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Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer)
Matthew 5–7 (cf. Luke 6); Lord's Prayer Matthew 6:9–13, Luke 11:2–4· Teaching or doctrine· Books & writings
Mostly agreed by scholarsMost historians agree; some details uncertain.
Jesus' best-known teaching, in Matthew 5–7: the Beatitudes, 'love your enemies', the Golden Rule and the Lord's Prayer.
See it on the Bible & Christianity map →What it is
Matthew sets it on a hillside in Galilee. It opens with the Beatitudes: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit... the meek... the peacemakers'. Jesus says he came 'not to abolish' the Law 'but to fulfill' it (5:17), then deepens it: anger is like murder, lust like adultery; turn the other cheek; love your enemies. He teaches the Lord's Prayer (6:9–13), warns against worry and showy piety, and gives the Golden Rule (7:12). Luke has a shorter 'Sermon on the Plain' (Luke 6).
Why it matters
It is Christianity's core ethical charter. It shaped Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolence, and the Lord's Prayer is shared by all Christians.
Sources and history
Many scholars think Matthew gathered sayings spoken at different times into one sermon; much overlaps Luke, suggesting a shared earlier source scholars call 'Q'. Sayings like 'love your enemies' are widely judged authentic.
Questions and debates
Whether its demands are meant literally for everyone (Anabaptists), as counsels of perfection (medieval Catholic teaching), or to show the need for grace (Luther) still divides readers.
Connections (4)
▸Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer) reinterprets Ten Commandments and the Law at Mount SinaiMostly agreed by scholars
The connection
In Matthew 5:21–48 Jesus quotes commandments ('You have heard that it was said, You shall not murder') and adds 'But I say to you': anger deserves judgment, a lustful look is adultery of the heart. He presents this as fulfilling the Law, not abolishing it (5:17).
When and where
Matthew 5, on a hill in Galilee, early in Jesus' ministry around AD 28.
How do we know?
The link is explicit in the text: these six 'antitheses' quote the Ten Commandments and other Torah laws directly.
Questions and debates
Whether Jesus was intensifying the Law, as other Jewish teachers of his time did, or claiming authority over it is debated by Jewish and Christian scholars.
▸Jesus of Nazareth taught Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer)Mostly agreed by scholars
The connection
Matthew presents the Sermon as Jesus' first great teaching: seeing the crowds, he went up a mountain, sat down as teachers did, and taught (Matthew 5:1). The crowds were astonished, 'for he taught them as one who had authority' (7:29). Many readers see a deliberate echo of Moses receiving the Law on Sinai.
When and where
A hillside in Galilee, c. AD 28; tradition places it on the Mount of Beatitudes near Capernaum, above the Sea of Galilee.
How do we know?
Its sayings are widely judged authentic, but most scholars think Matthew assembled them into one speech; Luke sets a shorter version 'on a level place' (6:17).
Questions and debates
Whether Matthew deliberately cast Jesus as a new Moses on a new Sinai is debated. The traditional site was first marked by a church only in the 4th century.
▸Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer) teaches a prayer for the coming of The Kingdom of GodMostly agreed by scholars
The connection
The Lord's Prayer, at the Sermon's center, asks 'Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven' (Matthew 6:10). The Sermon opens by promising the kingdom to 'the poor in spirit' (5:3) and urges 'seek first the kingdom of God' (6:33). It describes how people under God's rule live.
When and where
Matthew 5–7, with the Lord's Prayer at 6:9–13; a shorter version of the prayer appears in Luke 11:2–4.
How do we know?
The prayer is attested in Matthew, Luke and the Didache (c. AD 100), an early church manual that tells Christians to pray it three times a day.
Questions and debates
The closing 'For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory' is missing from Matthew's oldest manuscripts; an early form appears in the Didache. Catholics add it only at Mass.
▸Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church built 'The Cost of Discipleship' on Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer)Historical record
The connection
The Cost of Discipleship (1937) is built around a commentary on Matthew 5–7. Bonhoeffer argued that churches had cheapened grace into 'forgiveness without requiring repentance' and called for 'costly grace': 'When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.' In 1935 he wrote that renewal would come from uncompromising discipleship 'according to the Sermon on the Mount.'
When and where
Lectures at the Confessing Church seminary in Finkenwalde, 1935–37; published in Munich in 1937 as Nachfolge ('Discipleship').
Historical evidence
The book itself, whose central section expounds Matthew 5–7, and his January 1935 letter to his brother Karl-Friedrich.
Questions and debates
How he reconciled the Sermon's call to nonviolence with joining a plot to kill Hitler is the great question of his life; he planned to visit Gandhi but never went.