This message provides a general introduction to the Beatitudes and examines the first three of them. Most crucial to understanding the Beatitudes is recognizing that Jesus was confronting and refuting His audience's ingrained conception of the kingdom as an idealized earthly, national and political structure. The Jews were poised to miss Jesus' kingdom because of this false conception, and the Sermon on the Mount was the Lord's most intricate and extended attempt to show them that His kingdom is other-worldly and not natural. It is the "kingdom of heaven" - the realm of the new creation. So the Beatitudes express fundamental qualities of the human new creation; they express who man is when he is renewed "according to the image of the One who created him" (Col. 3:9-10). And precisely because Jesus is the Last Adam - that is, the source and substance of the new humanity of the new creation, the Beatitudes must be understood as having their first and foundational referent in Him. Jesus is the "beatific man" such that all other human beings find their own "beatific" status only through personal union with Him by His Spirit.
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