Who Gets To Heaven?

Matthew 5:1-10 Seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him.  Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:   Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.  Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.  Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus in His sermon on the Mount began with the ”Beatitudes”.  A key insight infrequently taught about these passages is that they convey in totality the very characteristics or attributes of all believers that will spend eternal life in heaven with Jesus.  Most teachings on these passages speak to only to the blessings they convey for people who exhibit these attributes on a onsey twosey basis.  There is more wisdom contained in these passages!  These Beatitudes are actually a checklist of the traits Jesus’ followers will possess.  The Beatitudes give us a series of “self examinations” to see if we are truly walking with Jesus in a genuine and saving faith.  Everyone of these Beatitudes are specific attributes that Jesus and the Apostles told us we will possess if we are truly Born Again and following Jesus on the narrow and difficult path to life.  I am examining myself in this regard and know that change and improvement is needed.  I pray that God will grant me repentance in the areas I need to change.  Let’s explore these eight attributes together to see how we are doing and if we “pass the test”. 

 1.  Poor in Spirit:  This speaks directly to our need to acknowledge that we need a Savior.  Those of true faith come to Christ only after reaching a point of  brokenness.  This brokenness can be driven by many things including the general anxiety of life without God,   a sense of hopelessness or an aimless lack of purpose.  Eventually we reach the point of no return where we say (at God’s calling of course) NO MORE I don’t want to or I can’t live this way anymore.  We then turn/cry to the Lord who was there the whole time to embrace our broken spirit.  Others reach the point of being poor in spirit by the increasing weight of the guilt and shame they have for continuing to do evil and sin.  Try as they might with human willpower, they can’t stop doing evil.   Eventually, God’s call gets to them, assisted by a brother or sister in Christ and they surrender to the Lord and repent of their sins.  This is what Jesus means here when he says Poor in Spirit.  Jesus mentioned this as the first Beatitudes because it is indeed the first step necessary in a walk with God.  We must be broken and acknowledge that we are a sinner that cannot on our own power or initiative be saved.  We must call upon the name of the Lord instead.

Joel 2:32  And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.  We have to get to the point where we grab hold of the truth of John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  We have to want eternal life.  We have to acknowledge God in our lives.  We must decrease by our surrender to Him so He can increase.

Our call to the Lord and confession of our sins to Him begins our walk of faith, without which nobody can please God and by default get into heaven.  This is the first and most critical step in our path towards salvation.  We must indeed start the race to be able to finish it.

 2.  Those Who Mourn:  God hates sin and sent Jesus to call us sinners to REPENTANCE.   God demands that we repent to have life but promises to forgive, restore and empower us when we turn to him in Godly sorrow.                       2 Cor 7:9-10 Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing.  For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.  When we remain in an un-repented state, we are separated from God until and unless we repent of our sin.  1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  James told us to mourn in the context of purifying ourselves and humbling ourselves before God.  James 4:7-10 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.  Jesus knew that true repentance brings godly sorrow and the mourning and weeping which follows.  He knows how this operates, as He indeed is our creator.  But Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes that He will comfort us when we mourn.  Through the grace of God we are forgiven, purified and strengthened when we repent and mourn over sin.  

Paul wrote a verse about the comfort the Father provides when we mourn.  2 Cor 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  

3.  The Meek:   Meekness is despised by worldly logic and is synonymous with weakness.  But in God’s eyes, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Another word for meekness is humility.  It is the antithesis of pride.  James told us that God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud.  We are told in Proverbs to lean not on our own understanding and that in all ways let God direct our paths.  Sadly we are taught the opposite of God’s logic by the world and the school and business systems of our society.  Before I became a true man of faith,  I would ridicule Christians for being so weak that they had to fall back on a dependency to God to live their lives.  What folly I thought.  God told us the world would reject us if we truly followed Him, so you can be sure your meekness before God will be rejected by those that do not know God. We need to equip our young people to stay with Christ, we lose so many in the teen and college years.  We simply must begin teaching and living on the call of God for meekness.  This encompasses a lot more than fasting.   The truly rich are the people of God that live with an attitude of persistent humility and meekness.  This is hard to do when measured against the lifestyle of the world.

4. Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness:  I believe this attributes gets to the heart of what we focus on.  Matthew 6:33 says “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.  If we put the Lord first in our lives and seek to love Him with ALL our heart, mind and soul, we are seeking to OBEY him above anything else.  That is what seeking righteousness is, seeking to obey God.  A common theme in my posts is the dearth of teaching regarding obedience to God.  Seeking Him starts and ends with obeying His commandments and adhering the many words of God that define what our true love Him looks like.  It looks like obedience.  Getting to heaven will require us to hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Thankfully we have a Savior to forgive us for our slips, falls and trespasses but we must be seeking obedience sincerely in our hearts, otherwise we are just playing religion and Jesus will tell us “depart from me, I never knew you”.

 5.  The Merciful:  There are many universal laws of God.  One of them is the law of sowing and reaping.  God tells us plainly that we reap what we sow, we get whatever we give, etc.  Consider this passage from Luke’s gospel.

Luke 6:35-38 “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. “Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

Since we all will have sin in our lives, we need mercy from God to enter life with him.  There is no other way to be pure and spotless.  We cannot earn our way into heaven.  God chooses to have mercy on whom he will have mercy Paul tells us in Romans 9.  Here in the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy.  Are you harboring unforgiveness towards anyone?  If so, God tells us clearly he will not have mercy on you, and your sins will not be forgiven.  Just read Matthew 18 or recite the Lord’s prayer if you don’t believe this.  It is amazing how many Christians walk around harboring unforgiveness and bitterness towards others.  Even greater numbers walk around with planks in their eyes, showing a critical spirit and being an evil judge of everyone else but never looking in the mirror and seeing their own double mindedness and hypocrisy.  If we want mercy from God, which we must have to enter heaven, we must learn to be merciful to all we interact with in this life.  No exceptions.

6.  Pure in Heart: Jesus tells us that the pure of Heart will see God or another words enter into heaven with Him.     The writer of Hebrews said something similar to this Beatitude when he wrote:  Hebrews 12:14 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.  Flipping this passage around, we implicitly see that it shows us that we must pursue peace with all people and holiness to see the Lord.     Pursuing peace is another way of saying sowing Love to all.  Man is so competitive, we want to be right, we want to win, and these kinds of worldly thoughts lead to conflict – the antithesis of peace.  Paul told us that without Love, we are nothing and all the other good is useless as we are just a clanging symbol.  So the pure in heart, LOVE above all.  The second part of pure of heart is achieving holiness.  Holiness is achieved by being sanctified through repentance and the forgiveness of sins that flows from the grace of God and our subsequent pursuit of righteousness via our obedience to the Lord.  Romans 2:13 tells us For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.  Being declared righteous is the same as being declared holy and is a requirement to enter heaven as the whole of scripture attests.

Are you obeying God?  Jesus said if you love Him you will obey his commandments.  Obedience is indeed at the heart of the salvation message of the gospel.

7.  The Peacemakers:  To be called a Son of God, is indeed a high honor.  Slaves do not inherit the possessions of their masters, but Sons do.  Only God’s sons (and daughters) get to inherit the kingdom of God.  Here in this Beatitude, Jesus tells us we will be called Sons of God if we are a peacemaker.  Peacemakers do not compromise the truth about God.  They seek to bring true peace to a situation not the false peace a peacekeeper brings.  We must be willing to stand up to the truth, rebuke evil and judge righteous judgment.  

Phil 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  The world doesn’t get it.  People that do not know God, can’t understand how we of true faith can be at peace in the midst of calamity and not be fearful about tomorrow.  I think the world is going to into an end times period of severe calamity and hardship, yet I am not fearful. I am at peace with it because I am in Christ and my mind is being guarded by Him.  But  I believe Jesus had a higher and specific message in isolating out being a peacemaker. 

The world is conflicted.  The lost are in torment and in bondage.  Satan uses  fear to entice the lost into evil and all kinds of sinful pursuits.  I believe that when Jesus referred to those going to heaven as Peacemakers, he was referring to our call to be disciples to all nations.  All believers are called to be disciples, there is no distinction for a son of God who is not also a disciple.  Sitting on the sidelines cherishing the fact we are going to heaven and riding out the storm in the world is not what Jesus had in mind and in fact is an oxymoron.  If we do that, we are not obeying Him, we are not following Him and we are certainly not His sheep.  The great commission was for ALL to practice that wish to go to heaven.  Matthew 28:19-20  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  Are you sitting on the balcony of life?  You need to get into this game and become a peacemaker to be a true Son of God. 

8.  Persecuted for Righteousness Sake:  If we are a worker in God’s field Jesus told us we will be persecuted.  Jesus told us many times about counting the cost of discipleship.  One aspect of that cost was giving up the things of the world but another and most important aspect of the cost is the rejection and persecution we incur from the world, including family, friends, co-workers and the like that do not know God.  Consider what Jesus said in John’s gospel.

John 15:20-21 Remember what I told you: ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’  If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.  They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.

James tells us to be joyful when this happens.  James 1:2-3 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,  because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  We should indeed be joyful, as the persecution we incur for righteousness sake is validation of our candidacy and fulfillment of the attributes for heaven.  Clearly we are to show love to others, preach the gospel, be humble,  show mercy to all, be a peacemaker and ultimately build the kingdom by sowing the seeds of God.  We will make some enemies by doing this but we shouldn’t shy away from it and stay in the balcony. Jesus went on to add an 9th Beatitude to add emphasis to our call to discipleship as His sheep. Jesus saved this Beatitude for last in the list, as it is the fulfillment of all that he taught.  This is FAITH in action, not just vain worship with our lips, but real action.  Jesus coined the adages that TALK IS CHEAP and ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS right here in the Beatitudes. 

9.  Being Reviled and Persecuted :  Matthew 5:11-12  Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.  Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.  Wow, we are to be EXCEEDINGLY GLAD when people that don’t know God hate us (revile).  We don’t go looking for fights but if we walk uprightly and preach the truth, we will find out what Jesus found out and that is we are no friend of the world.

So how did you fare in your self evaluation of these 8 (or 9) attributes of those bound for heaven?  I found that I need to work on my pride and meekness issues and step out in faith more boldly and risk persecution by those in my life circle.  I also realized that I am not mourning over the areas where I still sin.  I must hate it and weep over my sins sincerely before God.  That is true repentance.

I hope this post will inspire you and periodically check yourself against the characteristics one would have or endure if they were blessed and destined for the kingdom of God.   

MAY GOD BLESS YOU RICHLY!!!