The most concentrated body of Christ's ethical teaching in all of Scripture, given on a hillside in Galilee and recorded in Matthew 5-7 (with the parallel Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20-49). The sermon opens with the Beatitudes (5:3-12) and closes with the parable of the two builders (7:24-27). Between, Christ addresses anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, love of enemies, almsgiving, prayer (giving the Lord's Prayer, 6:9-13), fasting, treasure, anxiety, judging others, asking-seeking-knocking, the narrow gate, and false prophets. The sermon is sometimes mistakenly read as the ethic of natural-religion goodness; it is the opposite. The standard is so high (be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect, 5:48) that without Christ's atoning work and the Spirit's power, no one can keep it. The sermon drives the sinner to grace, then forms the redeemed into kingdom-people.
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• "The most concentrated body of ethical teaching in all of Scripture."