The modern left will look to the sermon on the mount as a utopian social blueprint; something like Plato’s Republic or Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. They treat Christianity as mere ethics. The essence of Christianity is not the Sermon on the Mount, although there is a link between the two, or that Christianity is the essence in and of itself. The essence of Christianity is Christ.

When Christianity is proclaimed throughout the world, the proclamation is never “love thy neighbor as thy self” or “love your enemies”, but rather “Christ is Risen!” This isn’t simply an ideal, it’s a real event. Christianity isn’t ideal, it’s real, it’s the “good news”. Where the humanist response is always to “try”, God’s instruction to us is to trust Him.

Matthew 5-7 & Luke 6