Category: 2018 – Beatitudes

Happy are the Peacemakers

Every Christian, according to Jesus Christ, is meant to be a peacemaker both in the community and in the church.  Thus, the sequence from purity of heart in Matthew 5, verse 8 to peacemaking in verse 9 is natural.

There are 400 references to peace in the Bible.  God calls Himself the “God of Peace,” and note how He set things up in the beginning:

  • Peace between God and His people. Intimacy, love, trust.
  • His people at peace with one another. Cooperation, respect, unity.
  • His people in a state of inner peace and rest. No worry.  No anxiety.  No anger or resentment or rebellion.

Unfortunately, two things keep peace from the world:  the opposition of Satan and the disobedience of men.

We are to restore this world to the peace that was forfeited by sin.

Continue reading for perspectives on the seventh beatitude from John MacArthur, Jennifer Kennedy Dean, and John Stott.

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Kierkegaard on Purity of Heart

Purity of heart is to will one thing. - Soren Kierkegaard

What better way to explore the Sixth Beatitude—that “the pure in heart shall see God”—than Kierkegaard’s address.  Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855)—a Danish philosopher and theologian—wrote Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing in 1846.  It was the first of his Edifying Addresses to be translated into English and published in 1938.

Like his other Edifying Addresses, it was never spoken aloud to an audience. Instead, it was written for men and women to speak aloud to themselves.  The address was aimed at an audience who read and who pondered what they read. Kierkegaard’s own life-long practice of reading sermons aloud to himself convinced him that there was no more effective way to engage with them.

Eduard Geismar, a Danish scholar of Kierkegaard studies, wrote of Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing: “It seems to me that nothing that he has written has sprung so directly out of his relationship with God as this address. Anyone who wishes to understand Kierkegaard properly will do well to begin with it.”

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