This week in the Bible study we went over Matthew 5. In the first section, we saw Jesus talking about blessings for righteousness, including being meek, poor in spirit and a peacemaker. Verse 5 really touched me, and the Bible reads: “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” A brother in the Bible study brought Matthew 11:29 to our attention as we were discussing this section— this verse is where Jesus says that He is meek and lowly in heart, teaching us that we should not only be meek outwardly, but also inwardly.
In the second section, Jesus teaches us how we are the salt and the light of the world, and he tells us that “a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” From this section we learned that we should be a light to the people in our life, and we can be a light by sharing the gospel, dressing and behaving apart from this generation so that our friends can recognize a difference, and so they can see a light shining through all the darkness of this world. From this section we also see the word ‘you’ being used as a plural (in the original Greek), showing us that as Christians, we must assemble together. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 reads “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”
In the last section, we see Jesus raising the bar of righteousness. Jesus states that being angry with your brother puts you under God’s judgment and looking upon a woman to lust after her means that you committed fornication in your heart. Throughout this section, Jesus puts an end to the idea that anyone is righteous enough to go to heaven. Furthermore, towards the end of this section, we learned that as Christians we must love and pray for our enemies, and we should answer with yes’s and no’s and not try to find an answer in between.
- Ciprian M.