, you have to understand, is what the lord Jesus is saying to His disciples, “Blessed are these kinds of people”.

Now you must strive to be the kind of person who is blessed by God. He said to His disciples, “You make this kind of person the objective of your life. You become that kind of person, because that kind of person is blessed by God.” That must be the goal of every disciple. I hope by now the whole objective, the whole teaching, the internal spiritual connection of the lord’s teaching on the Beatitudes becomes very, very clear to us.

These Beatitudes are not meant to be intellectualized. They are meant to be applied into our life as the goal and direction which we are to follow. Then we are going to experience the power of God in our lives in a way that we never knew, never dreamed was possible, until our lives are so open to God through our realizing our poverty of spirit that He will fill us with all His fullness. I pray that God will truly help each one of us to understand these life-giving words of the lord Jesus.