The Lord's Sermon on the Mount

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.8 · 1.9–1.13 · 1.14–1.17 · 1.18–1.21 · 1.22–2.2 · 2.3–2.8 · 2.9–2.14 · 2.15–2.19 · 2.20–2.24 · 2.25

1. 1.1Augustine argues that the Sermon on the Mount contains the perfect pattern of the Christian life, explains the mountain as the greater precepts of righteousness, and reads the poor in spirit as the humble who fear God.
2. 1.2Augustine explains the beatitudes of the meek, the mourners, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers, describing inner peace as reason ruling the passions under God’s truth.
3. 1.3Augustine counts eight beatitudes and reads the first seven as ascending steps of the soul, from humility to wisdom, with the eighth returning to the first.
4. 1.4Augustine matches the seven gifts of the Spirit in Isaiah, counted upward from fear to wisdom, with the beatitudes and their rewards, and finds the eighth beatitude signified by the eighth day and Pentecost.
5. 1.5Augustine explains the blessing on the persecuted disciples: blessedness is inward, heretics and schismatics who suffer do not share the reward, and the reward is in the spiritual heavens.
6. 1.6Augustine explains the salt that loses its savour as disciples who fear persecution, and the lamp under a bushel as truth hidden for the sake of bodily comfort.
7. 1.7Augustine explains that good works are to be shown not for human praise but so that God may be glorified, and introduces Christ’s saying that he came to fulfil the Law.
8. 1.8Augustine explains “fulfilling” the Law first as adding what it lacks, and reads the iota and the stroke as the least commandments.
9. 1.9Augustine explains the greater righteousness that forbids anger without cause, interprets Racha as an interjection, and sets out the three grades of sin and of liability: judgment, council, and the gehenna of fire.
10. 1.10Augustine interprets leaving the gift at the altar spiritually: the altar is faith in the inner temple, and reconciliation is made first in the heart before God.
11. 1.11Augustine interprets the judge, officer, prison, and last farthing of Matt 5:25–26, leans toward reading the punishment as eternal, and asks whether the adversary is the devil, a man, the flesh, God, or God’s commandment, preferring the last two.
12. 1.12Augustine explains adultery of the heart as full consent to lust, sets out the three steps of sin (suggestion, delight, consent) after the pattern of the fall, and widens adultery and sexual immorality figuratively to every evil desire.
13. 1.13Augustine reads the right eye and right hand that cause stumbling as a beloved counsellor and helper in divine things who would lead one into heresy, to be cut off.
14. 1.14Augustine explains that Moses’ certificate of divorce was meant to delay separation, that Christ excepts only sexual immorality, and that, following Paul, neither a wife who departs nor a husband who puts away his wife may marry another while the spouse lives.
15. 1.15Augustine reconciles Christ’s ban on putting away a wife with the command to hate one’s wife: the Christian loves the spouse as a human being and fellow heir, while hating the temporal and mortal bond that will not exist in the resurrection.
16. 1.16Augustine asks how widely “sexual immorality” in the exception clause is to be taken, argues from 1 Cor 7 that it includes idolatry, unbelief, and every unlawful desire, holds that a woman who is put away should remain unmarried or be reconciled, and recounts without judgment a case from Antioch.
17. 1.17Augustine explains the prohibition of oaths: swearing is not good but sometimes necessary because of others’ weakness, as Paul’s oaths show; the oaths by heaven, earth, Jerusalem, and one’s head are all owed to God.
18. 1.18Augustine sums up the precepts so far as the hard conquest of habit, including bearing every hardship of marriage except sexual immorality and not marrying a divorced woman, and introduces the precepts of mercy.
19. 1.19Augustine explains that the law of retaliation set a measure on revenge, which Christ perfects by commanding readiness to suffer more, and interprets the cheek, the tunic and garment, and the forced mile as dispositions of the heart, citing the conduct of Paul and of Christ himself.
20. 1.20Augustine distinguishes injuries that cannot be restored from those that can, allows punishment that corrects out of love (citing Elijah, Peter, Paul, and even the Acts of Thomas against the heretics), and explains giving and lending.
21. 1.21Augustine explains love of enemies as the summit of mercy, treats “hate your enemy” as an allowance for the weak, and argues that the imprecations of the prophets, of Christ, and of Paul are predictions, not wishes.
22. 1.22Augustine explains the “sin unto death” of 1 John 5:16 as a Christian’s envious attack on the brotherhood after receiving grace, connects it with the sin against the Holy Spirit and with Judas’s despair, and reads the martyrs’ cry for vengeance as a prayer for the overthrow of sin’s kingdom.
23. 1.23Augustine explains that believers become sons of God by adoption and imitate the Father, who gives his own sun and rain to good and evil alike, and he closes Book 1 with the beatitude of the merciful.
24. 2.1Opening Book 2, Augustine treats the cleansing of the heart: good deeds may be seen by men but must not be done for human praise, as Paul’s pleasing men for God’s sake shows.
25. 2.2Augustine explains the warning against hypocritical almsgiving, rejects readings of the “left hand” as unbelievers, enemies, or a wife, and interprets it as the desire for human praise mingling with the intention to obey God.
26. 2.3Augustine explains praying in the inner chamber of the heart with the door of the senses shut, rejects many words in prayer, and argues that prayer serves not to inform God but to turn and cleanse the heart.
27. 2.4Augustine introduces the Lord’s Prayer and explains its opening address: Israel knew God as Lord, but Christians by grace call him “Our Father,” which stirs love, confidence, reverence, and brotherhood between rich and poor.
28. 2.5Augustine explains “who are in heaven” as God dwelling in the righteous, explains why Christians face east to pray, and reads “hallowed be your name” as a prayer that God’s name be held holy among the nations.
29. 2.6Augustine explains “your kingdom come” as the manifestation of God’s reign at the judgment, and gives several readings of “your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”: angels and men, righteous and sinners, spirit and flesh, Christ and the church.
30. 2.7Augustine weighs three meanings of “daily bread” (bodily needs, the Eucharist, the spiritual food of God’s precepts), prefers the spiritual, and allows all three to be taken together.
31. 2.8Augustine explains the debts of the fifth petition as sins, discusses forgiving money debts, and concludes that all sins against us must be forgiven if we wish to be forgiven.
32. 2.9Augustine explains the sixth petition as a prayer not to be led into temptation, not to escape all testing, answers the heretics’ objections from God’s testing and from Job, and explains the seventh petition as deliverance from the evil we are already in.
33. 2.10Augustine distinguishes the first three petitions, which begin in this life but last forever, from the last four, which belong only to this temporal life.
34. 2.11Augustine matches the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer to the seven gifts and beatitudes, and stresses the petition for forgiveness as a pact with God.
35. 2.12Augustine explains the precept on fasting: ostentation can lurk even in squalor, and anointing the head and washing the face mean inward joy and a pure heart.
36. 2.13Augustine explains treasure in heaven and the single eye as the pure intention behind our acts: what counts is the mind with which a deed is done, since its outcome is uncertain.
37. 2.14Augustine explains that no one can serve God and mammon, identifies mammon’s master with the devil, and warns against despising God through presumption on his mercy.
38. 2.15Augustine explains the warning against anxiety for food and clothing, takes “soul” as this present life, and reads the birds and lilies as arguments from lesser to greater, not allegories.
39. 2.16Augustine distinguishes the good to be sought, the kingdom of God, from the necessities to be used for its sake, and illustrates this with Paul’s refusal to preach the Gospel for a living.
40. 2.17Augustine explains that providing for necessities is not forbidden, as the examples of Christ’s purse and Paul’s collections and manual work show, provided one does not serve God for the sake of these things.
41. 2.18Augustine interprets “Do not judge” as forbidding rash judgment of doubtful motives or despair of anyone’s amendment, while manifest sins may be judged, and explains that rash judgment harms chiefly the one who judges.
42. 2.19Augustine reads the speck and the beam as anger and hatred, warns against rebuking others out of hatred or pretence, and explains Paul’s becoming all things to all as love, not pretence.
43. 2.20Augustine explains “Do not give what is holy to dogs” as permission to conceal truths from those who would assail (dogs) or despise (swine) them, without lying, and discusses when and how to answer questioners, after Christ’s example.
44. 2.21Augustine explains asking, seeking, and knocking as prayer for strength, search for truth, and entry into possession, and argues from human fathers to God’s readiness to give good things.
45. 2.22Augustine explains the Golden Rule, noting that “good things” is a Latin addition absent from the Greek, relates it to love of neighbour, and concludes the treatment of the single, pure heart.
46. 2.23Augustine explains the narrow gate: Christ’s yoke is light, but few are willing to take it up.
47. 2.24Augustine warns against false prophets and heretics, refutes the reading of the good and bad trees as two natures, identifies the fruits by which a tree is known with Paul’s works of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit, and notes that fasting, prayer, and alms can be counterfeited.
48. 2.25Augustine warns against being deceived by the mere name of Christ or by miracles, reconciles “Lord, Lord” with 1 Cor 12:3, and closes with the parable of the two builders and the sevenfold pattern of the sermon.