1. Christ’s aim in the Sermon on the Mount was to make its hearers “perfect.” “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat_5:48).
Now in the language of the New Testament the “perfect” is that which is come to its own proper completion. In the simplest use it means a full-grown man, one whose bodily development is complete, and who has the use of all his natural faculties. By an obvious transition it is used to express the full possession of supernatural grace, this also being required for the completeness of man according to the purpose of God. In no other sense but this can we take the promise of the Lord and the aspiration of St. Paul. The perfect man according to the measure of Christ is the man who has grown to the utmost in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, the man in whom Christ is formed, and who is conformed to His image.
There is, however, a lower grade of advancement which is also called perfection. “We speak wisdom,” says St. Paul (1Co_2:6), “among the perfect”—men, that is to say, who are called perfect though still living the life of the flesh. He assures the Colossians that prayers are being made for them to the end that they may stand perfect. In writing to the Philippians, he puts the two kinds of perfection vividly in contrast. “Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect,” he says, “I count not myself yet to have apprehended: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal.” He then immediately adds the exhortation, “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded” (Php_3:12-15).
It is the aim of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount to bring His followers to the higher perfection. In the other sense they are “perfect” already, just because they are followers: they are “saints,” in the language of the Epistles. And just as the “saints,” those who are called according to the purpose of God, have to work out their own salvation, so the perfect have to go on unto the full stature of manhood in Christ Jesus. This full stature may not be attained in this life. Perfection is a promise of the future; in hope of this promise a Christian man labours to purify himself; but the work is not yet complete, nor can be in our present state. “We know in part,” says St. Paul (1Co_13:10), “but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.” Perfection is not for this life, but for the life which is to come.
2. It is thus manifest that the Sermon on the Mount offers an ideal of life. It is an ideal just because its end is perfection like that of our heavenly Father. And it is an ideal to be realized even though its end may never be completely attained in this life.
Take as example the command to love our enemies (Mat_5:43-48). Whatever reservations it may be necessary to make as to the meaning of “love,” it is indisputable that Christ here commands something which is above man’s natural instincts, and which most people would say is above his natural powers. Even if the word were restricted to its least exacting signification, as equivalent to “wish for the welfare of” our enemies, how many of us could honestly say that we are able to rise to this, in the case of one who has malignantly thwarted us, or gone out of his way to slander our name and make life harder and bitterer than it would be if he had never been born? Or even suppose one with whom we are constantly thrown, who irritates or wearies us every hour, our wish for such a person’s welfare is very often only of a languid and abstract character; certainly it falls short of the point where we feel impelled to take trouble. Hence arises the important question: Is this command one of the paradoxes in the Sermon which are obviously not to be taken literally, such as that of turning the cheek to the smiter? And the answer is quite complete. In the case of the real paradoxes, our Lord’s own conduct contradicts the literal precept, but in the case of this command He fulfils it. The records of His life, and especially of His Passion, are full of indications of His deep and tender concern for the highest moral interests of His bitterest, most brutal enemies. Otherwise, we should never have known what the fulfilment of the precept meant, so utterly alien to ordinary human nature it had always been, and always, we may conjecture, would have remained In short, the command involves an ideal of conduct actually realized by Jesus Himself and capable of realization by us. We are to strive to realize it, never forgetting that it belongs to the eternal purpose of God to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
Jesus has no doubts about the capacities of human nature. He speaks to the peasant, the fisherman, the artisan, the shepherd, and he dares to challenge them to achieve the perfection of God! In the midst of poverty and toil he sees his comrades in labour and privation under
“The light that never was on land or sea,
The consecration and the poet’s dream,”
invested with ability to resemble the Maker and Sustainer of the world; and he lays on them the tremendous duty of reproducing in their own being and character the moral completeness of the Father on high. [Note: J. E. Carpenter, Ethical and Religious Problems of the War, 70.]
3. But not only does the Sermon on the Mount offer an ideal of personal life, it also offers an ideal sphere within which that life is to be lived. That ideal sphere is called by Christ the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God was presented in glowing colours and magnificent imagery by the prophets. The words with which they described it throbbed with moral and spiritual passion. But the outlines of this social order in which the righteous reign of Jehovah over the world was to be realized were not clearly drawn. Jerusalem was its centre and it included the ends of the earth; it was filled with the glory and peace of Jehovah’s presence; in it “the swords had been beaten into plowshares” (Mic_4:3) and “the trees of the field clapped their hands for joy” (Isa_55:12). The splendid poetry of it thrills the heart, but it cannot be subjected to critical analysis. This very defect is doubtless a virtue and shows its superiority to the ideal of Plato or that of the Stoics. It may be less satisfying to the intellect than they, but its appeal to the emotions makes it a more effective social dynamic. This somewhat nebulous ideal, however, took definite shape in the popular mind as a political world-order with Jerusalem as its capital, and the Jews as a preferred and ruling class; and this was the actually current ideal when Jesus came. This Jewish phrase, “The Kingdom of God,” was often on the lips of Jesus. He made it the most general concept of His teaching, and put into it a new content of meaning.
4. Did Jesus think of the Kingdom as a subjective state of the soul or as an objective social order? The answer must be, both. Times and conditions may lead students of His teaching to put the emphasis sometimes on one and sometimes on the other phase of His great ideal; but exclusive emphasis upon either always obscures the beauty and power of the great conception; and the positive rejection of either amounts to a downright perversion of His teaching and results in a fatal crippling of Christianity.
The Kingdom of God is at once spiritual and historical: eternal and temporal: outward and inward: visible and invisible: a system and an energy. It is an order of things in which heavenly laws are recognized and obeyed. It depends both for its origin and for its support upon forces which are not of earth. It is inspired by the principles and powers of a higher sphere. It implies a harmonious relation between men and the beings of the unseenuniverse (the Kingdom of Heaven). It places its members in a social and personal relationship to a Divine Head, as citizens to a King, as children to a Father (“the Kingdom of God,” “the Kingdom of your Father which is in heaven”). [Note: B. F. Westcott, Social Aspects of Christianity, 88.]
(1) Now the primary principle of the Kingdom is the subordination of the human will to the will of God; though the word “subordination” does not fully express the idea. It is rather a union of the human will with the divine; it is the human will freely accepting the divine will. There is no suggestion of restraint or coercion about the act. It is surrender; but it is surrender not to a superior force, but to a superior, or rather the supreme, moral excellence, which is perceived and appreciated. The act is, therefore, rational and free—the expression of the real personality of the man. In a word, though not in the metaphysical sense of the word, the will of the man and the will of God become one; but this moral identity results from the change of the human will. Ideally, the Kingdom of God as a subjective state means the complete conformity of the inner life to the character of God; the bringing of the thoughts and the intents of the heart, the affections, the purposes, the ideals, the whole voluntary nature —including impulses, aims, and decisions—not into subjection to, but rather into harmony with, the divine life.
(2) But the incorporation, so to speak, of the will of God in the wills of individual men means, of course, the conformity of the actions of men to the will of God. If all the interests, purposes and ideals of a man are inspired by the will of God, then all the actions of the man which have any moral significance will be expressions of that will; and all actions which grow out of or affect the relations of men one to another have moral significance. The Kingdom of God, therefore, becomes external—objectifies itself, so to speak—in all our social relations, and is of necessity embodied in a social order exactly as far and as fast as it is realized internally in individual men. To try to separate the inner lives of men from the social order in which they live is as foolish and disastrous as to try to separate the roots of a tree from its trunk and branches. Such a separation may be effected in the case of a tree, but will certainly result in the death of the trunk and branches, and probably in the death of the roots. To separate the inner lives of individuals from the social order is really impossible. But the very attempt may be extremely hurtful. The concave and convex surfaces of a hollow sphere are no more inseparably related and invariably proportioned to one another than the inner individual and outer social spheres of human life. The inner life and the social order act and react upon one another always and inevitably. We must conclude, then, that the Kingdom of God is also a social order—a system of human relations, the organic principle of which is the will of God.
