The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Sermon on the Mount

[ 1 ] The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) is the most important revelation of Christianity. It is usually understood to be a sermon that Jesus gave to the people from a mountain. But “going up the mountain” is a key phrase that is found in all secret languages and is ancient. “To love” is also an occult key phrase. “The disciple whom the Lord loved” — and at the raising of Lazarus: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,” “See how he loved him.” The disciple whom the Lord loved is always understood to be the author of the Gospel of John. But his name never appears in the entire Gospel of John, not even at the crucifixion. It says: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there.” This word “love” has a deep meaning. The disciple of a master who is most deeply initiated into occult science is called “a disciple whom the Lord loves.” “Going up the mountain” means entering into the deepest mystery and teaching words which the disciples then repeat to the people. One does not read the words of the Bible in an orderly manner, but rather reads right over the words.

[ 2 ] Verse 1 is correctly translated as: “But when he saw the people, he went up on a mountain and sat down, and his disciples came to him.” So Jesus went away from the people and spoke only to his disciples. Jesus Christ always had to speak in a double language. He spoke in parables when he spoke popularly to the people. But he explained the occult meaning of the words to his disciples when he was with them “on the mountain.”

[ 3 ] Verse 3: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” The words, even the letters, all have a secret, deep meaning. Our German word for “I,” with its letter combinations I, C, H, contains the initials of Jesus Christ: I-Ch. The great initiates interpreted the word to mean that the ‘I’ = Jesus Christ. Only one people could discover the birth of the name Jesus Christ from the “I” — and thus German Christian mysticism came into being. There are more words like this that have a deep, literal meaning; for example, “holy” = to be whole or fundamentally healthy. “To be blessed” = to be full of soul, to find the content of the soul within oneself. Blessed are those who have the urge and drive to lead the soul ever closer to the spirit. When many people always say, “Look within yourself, and you will find God,” that is not correct. For if we only look within ourselves, we will only find what is already within ourselves. We should guard our aspirations; our individuality should come out of itself, that is, know yourself. The authority of people should not give us conviction, but inspiration.

[ 4 ] Verse 4: “Blessed are those who suffer, for they will find comfort through themselves.” Suffering presents itself to the world as one of the greatest mysteries of the world. Even the Greeks, that free, joyful race that was so attached to existence, for whom the enjoyment of the senses was the breath of life, let the wise Silenus answer the question of what is best for man: “Miserable one-day generation ... The very best is completely unattainable for you: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is to die soon.” Aesop, meanwhile, says that one learns from suffering. And Job, through all the suffering imposed on him, comes to the conclusion: Suffering purifies, it elevates man. Why do we leave the theater satisfied after hearing a tragedy? The hero triumphs over suffering. There is a connection between man's elevation and the pain he endures. Suffering and pain of the soul speak to those who recognize them through physiognomy. Man must create an organ for himself so that he can bear suffering. Just as the eye was formed by light and the ear by sound, so suffering and pain create spiritual organs. Within themselves, people carry the consolation of knowing that they can bear suffering. People become more highly developed through suffering.

[ 5 ] Verse 5: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Two forces are at work in the world: on the one hand, egoism, and on the other, love and compassion. If love is to develop, egoism must disappear. Sensual love must develop into higher spiritual love. Being meek of spirit is also meant in the third sentence of “Light on the Path”: “Before the voice can speak before the masters, it must unlearn how to wound.” One should approach everyone with a loving attitude, so that one's voice no longer wounds, then we are meek, as meant in the Sermon on the Mount. The goal of earthly development is love; it will possess the earthly realm.

[ 6 ] Verse 6: "Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, for they will be satisfied by themselves. “ Here Christ tells the disciples the whole meaning of the deeper, innermost powers of the human soul: Give love to others — not: strive for love — then love will become universal when everyone does it themselves.

[ 7 ] Verse 7: ”Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." We should empathize with each individual person, then the mercy we have done and given will shine back at us from others.

[ 8 ] Verse 8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God through themselves.” This sentence is a guide to mysticism. We should purify and cleanse our hearts. The eye that is meant to see God is the heart. It is the organ of the future, not the brain. It is to God what unclouded eyes are to light.

[ 9 ] Verse 9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” The soul makes the way from God through man to God. The souls were peaceful, and peace leads back to the divine essence.

[ 10 ] Verse 10: “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus Christ demands that man impose the requirement of righteousness on himself, then his thirst will be quenched by righteousness. Earthly demands and heavenly demands are always kept separate.

[ 11 ] Verse 11: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” Christianity must not be confused with other religions. In Buddhism, it is important that everything Buddha taught is followed. The same is true of the teachings of Hermes in Egypt, Zarathustra in Persia, and so on. But Christ was there himself. The disciples were called to bear witness: We heard him ourselves, we put our fingers in his nail marks. The evangelist John speaks most about Jesus Christ in his Gospel. Christianity must believe in Christ Jesus himself, not just in his teachings. The Logos came down to the ego-people, the Word became flesh in a human being and truly dwelt among us. All are blessed in their faith in the One in whom the Logos himself is embodied. Only One can say, “Blessed are you when you are persecuted for my sake.”

[ 12 ] Verse 12: “Be of good cheer and full of comfort, for it will bear fruit for you in heaven, for thus they persecuted the prophets.” This refers to the I-people inspired by God.

[ 13 ] Verse 13: “You are the salt of the earth.” Salt means that which gives wisdom to the earth.

[ 14 ] Now someone might refer to the end of chapters 7, 28, and 29: “And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings, the people were astonished at his teaching, for he preached with authority and not like the scribes.” One might therefore think that Jesus really did speak to the people. However, these verses are completely unrelated to the Sermon on the Mount, which even contrasts with what had caused turmoil among the people. The people were astonished by a speech of Jesus, but one quite different from the Sermon on the Mount—and this caused turmoil and uproar among the people. One only has to examine all the events in the Bible closely and know how to read the words correctly, and then a new understanding dawns on one for many things that one had simply skipped over before.

Questions and Answers

What can be said about the two criminals who were crucified with Jesus?

[ 15 ] First and foremost, it must be borne in mind that symbolic interpretation does not exclude the actual facts. Some people want to interpret everything literally, considering Jesus to be only a human being who really lived, and cannot believe that there is a deeper meaning behind it all. Others, on the other hand, want to interpret everything in a secret way and cannot believe in historical events. But the symbol is also a real historical fact. The fact of Christianity can only be grasped if it is regarded as a real fact. It is the mystery of human evolution: Christ between the two criminals, the one who repents and the one who remains obstinate. This is again the balance between selfishness and love. Love is based on blood relationship, and selfishness wants to tear it apart. Christ wants to balance this out, which is what the three crosses on Golgotha signify. One is the principle of good, the other is the principle of evil. “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Paradise is a key word and means: You will be with me in a place beyond the ordinary day. Before man became guilty, he lived in the bosom of the Godhead. How does he regain the right to become a child of God again? Through peacefulness! How does one stray from this? Through selfishness!

Do other peoples also have the initials I-CH in their ego?

[ 16 ] This only applies to the German language. The German Ich gives strength to the soul. The fact that these initials form the name Christ should bring the word to life for us. Christ is there every day and works through all languages. The further east we go, the richer the language; the further west, the poorer. America is therefore the poorest; it has the smallest vocabulary in its language. The prayers of the old languages lose their ancient power when they are translated into newer languages. There is much more power in the Latin words of the Pater noster than in the Lord's Prayer. The language of the old Lord's Prayer is Aramaic. Those who spoke it in the Aramaic language felt its magical power. By correctly understanding things, we must bring the power of words back into language. The four sentences in “Light on the Way,” for example, do not have the same power in English as they do in German. These four sentences do not sound as beautiful in any other language as they do in German; it has the most beautiful translation of these four sentences.

The third question is incomprehensible.

[ 17 ] These early natural scientists looked up to the Bible with the greatest reverence. Pastor X said: Moses knew as many things as modern natural scientists, or he was inspired. Pastor X has a brilliant, subtle way of explaining the Bible. When biblical criticism began, reverence and respect for the Bible were lost. But nothing else will ever come of biblical criticism. One thing is characteristic of spiritual science, and that is attitude. Every thought is permeated by this attitude, everything is imbued with it. And what is this attitude? We also have an attitude toward nature, but we do not criticize nature. Spiritual science wants to understand everything in spiritual life impartially and with understanding; not to apply the yardstick of sympathy and antipathy, but to understand everything impartially, both in human life and in the spiritual world. Spiritual science is about understanding. One must acquire an attitude in spiritual life as in the research of nature, then one gains experience. The Bible should become a book before which criticism begins to fall silent. When one reads it correctly and impartially, one experiences that one begins to feel something as an expression and experience that one would not have dreamed of before. One then finds deep wisdom, whereas before one had placed obstacles in one's way. The key to reading the Bible correctly must be found in spiritual research, and it will be found. Then biblical criticism will be replaced by a deep and profound interpretation. Natural science deals only with material phenomena and disregards the fact that these have a spiritual development underlying them. The task of spiritual science is to investigate the nature of human beings and their development in the universe. Where natural science wisdom must stop, spiritual research begins, for the natural scientist sees only the outer, he wants to fathom the atoms. But precisely what the natural scientist cannot explain is there. Haeckelism is also true for the spiritual researcher insofar as it describes external things. But the spiritual researcher wants to look back with higher, spiritual eyes on the delicate process of becoming and wants to investigate which spiritual facts accompany the external facts. When one looks at things with spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, one perceives the supersensible in human beings.

[ 18 ] We perceive as much of the outer world as we have physical sense organs. So anyone who argues and says, “Only what I physically see exists,” has not yet developed spiritual powers. Every time a person acquires a new organ, they perceive a new world. The eyes and ears of the soul can be acquired. If a person has enough energy and patience, they will become an initiate. What an initiate sees with spiritual eyes must be expressed with images from the physical world. This is what Goethe, who was an initiate, meant in the verse: “Everything transitory is only a parable.” Expressing the great spiritual truths in apt parables is called imaginative knowledge. Spiritual science does not want to lead us away from matter, but rather sees in matter the condensed spirit, which relates to matter as ice relates to water.

[ 19 ] The seven-day work is a comparison with great spiritual facts. Those who have the key to reading the Bible can always take the Bible literally. No document contains the truths of theosophy better than the Bible. Spiritual science strives to explain the Bible and provide access to the most unbiased understanding of it. One will learn to understand the division of the work of creation into two parts when one learns to distinguish between the human being who is asexual—that is, the spiritual astral human being. Then a reversal took place: the asexual spiritual human being became the physical bisexual human being, which is why we must speak of a double creation. We often hear it said: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life — whereby everyone means their own spirit. Goethe says:

And as long as you do not have that,
This: Die and become!
You are only a dull guest
On the dark earth.

[ 20 ] This “die” does not mean kill the physical body, but give birth to a new human being from within yourself, so that it gives you the tool for the spiritual world. It should become a tool of strength. We must also take “die and become” literally. In spiritual science, everything is valuable; even the smallest thing is an expression of condensed spirit. Those who fight against the Bible do not understand it; they are fighting their own delusions. Many people presume to establish a creed. But it is petty and immodest to then be satisfied with the thought: How wonderfully far we have come! Spiritual science always wants to penetrate deeper, it wants to delve lovingly into the letter and open the way to the divine for the soul.