Taking Jesus at His Word: What Jesus Really Said in the Sermon on the Mount

by Addison Hodges Hart

Jesus’ message is about a way of life, a way of being and thinking and doing. It guides both actions and reactions. It finds its strength in an inner life, and the peace and compassion that that interior discipline engenders are meant to be visible to others. The kingdom of the Romans was external, imposed from above, ruled from the top down, hierarchical, militant, cruel, legalistic, moralistic, and oppressive. The kingdom of heaven, in contrast, is internal (and thus hidden from plain sight), received through a listening ear, guided from within, egalitarian, pacifistic, kind, generous, loving, and freeing. It is an invisible empire, one in which God flows through the veins and lives of human beings, and reaches ever further and further out through them to others. The kingdom of Rome and all other worldly powers are merely organizations. The kingdom of heaven is, if lived rightly, organic and an organism. It is personal, multifaceted, and — to the frustration of all would-be supreme organizers of it, both ecclesiastical and political — ultimately guided by no single organizing power. It moves through individuals, binds them into relationships, and passes on in some indefinable way from generation to generation. It has never been fully harnessed, and no church or nation can control its internal life. It remains, it would seem, working as it does from within the human person, what we might well think of as God’s domain.