μακάριος



Luke 6:20-26
20And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
22“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
23Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
24“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.
26“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Luke has made a distinction here for us. These words are for “His disciples”. This teaching is for us. Even in that is a lesson for us. You meet people where they are at on the journey. For the most part, you don’t start with Ezekiel or Revelation when dealing with a new Christian. You start with John or Genesis. Jesus isn’t sharing these words with the crowd. He’s teaching those who are already His disciples.

Now, on to what He has to say to us. First we start with the word “blessed”. In some translations, the word “happy” has been used here. In fact, several years ago, Robert Schuller published a book called The Be Happy Attitudes. I remember thinking at the time that this was a gross trivialization of what Jesus intended. I still think that. The word here is makarios which could indeed include happiness, but that word has connotations in English that don’t really fit here with the context of the passage.

“Happy” implies a human emotion, while “blessed” implies that God’s grace and favor rest upon the person. The promise of bliss for those who are blessed is eschatological, not temporal. The blessing of joy does not come from being poor, but from the promise of God’s kingdom that comes to those who understand the eschatological meaning of their poverty.
Just, A. A., Jr. ©1996. Luke 1:1–9:50 (p. 279). St. Louis, MO: CPH.

So, if you want to read “happy” here, it wouldn’t exactly be wrong, but it is certainly less than what I think Jesus meant.

These verses divide into two categories. The blessings and the woes and they correspond to one another as a whole.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

When seen in this way, you can make some correlations between embracing the earthly life versus embracing the Kingdom of God. These words probably refer to both the physical world and the spiritual. If we want to place all of our trust and energies into what the flesh has to offer, our rewards are going to be shallow and short term. If we want to place our trust in God and His way for us, we will receive the Kingdom of God, satisfied and rejoicing. The praise of man, while pleasant enough is also short-term and useless.

Already, as Jesus teaches His disciples He is painting them a realistic picture of what their lives will look like here on earth and in the realm of Heaven. If you can forgo the rewards of the flesh which are fleeting you will gain the reward of heaven which is eternal. That might sound like a no-brainer, but we all know that living in the now, facing the hatred of those who don’t want anything to do with the faith, is tough. Keeping the future blessings of heaven in mind can also be difficult but those blessings are even played out for us right here, right now, as we get to spend our days with Jesus even before we reach heaven.

I know, it’s deep. That’s why He taught it to the disciples, not the crowd.

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