Week 08 is scheduled for study Feb. 13-19, 2023. If we are honest, this might be a difficult week. We look at the person God wants us to be, and how to become that person. I know it was difficult for me.

Day 1

Pay attention to impressions you receive as you read Matthew 5 and Luke 6, and record them in a study journal or in some other way. This outline can help you identify some important principles in these chapters, but be open to others you discover in your study.

Matthew 5:1-12; Luke 6:20-26, 46-49 – Lasting happiness comes from living the way Jesus Christ taught.

Happiness is built into the lifestyle of God. It is His lifestyle that creates happiness. Too many people think that happiness will come from something they do. Happiness comes from being, not doing. When we have the attitudes of Godliness, His happiness becomes ours. This is what the Beatitudes are trying to teach us. Happiness is the result of being meek, humble, hungry for righteousness or the things of God. Everything else in these scriptures just shows us ways to implement a life that patterns itself after Godly ways.

Day 2

Matthew 5:13 – Ye are the salt of the earth

Please read this article – Salt, Light, and Perfection in the Beatitudes.

Day 3

Matthew 5:17-48; Luke 6:27-35 – The law of Christ supersedes the law of Moses.

There are two main points here. First, Israel was taught from the very beginning, i.e. from the days of Moses onward, that the law he gave them was to prepare them for the day their Messiah would come and give them a better law. They were taught that whatever He would give them they should do. Unfortunately, over the course of thousands of years they lost sight of that directive completely. By the time Jesus came the Jews had forgotten that salvation did not come by way of the law of Moses. They thought it did, and that they were the only ones to receive it, being the chosen people and all.

The second point, and the most embarrassing one, is that Jesus is the one who gave them the law of Moses. If anyone knew the requirements of that law, the purpose of the law, and what was needed to fulfill all the details of that law, it was Jesus. Why would he come to destroy his own law? That makes no sense. He gave the law with the intention of fulfilling every detail of it before replacing it with a higher law. Everything was as it should be.

The challenge Jesus faced was getting his own people to believe that he gave the law and that he was come to fulfill it in every detail. Even after Jesus was resurrected and ascended, his disciples had an uphill battle convincing the Jews that their law was now completely void, because Jesus had fulfilled the law during his ministry. Even though Jesus and all his disciples lived the law of Moses during his earthly ministry, once Jesus was resurrected the law no longer served any purpose. From then on his disciples were to teach only the higher law of the gospel Jesus taught during his ministry. Everything the law of Moses pointed to had now taken place. All that his law anticipated had come to pass.

Day 4

Matthew 5:48 – Does Heavenly Father really expect me to be perfect?

For me, and hence I must assume I am not alone in this, the most difficult thing about believing we can become perfect is the redefining of the word. All our lives we have believed that to be perfect is to have no fault, to make no mistakes, and to know what and how to do everything. That means that we must already be able to take God’s place in being complete and whole in every way while we are still in mortality. This is the great lie perpetrated by the Deceiver.

When the New Testament was written, it was first recorded in Greek. This is why we see so many Greek versions of the Hebrew names, like Christ, instead of Messiah. Here is a great little article I found on the differences between Greek and the Hebrew names of the New Testament – Jewish and Greek Names. The New Testament talks about being perfect the way Greeks referred to being perfect, since it was written in their language.

Our version of being perfect includes being omniscient or all knowing. The Greek version of being perfect just means being complete or whole. The entire point of the Beatitudes is that Jesus was telling his disciples how to become complete or whole in their personalities. God can more easily work with someone who is no longer lacking in the basic characteristics of a godly life. It is more difficult to teach someone charity if they lack patience, forgiveness, or are proud. In other words, they are not yet meek enough to be taught how to live their life after the manner of those who will inherit the celestial kingdom. The Beatitudes give us the main character traits that will prepare us for a celestial life.

Once we are well (whole or complete – i.e. perfect) then God can teach us how to live the kind of life He lives. So yes, we are indeed commanded to become perfect. What we are not commanded to become is perfect by our definition of the word, but by that of the Greeks. I might want to clarify something here. Even using the Greek definition of the word perfect we will never achieve in mortality the ultimate state in each of the qualities Jesus taught us in the Beatitudes. But as we seek to incorporate these attitudes or character traits in our life we become more like Christ, more easily taught, more readily forgiven for our sins, and closer to that perfect or complete state God wants us to achieve.

When I say we can be perfect in this life, I refer to the acquisition of these traits in our character. The complete change from the human that we are to the fully celestialized individual we will someday be is still a ways away. But we are approximating perfection here, in that we are learning to be meek, humble, forgiving, etc., like Christ.

FHE/Personal Study

Matthew 5:43-45 – Loving the “unlovable”

I don’t know about you, but I find this lesson challenging. People who have treated us coldly, callously, with indifference, or with a complete disregard for our feelings, are those I would consider to be “unlovable.” Yet Christ says to love them anyway. This leads me to ask the question, “Do I love only those strangers who treat me well?” The answer to me seems rather obvious that yes, I do love only those strangers who treat me well. That’s embarrassing.

The manual makes it even more difficult for me when it suggests that I should “bless and pray” for them. As I struggled with this notion, it occurred to me that if I want to learn to love someone the way to do it is to serve them and pray for them. These are hard things to do when you feel you have been wronged in some way. This made me think of Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus. Jesus knew what he was about to do, and what it would mean for him (Jesus) to be betrayed. Judas’ betrayal would lead to Jesus’ painful death. Yet Jesus washed the feet of Judas and gave him every opportunity to not do what he was going to do.

In other words, Jesus wanted to forgive Judas, to have him retake his rightful place among his most beloved disciples. But Jesus knew where that “friendship” was going. And for all that, I believe Jesus loved Judas still.

When someone treats me unkindly, badmouths me, hurts me in some way, or just makes my life miserable, how should I react? According to the manual I need to make myself serve and pray for that person until God changes my attitude. If it hasn’t happened to you, I’ll bet that if you ask around you can find someone who did this for an enemy and who grew to love that person. There is something about service that causes you to love a person. In large measure I wonder if it is the amount of service we provide our children that teaches us of their worth and value as individuals. The same can be said about pleading for them with God. We come to believe in their inherent worth, despite their current behavior. What about you?

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NT08-2023 – Blessed Are Ye

Week 08