Again, as from this point of view the Sermon on the Mount differs from all contemporary Jewish teaching, so also is it impossible to compare it with any other system of morality. The difference here is one not of degree, nor even of kind, but of standpoint. It is indeed true, that the Words of Jesus, properly understood, marks the utmost limit of all possible moral conception. But this point does not come in question. Every moral system is a road by which, through self-denial, discipline, and effort, men seek to reach the goal. Christ begins with this goal, and places His disciples at once in the position to which all other teachers point as the end. They work up to the goal of becoming the children of the Kingdom;' He makes men such, freely, and of His grace: and this is the Kingdom. What the others labour for, He gives. They begin by demanding, He by bestowing: because he brings good tidings of forgiveness and mercy. Accordingly, in the real sense, there is neither new law nor moral system here, but entrance into a new life: Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father Which is in heaven is perfect.'
But if the Sermon on the Mount contains not a new, nor, indeed, any system of morality, and addresses itself to a new condition of things, it follows that the promises attaching, for example, to the so-called Beatitudes' must not be regarded as the reward of the spiritual state with which they are respectively connected, nor yet as their result. It is not because a man is poor in spirit that his is the Kingdom of Heaven, in the sense that the one state will grow into the other, or be its result; still less is the one the reward of the other. [2508] The connecting link - so to speak, the theological copula between the state' and the promise - is in each case Christ Himself: because He stands between our present and our future, and has opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.' Thus the promise represents the gift of grace by Christ in the new Kingdom, as adapted to each case.
It is Christ, then, as the King, Who is here flinging open the gates of His Kingdom. To study it more closely: in the three chapters, under which the Sermon on the Mount is grouped in the first Gospel, [2509] the Kingdom of God is presented successively, progressively, and extensively. Let us trace this with the help of the text itself.
In the first part of the Sermon on the Mount [2510] the Kingdom of God is delineated generally, first positively, and then negatively, marking especially how its righteousness goes deeper than the mere letter of even the Old Testament Law. It opens with ten Beatitudes, which are the New Testament counterpart to the Ten Commandments. These present to us, not the observance of the Law written on stone, but the realisation of that Law which, by the Spirit, is written on the fleshly tables of the heart. [2511]
These Ten Commandments in the Old Covenant were preceded by a Prologue. [2512] The ten Beatitudes have, characteristically, not a Prologue but an Epilogue, [2513] which corresponds to the Old Testament Prologue. This closes the first section, of which the object was to present the Kingdom of God in its characteristic features. But here it was necessary, in order to mark the real continuity of the New Testament with the Old, to show the relation of the one to the other. And this is the object of verses 17 to 20, the last-mentioned verse forming at the same time a grand climax and transition to the criticism of the Old Testament-Law in its merely literal application, such as the Scribes and Pharisees made. [2514] For, taking even the letter of the Law, there is not only progression, but almost contrast, between the righteousness of the Kingdom and that set forth by the teachers of Israel. Accordingly, a detailed criticism of the Law now follows - and that not as interpreted and applied by tradition,' but in its barely literal meaning. In this part of the Sermon on the Mount' the careful reader will mark an analogy to Exod. xxi. and xxii.