One of the benefits of this new Bible translation is that in new wording we may see God's story in a new way. Many of us gloss over the Beatitudes as we read them for the hundredth time without remembering how amazingly radical they were to the people that Jesus addressed. They were revolutionary bombshells to the early church.
The Beatitudes took the accepted standards and turned them upside down. The people that Jesus called happy the world at that time called wretched, and the people that the world called wretched Jesus called happy. Can you imagine the impact of a statement like "Happy are the poor, and woe to the rich."
According to the Gospel of Luke by William Barclay, what Jesus was saying was this, "If you set your heart and bend your whole energies to obtain the things which the world values, you will get them- but that is all you will ever get. But if you set your heart and bend your energies to the true Christ, you will run into all kinds of trouble. Your payment will come later, and it will be eternal joy."
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