The Blessed Life Is Closer Than You Think

By Dave Miller

When I was younger, I learned to read the Sermon on the Mount a certain way. It was presented to me as a kind of spiritual mirror designed to expose how far I fell short. Jesus’ words were treated like an intensified version of the Ten Commandments, a higher and more penetrating law that reached beyond behavior into motives, thoughts, and desires. When He said that unless our righteousness surpassed that of the scribes and Pharisees we would not enter the kingdom of heaven, I understood that to mean one thing: I could never do it.

That understanding fit neatly into how I was taught to think about grace. Grace was forgiveness. Grace was justification. Grace was the gift of Christ’s righteousness given to me because I could never attain righteousness on my own. The logic was simple and clean. The Sermon on the Mount showed me how impossible holiness really was. I felt the weight of that impossibility, and that weight drove me to cling to Jesus. He had lived the life I could not live. He had achieved the righteousness I could not achieve. Through belief, His righteousness became mine. Case closed.

In that framework, the Sermon on the Mount served a single primary purpose. It humbled me. It exposed me. It reminded me that I was not enough. And then, having done its job, it quietly stepped off the stage. I did not return to it very often, because once I understood that I could never live up to it, what was the point? It was like a standard that existed only to show me my failure and then send me back to the cross for forgiveness.

There is truth in that understanding. The Sermon does expose the human heart. It does dismantle self-righteousness. It does show us that external compliance is not the same as inward transformation. But over time, I began to sense that something was missing. If the Sermon on the Mount was only a tool to crush me so that I would accept forgiveness, why did Jesus spend so much time describing life in the kingdom? Why did He speak in such concrete, human terms about anger, reconciliation, purity, truthfulness, generosity, prayer, trust, and love? Why give such a detailed picture of life if no one was ever meant to live it?

The turning point for me came as my understanding of grace began to change. Dallas Willard was one of the voices that helped me make that transition. He insisted, again and again, that grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning. He described grace as God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot accomplish on our own. That definition widened the horizon. Grace was no longer only pardon. It was power. It was not merely the mechanism by which I was forgiven; it was the very life of God at work in me, enabling me to become different.

That shift began to reshape how I saw the Sermon on the Mount. If grace is only forgiveness, then the Sermon must function primarily as an unattainable law. But if grace is also the active, present power of God working in us, then the Sermon begins to look less like an impossible standard and more like an invitation into a new way of living.

I started to notice how I had been reading the Sermon. I had treated it as purely prescriptive law, a list of commands that were meant to be obeyed perfectly but never actually could be. At times, I also treated it as descriptive in the wrong sense, as though Jesus were only describing His own unique life, something beautiful to admire but never to imitate. In both cases, the result was the same. The distance between Jesus and me remained fixed and unbridgeable.

But there is another way to understand it. The Sermon on the Mount is also exemplary. It shows us the kind of life that flows out of a person who lives in the kingdom of God. It reveals the inner character, the habits, the reflexes, and the posture of someone whose life is rooted in trust, dependence, and obedience to the Father. It is not merely a new law to perform, nor is it just a portrait to admire. It is a window into the life Jesus lived and an invitation to learn to live that life with Him.

That realization required another important shift. I had always thought of righteousness primarily as a noun. Righteousness was a status. It was something I received. Christ was righteous. Through faith, that righteousness was credited to me. That is gloriously true, and I would never want to diminish it. Justification is real. Forgiveness is real. The gift of Christ’s righteousness is real.

But if righteousness is only a noun, then it can remain abstract and distant from daily life. It becomes something I possess without necessarily becoming someone different. The Sermon on the Mount pushes us further. It forces us to see that righteousness is also a verb. Those who are made righteous begin, over time, to live righteously. Not perfectly, not instantly, but genuinely and progressively.

Jesus does not say, “Blessed are those who admire humility.” He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” He does not say, “Blessed are those who agree that mercy is a good idea.” He says, “Blessed are the merciful.” The language of the Sermon is not abstract. It is lived. It is embodied. It is the language of people who are actually becoming a certain kind of person.

When I began to see grace as the empowering presence of God and righteousness as something that could be lived as well as received, the Sermon on the Mount stopped feeling like a wall I could never climb and started to look like a path I could begin to walk. Not in my own strength, not as a way to earn God’s approval, but as the natural direction of a life lived with Christ.

This is where the phrase Jesus uses becomes so important. He says the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That does not simply mean it is coming someday. It means it is near. It is accessible. It is within reach. Through Him, the life of the kingdom becomes relationally proximate. We are not only promised forgiveness; we are invited into a new way of being human.

If the kingdom is at hand, then the Sermon on the Mount is not a distant ideal. It is a description of life in that kingdom. It shows us what it looks like when anger is replaced by reconciliation, when lust gives way to purity of heart, when revenge is overcome by love of enemy, when anxiety is surrendered into trust. It is not a script that we must perform flawlessly. It is a blueprint that shows us the direction of a transformed life.

For years, I believed the primary function of the Sermon was to drive me back to the cross again and again to be forgiven. Now I see that it also drives me forward into a life of discipleship. It calls me to trust that transformation is possible. It challenges me to consider that the faithfulness of Christ is not only something that covers me but something that can begin to form in me.

This changes the question we bring to the text. Instead of asking, “How does this show me I can never measure up?” we begin to ask, “What kind of life is Jesus inviting me into here?” Instead of seeing grace only as rescue from failure, we begin to see it as the steady, patient power that teaches us to live differently.

The Sermon on the Mount then becomes what it may have been intended to be all along: a picture of the blessed life. Not a life free from struggle or difficulty, but a life rooted in God’s presence, shaped by His values, and aligned with the way we were designed to live. Jesus is not merely describing the life He alone can live. He is showing us the life that begins to emerge in those who walk with Him, trust Him, and learn from Him.

This perspective does not minimize sin. It does not erase the need for forgiveness. It does not pretend that change is easy. But it does take seriously the possibility that the gospel is about more than being declared right. It is also about being made new. Grace does not only cancel our debt. It trains us, strengthens us, and leads us into a new way of living.

The question that slowly formed in me, and that now presses gently on others, is simple but searching. Do we believe that the life Jesus describes is actually accessible through Him? Do we believe that, by grace, we can begin to live the blessed life He outlines? Not perfectly, not all at once, but intentionally and progressively, as we follow Him?

If the answer is yes, then the Sermon on the Mount is not just a passage we visit to feel convicted and then leave behind. It becomes a lifelong companion. It becomes a guide. It becomes a vision of what it means to live as a citizen of the kingdom here and now.