Introduction: Before Entering the Sermon
How the Sermon on the Mount must be read through Christ and received as a call to obedience.
1. The King and His People – Session 1
Who belongs to the kingdom and what their lives begin to look like.
2. The True Meaning of Righteousness – Session 2
How Jesus brings the law to its intended depth in the heart.
3. True Devotion Before the Father – Session 3
What sincere faith looks like in worship, trust, and daily life.
4. The Two Ways and the Final Test – Session 4
How Jesus distinguishes between real discipleship and empty profession.
Introduction: Before Entering the Sermon
The Sermon on the Mount is familiar territory for many Christians, which can make it easy to move past its commands too quickly. Its words are well known, but its instructions are often kept at a distance. That is part of why Bonhoeffer gave so much attention to Matthew 5 through 7 in The Cost of Discipleship. He understood that this sermon stands near the center of the Christian life. Bonhoeffer’s reading can sound severe to modern ears, and some of that severity is tied to the world he was living in, especially the compromise, confusion, and fracture within the German church in his day. He often speaks in sharp, black and white terms because he was writing against a form of Christianity that wanted the name of Christ without the obedience of discipleship. Even so, the call to obedience in the Sermon on the Mount should not be read as a call to earn relationship with God through works. Scripture does not allow that. Salvation is the free gift of grace in Christ, as Ephesians 2 makes clear. Obedience belongs on the other side of that gift. It is the grateful response of those who have been shown mercy, and as James 2 makes plain, it is also the evidence that faith is living and real.
Bonhoeffer did not read the Sermon on the Mount as a collection of ideals or a set of moral insights detached from the person of Jesus. He read it through Christ himself. Jesus is the one who fulfills the law, calls the disciple, and speaks with full authority. That means the sermon cannot be treated as religious theory. It comes as the word of the living Lord to those who belong to him.
That changes the way it must be read. Taken as bare moral teaching, it will either feel impossible or be reduced to something admirable but distant. Bonhoeffer refused both options because Jesus does not speak here in a way that leaves room for safe admiration. He speaks to the heart, the will, the desires, the speech, the relationships, the worship, the anxieties, and the obedience of his people. The sermon reaches into ordinary life and refuses to stay abstract.
Bonhoeffer also saw that the Sermon on the Mount is about more than private devotion. It describes the visible life of the disciple community. When Jesus calls his people salt and light, he is speaking about a public faithfulness that can be seen in truthfulness, mercy, reconciliation, prayer, trust, and love, even when that love is costly. A church that wants the comfort of Christian language without the obedience of Christian discipleship will always struggle with this sermon.
That tension has not gone away. It is easy to speak about grace while resisting surrender. It is easy to praise the words of Jesus while avoiding the life they require. The Sermon on the Mount does not allow that separation for long. Jesus keeps bringing the claims of the kingdom into places where they cannot be managed from a distance.
These studies will work through the sermon with that in view. The goal is to read it carefully and in its biblical context, especially in light of the Old Testament. Jesus is not speaking into a vacuum. He is speaking as the one who fulfills the law and the prophets. What he says about righteousness, mercy, purity, prayer, trust, and obedience is deeply connected to what God had already revealed.
The hope is simple. The Sermon on the Mount should do more than leave a good impression. It should bring people under the words of Christ again. It should press past familiarity and expose where discipleship has grown thin. This is not a call to perfection, nor is it a call to earn acceptance with God through good works. As Ephesians 2 makes clear, grace is a gift before obedience is ever a response. This is a call to real change, real growth, and a life increasingly ordered around Christ and his commands in gratitude for the grace already given. Following Jesus has always meant more than agreeing with him. It means obeying him.
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