Blessed Are

Blessed Are…

All Saints’ Day – 11/1/2025

Matthew 5:1-12

Rev. Dr. Christopher W. Brademeyer

That portion from God’s holy Word for consideration this evening is our lesson from the fifth chapter of the holy Gospel according to St. Matthew with special emphasis on verse two which reads as follows:

                [Jesus said,] “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[1]

Thus far the Scriptures.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our Lord Jesus, ascending a hill, a mount, sat down and began teaching His disciples. What followed is arguably the most famous of His speeches, the Sermon on the Mount. In particular, the section that has since come to be called the Beatitudes which we read today, are among the most familiar and yet most misunderstood passages in all of Scripture.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit... Blessed are those who mourn... Blessed are the meek…” I think it is a fair assumption that many of us find these words family, poetic, and even beautiful. But if we stop and think about them we ask a simple but needed question, “How are people suffering these things blessed?”               

Poor, mourning, meek, persecuted; none of that sounds like a blessing! And yet Jesus declares them blessed. He speaks these words not as advice for how to become blessed, but as a description of what His kingdom looks like and what it means to belong to Him. The Beatitudes describe the reality life of faith, the life that flows from Christ’s righteousness, and the life that clings to Him even when suffering in weakness.

How We Become Righteous

Jesus begins with this, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The world around us teaches that blessing belongs to the successful, the powerful, the ones who have their lives together. It is shown in power, respect, property, money, and the like.  But Jesus starts with the poor in spirit, that is, the ones who know they are broken, the ones who have no righteousness of their own. These are the ones who stand before God with empty hands and say, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” To be poor in spirit means to confess that you cannot save yourself. It means you have reached the end of your own strength, your own goodness, your own wisdom and found them lacking.

And that’s exactly where Christ meets you. For the Gospel begins not with our ascent up to God, but with God’s descent down to us, specifically, in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus, in His becoming Man. We do not climb up the mountain of righteousness by works or decisions or anything of the sort, Christ comes down from heaven to clothe us with His righteousness.We are not saved because we are meek or pure or merciful, we are saved because Jesus is all those things for us.

This is where the misunderstanding of the Beatitudes comes into play. Many see these not as blessings, which Jesus plainly says they are, but instead, as a list of things to work at or aspire towards. But the Beatitudes are not a ladder to climb, instead, they are a mirror that shows us our condition and need, which point to a promise that Christ Himself provides for us in our needy state.

The Lord Goes on to say, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” In Christ, our hunger for truth, security, and stability is satisfied. He gives us His own righteousness, the righteousness that He earned through His perfect obedience and His sacrificial death. This righteousness is not earned by us, not deserved by us. Instead, it is given. It is received by faith. This is how we become righteous: by receiving, not achieving.  As Luther  and all faithful preachers of the Gospel have observed, The righteousness of faith, by which the sinner is declared righteous before God, is not by his works, but through faith in Christ alone.

The Deficiency of the Sinful Nature

But as long as we live in this world, we carry within us what Scripture calls the old Adam, that is, our sinful nature. And that nature is utterly deficient. It cannot produce the righteousness that God requires. Instead, everything that it does, no matter how nice it might look on the surface, is tainted with the source. That is to say, sinners produce sin. And even though we can do things that are nice for our neighbors in a subjective, human sense, these works do not possess the purity that the Law of God requires. And knowing this, we will take accurate stock of our condition, seeing ourselves as poor, miserable sinners.

The Beatitudes show us what the state of Christians is like; we are poor in spirit, lacking in any righteousness in ourselves. We are in mourning due to death and sin in ourselves in this world. We are meek, realizing that we cannot save ourselves. We have purity of heart, having been given new and clean hearts opposed to this world and its false promises by the Holy Spirit. We seek to extend mercy, as God has been merciful to us. And as those who benefit with the peace that surpasses all understanding that we given to us by Christ Jesus our Lord, we too seek to bring peace wherever we can.  

The sinful nature does not like to concede these things. We are not naturally poor in spirit; we are proud and self-reliant. We do not mourn sin; we often justify it or minimize it. We are not meek; we want control and power. We hunger for comfort, not righteousness. We are not merciful; we remember wrongs and thirst for vengeance. We are not pure in heart; our hearts are divided and distracted.

The old Adam within us loves the opposite of the Beatitudes. And that’s why Christ must not only forgive our sin but we must also crucify our sinful nature daily.  In Baptism, our old sinful self was drowned, and a new Adam, a new self, came forth to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. But that old nature still clings to us like a shadow, fighting against the Spirit. So every day, the Christian life is one of repentance, dying to sin and rising again in Christ.

It is impossible to make sense of the beatitudes and blessings without seeing them in the light of the Cross of our Lord Jesus. This list may give us a certain kind of virtue that we should seek to cultivate, but these are not commands from God that we must emulate. No, these are the blessings and reality of the Christian life, even a portrait of the very life of Christ Himself. One that now lives in us as we live in Him.

Jesus is the One who was truly poor in spirit, emptying Himself and taking the form of a servant. He mourned over the sin of the world and wept over Jerusalem. He was meek and lowly of heart. He hungered and thirsted for righteousness so that we might be filled. He was pure in heart, merciful to sinners, and persecuted for righteousness’ sake, even unto death on a cross. And as His Christians, little Christs in the pattern of our Master, we too will be this way. 

But even more than this, we have the promise that where we fail, Christ succeeded.Where we are deficient, He is perfect to an excess degree. And His perfection is credited to us by faith.

The Opposition of the World, the Devil, and the Sinful Self

But make no mistake: this righteousness and this life of faith do not go unopposed. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake… Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” The world hates the kind of righteousness that comes by faith, because it exposes the world’s own false righteousness. The devil hates it because it robs him of his accusations and the shame that he manipulates us by. And our sinful flesh hates it because it means surrendering control.

The world says, “Blessed are the powerful.” Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek.” The world says, “Blessed are the satisfied.” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst.” The world says, “Blessed are those who are admired.” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are  reviled for My sake.” So when you face opposition, when you’re mocked for believing God’s Word, when you struggle against your own temptations, when you feel out of step with the world remember that this is not a sign of failure. It really the opposite; it is a sign that you belong to Christ. As Paul writes, “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,”[2] Yet in that opposition, we share in Christ’s sufferings, and we also share in His comfort and His glory.

The Triumph of Christ in Weakness

This brings us to the heart of the Beatitudes and the heart of All Saints’ Day, the triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ in weakness. The saints are not those who triumphed by their strength. They triumphed through Christ’s weakness, through faith in His cross, His suffering, His death, in Him. The world saw Jesus’s crucifixion as defeat, but faith sees it as the victory over our enemies that it is. There on the cross, our Lord conquered sin, death, and the devil. He was poor, mourning, meek, and persecuted, and yet through it all, He was victorious. And that same victory belongs to His saints by faith.

Those who have gone before us, the faithful saints who now rest from their labors, did not live perfect lives. They lived forgiven lives. Their triumph was not their own doing, but Christ’s work for them. And you, too, share in that triumph. Even in your weakness, Christ’s strength is made perfect. Even when you are empty, you are blessed. Even when you mourn, you are comforted. Even when you are poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is yours. Even now, sinners that you are, you are saints in Christ. The world cannot see it, but God declares it to be true: you are blessed. This is not because of your circumstances, but because of Christ’s promises. It is not because you are strong, but because Christ is strong on your behalf.

Conclusion

So today, we remember with joy all the saints of God, the known and the unknown, the famous and the forgotten. We remember those who confessed Christ in the midst of suffering, who died in faith, and who now see Him face to face. We remember those who died peacefully with faith in their Savior. And we remember that we, too, are part of that communion of saints. You are saints, not because of what You have done, but because of what Christ has done for you. You have been washed in Baptism, fed with the Lord’s own body and blood, and have been sustained by His Word. Even now you live as blessed saints in Christ.

When Jesus says, “Blessed are you,” He is not making a wish. He is declaring a reality. Even now, though you mourn, though you hunger, though you struggle, you are blessed, because the kingdom of heaven is already yours.  And one day soon, that promise will be fulfilled in glory. The poor in spirit will see fully the richness of grace that they already possess by faith. Mourners will be comforted. The meek will inherit the earth. The pure in heart will see God. The persecuted will reign with Christ forever.

Until that day, we live by faith in the certain work of the One who triumphed through weakness, who makes saints out of sinners, and who blesses us with His righteousness.

“Rejoice and be glad,” Jesus says, “for your reward is great in heaven.”

In the Holy Name of + Jesus. Amen.

 The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

[1] Matthew 5:2 English Standard Version. All further citations from the Scriptures are from the ESV.

[2] 2 Timothy 3:12