The Narrow PathSample

Confound, Confront, Convert

How you approach the Sermon on the Mount changes everything. If you see it as an instructional manual for salvation, then every time you fail to live up to Jesus’s words, you will question whether God is for you.

But the sermon is not how we achieve salvation; it’s how we demonstrate it. Those who Jesus has transformed resist the cultural norms around them. Thus, this sermon is both an invitation and an inventory. It invites us into a different way of seeing, hearing, and being. We were called to confound, confront, and convert a world out of darkness and into God's peace-giving, love-animating, joy-fulfilling reign—not in our effort alone, but in the grace of God so generously poured out for us. But this sermon also prompts us to take inventory of our thoughts, words, and actions to see if they align with Jesus’s glorious vision. Consider some of its major themes:

• How can I forgive someone who hurt me?
• Am I serving God or money?
• Is trust or anxiety shaping my life?
• Can my word be taken at face value?
• Do I bless those who curse me?
• Do I have sexual integrity?

You might conclude that Jesus’s path makes no sense. And you would be right. In the eyes of the world, Jesus’s wisdom is nonsense. But for those of us who are weary of anchoring our lives in the unfulfilling promises of the surrounding culture, Jesus offers a better way—a narrow path. The life you and I desperately want but struggle to attain.

Choosing the narrow path requires trusting that Jesus knows what’s best for you, even when it conflicts with your assumptions and expectations. As we read in Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9).

Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount help set our lives in a particular direction, strip off what is weighing us down, and realize how subversive the way of Jesus really is.

As you read the Beatitudes, what invitation do you sense from God? What stands out to you in its major themes as something you need to evaluate in your life today?