At At. George’s, we have started a new series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. Here are 7 great quotes from Christian theologians on the theme and intent of this famous sermon.
- “Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.” – Phillip Yancey
- “Jesus himself, as the gospel story goes on to its dramatic conclusion, lives out the same message of the Sermon on the Mount: he is the light of the world, he is the salt of the earth, he loves his enemies and gives his life for them, he is lifted up on a hill so that the world can see.” – N.T. Wright
- “I would rather make bricks without straw— than try to live
the Sermon on the Mount in my own strength.” – Martyn Lloyd Jones
- “In short, the Sermon shows us what life should look like for a heart that has been melted and transformed by the gospel of grace, while also making clear the true nature of God’s standards of righteousness—high standards which mean that our right standing with God is ultimately dependent on the grace of the One who tells us of them.” – Frank Thielman
- “Again and again the Sermon on the Mount calls and challenges us to a life of radical discipleship. Note: when Jesus says ‘Blessed are the . . . . merciful, peacmakers’, and so on, he doesn’t just mean that they themselves are blessed. He means that the blessing of God’s kingdom works precisely through those people into the wider world. That is how God’s kingdom comes. That’s one thing to hear afresh.” – N.T. Wright
- “If Jesus is a teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize us by erecting a standard we cannot come anywhere near. But if by being born again from above we know Him first as Savior, we know that He did not come to teach us only. He came to make us what He teaches we should be. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His way with us.” – Oswald Chambers
- “There is a mountain you have to scale, the heights you have to climb; and the first thing you realize, as you look at that mountain which you are told you must ascend, is that you cannot do it, that you are utterly incapable in and of yourself, and that any attempt to do it in your own strength is proof positive that you have not understood it’. It condemns at the very outset the view which regards it as a program for man to put into operation immediately, just as he is. – Martyn Lloyd-Jones
