Blessed by God (Part 6): The Blessed Life

    I recently heard a pastor on television preaching to his congregation about these themes of blessing and cursing. He was right to hold out to his people the promise of God’s blessing, but sadly the hope he offered was far removed  from the hope given in Scripture. The focus was in the here and now and the blessing he spoke of was that of a fulfilled life which included a long awaited promotion in one‘s employment. Giving consideration to what we saw in the previous chapter, don’t these earthly blessings lose their significance at least in some sense? The gospel is relevant for living but it is primarily for dying. The truth is that the promotion may never come, and for those who are named by the name of Christ true fulfillment will only come in the new heaven and the new earth. Until then we may have seasons of fulfillment or prosperity here but we are by no means guaranteed it. The church is a pilgrim people wandering through a wilderness awaiting the rest that will come in the promised land.

Blessed are…

    I often see decals in the back of car windows that say “Life is good.” I have always wanted to ask the driver to define this for me. We may be asking a similar question now given the biblical criteria of blessing that we have seen. What does the blessed life look like? Our Lord helps us in his Sermon on the Mount.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:3-12).

    Here we have it, these are the blessed according to Jesus. If we are honest, we must admit that our Lord’s words are against the grain of the way we tend to think . We would like it to read “Blessed are the rich, the confident, the go-getters.” Our default setting is to equate success with God’s blessing, it seems obvious to us. But those Jesus describes as “blessed” don’t fit the description of successful. What is Jesus speaking of here? Who are these blessed people? Jesus is not telling us what we need to do in order to be blessed. The prophets until John the Baptist preached the message of repentance under the administration of the old covenant. We have seen Jesus as the servant of the covenant but he is acting here as the Lord of the covenant. Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God and as king he is comes to dispense covenant blessings and curses (Matthew 11:20-24). The poor in spirit are not necessarily the materially poor, though they may be. Rather they are poor in spirit, in spiritual poverty. They recognize they are bankrupt before God having nothing owed to them but judgment. Those whose eyes are opened to see their spiritual poverty mourn over their condition, lamenting their sin. This leads to a meekness, submitting to the God they are indebted to like a horse who has been bridled. Those are blessed who recognize their need of a righteousness outside of themselves, and hungering and thirsting for it find it provided in Jesus Christ. Some have called the beatitudes synonyms of salvation. Why are they called blessed? For they inherit the kingdom, obtain mercy, are called God’s sons, and will ultimately see him (Revelation 22:4). Mercy is extended to those who are blessed, and they themselves as recipients of mercy are merciful to others. They are called pure in heart, being made pure by the blood of Christ in their standing with God and being progressively purified by the operating of the Holy Spirit within them conforming them to the image of God’s son. They are peacemakers, for their extension of mercy is to bring others into the kingdom and to reconciliation with their Creator.

    Also included in the list Jesus gives are those who are persecuted and suffer for his sake. Have you counted your blessings lately? Did you include persecution and suffering? This is why the prosperity gospel gives people a false hope and ultimately fails; it has an inaccurate theology of suffering. These traits sound entirely antithetical to blessing, but we are helped when we remember the meaning of the word blessed. The Reformation Study Bible says of those who are blessed “This means more than the emotional state represented by the word ‘happy.’ It includes spiritual well-being, having the approval of God, and thus a happier destiny."(1) Being blessed by God means union with Christ and approval by God because of Him. This is a bond so unbreakable that “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword” (Romans 8:35) cannot separate.

    The blessed life does not mean the absence of suffering or the maximizing of pleasure or possessions in this life (remember that Jesus preached repentance to the rich). It does not mean success in all or any of our endeavors. It is found in the one who has seen his poverty before a holy God and need of a savior, has embraced the savior and his finished work on their behalf by faith, and is being brought forward in righteousness at a continual (though sometimes indiscernible) pace. The blessed life is the one for whom “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). True blessing is primarily spiritual. God blesses his own “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3). He has chosen us (v.4), predestined us (v.5), redeemed us (v.7), given us an inheritance as sons (v.5, 11), and sealed us (v.13). These are realities for those in Christ possessed now, but not able to be fully grasped yet. By faith the blessed look forward to the realization of those blessings though they may experience poverty or suffering in this life. Here we find the tension between the already and the not yet, what we have already by faith but not yet by sight. The blessing is real but not fully realized. Glory is to come for God’s people, but in this vale of tears they carry the cross. This was the pattern of the Savior, and this is the pattern of those he came to save. Those who are in Christ cannot have their best life now because their richest blessings are in the heavenly realms. This is the day of carrying the cross not of wearing the crown. Jesus said to the dying thief, not to the Church, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). Glory does not belong to us yet. The church needs the theology of the cross not a theology of glory as we pour out our lives for the redemptive good of others and patiently wait for the reward that is to come. We may die every day (I Corinthians 15:31) and still be blessed.

What about the Law?

    We saw earlier that our attempts to keep the law of God are futile though the law itself is holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12). Again the problem is not with the command but with our moral inability to keep it. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that no mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but daily breaks them in thought, word, and deed (A.82). Therefore, the very command that promises life proves to be death (Romans 7:10).  Though the Bible is progressive in its revelation, it remains one coherent book of law and gospel from beginning to end. The promises of God are true but equal are the demands of God’s law. Some have taught that Jesus came to give us an easier law to keep, the law of love. Far from it, Jesus presses the law to its extreme, requiring purity in our motives as well as our deeds (Matthew 5:21-30). I remember reading the Sermon on the Mount as a young Christian and being totally overwhelmed. “I’ll never make it” I thought as I hoped that somehow I would be graded on a curve. No curve, this is God’s standard of righteousness: perfect holiness. The law, we are told by the apostle, has a pedagogical purpose. The law is a guardian or schoolmaster as some translations put it (Galatians 3:24). The guardian was a slave-attendant responsible for a child’s education and training, taking the child to and from school, testing the remembrance of what was learned, and teaching the child manners until he reached maturity. Among its manifold purposes this was the primary function of God’s law revealed to Israel, to hold them captive until the fulfillment of all righteousness should come, namely in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is right for us to read the law in the Old Testament and in the New Testament (i.e. the Sermon on the Mount) and to understand our inability to keep it. They say the old portraits of the pedagogical relationship would present the guardian with a rod in hand used for correction. As our schoolmaster the rod of the law drives us to a righteousness that cannot be found within us but outside of us in Jesus Christ who has fulfilled the law on our behalf.  Our hope is that Christ has fulfilled the law for us, that by faith his deeds are our deeds. We need not fear missing the mark for Christ has hit the bull’s eye and our hope is in him. But the question that follows is, now that we are in Christ do we cast off the law? Are the ten commandments to be ignored by the Christian? By no means. The commandments are repeated in the New Testament for Christ’s followers. Most certainly, we have a moral obligation to the law of God for it is a revelation of his will for our lives in loving God and loving neighbor. Many Christians want to know what God’s will is for their lives. We would do well to realize where we are in God’s providence and to seek to obey the ten commandments in our callings and responsibilities as an employee, spouse, parent, student, child, etc. God has prepared before hand good works for his people to walk in (Ephesians 2:10). The difference is that we do not have to obey the law as a fearful slave. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). We are free to keep the commands of God toward others without the fear of failing and coming under the law’s curse. The Anglican minister and hymn writer John Newton wrote “Christ has hushed the law’s loud thunder, he has quenched Mt. Sinai’s flame.” We are free, not that we may live lawlessly but that we may do good, working out our salvation with fear and trembling (not panic but reverence toward God), knowing that God is at work within us both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13). God is at work in our will and our actions for we are now led not by the letter of the law but by the Spirit who has written the law upon our hearts.

The Importance of God’s Blessing Through His Appointed Means

    Wouldn’t it be great if there were a place on earth where the benefits of Christ’s work could be communicated to us? Yes it would, and the good news is that there is such a place. It is common today for those who profess Christ to take a “me and my Bible” attitude and set off on the rugged trail of individualism as a lone ranger Christian to the neglect of the ordinary means that God has appointed for his people. Christ has established his Church on earth as the pillar and ground of the truth. God is with his people individually because they are indwelt by his Spirit, but he is especially present with them when they come together for worship. The meeting of God’s people for corporate worship is not to be taken lightly or neglected (Hebrews 10:25), it is coming “to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:22-24). The author of Hebrews follows with “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking” (v.25). God’s people come together to hear him speak his words of law and gospel, of commandment and promise, of curse within ourselves and blessing in Jesus Christ. This is where Christ is communicated to us by his Spirit through his means of grace, the word and the sacraments. God brings his righteousness near, he puts salvation in the midst of his people (Isaiah 46:13). Christ is as near to us as the word preached (Romans 10:8). In the preaching of the gospel he is held out to us to be received by faith and in his sacraments he confirms his promise to us. As the bread and wine of his supper are present to our physical senses that we may see with our eyes, hold in our hands, smell with our nostrils, crunch in our teeth, and taste with our tongue we can be sure that Christ has really and truly given himself for us in a supreme sacrifice on the cross. As sure as water washes away dirt from the body, the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. The sacraments are a tangible sign and seal of God’s promises to us.

    It seems foolish that the God of heaven would use such simple means; ordinary human words to give his son to his people, ordinary water and ordinary bread and wine to seal these benefits to believers and to commune with them. Indeed these things are ordinary, but they are the means appointed until the end of the age. By these ordinary means the Spirit applies the extraordinary work of redemption. Christ’s people must return to hear this message again and again, for we often lose sight of it and return to the default mode of self sufficiency. It is then that the blessing is given to the people, after they have heard the gospel for it is only in Christ (Eph 1:3) and through that message that they may be blessed. The minister raises his hands as the sons of Aaron would and as Christ did before his ascension to glory to bless the people by pronouncing the benediction. The blessing spoken from Scripture is not from the minister, it is from God. It is here that we can be sure we are blessed, in hearing the blessing of God upon all of those who trust in Christ alone for salvation. Those who trust in Christ are truly blessed, blessed by God in Christ.












1. The Reformation Study Bible. Text note on Matt 5:3. p 1367