Jesus: Sermon on the Mount

Photo: Sermon on the Mount by Danish painter Carl Heinrich Bloch (May 23, 1834 - February 22, 1890).

Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount (Mount Zion) is a compilation of Jesus' moral teaching in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Jesus of Nazareth gave this sermon, around AD 30, to his disciples and a large crowd (chapters 5-7). The best portions of the sermon constitute the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer and the injunctions to ‘resist not evil’ (5:39), and ‘turn the other cheek’ as a version of the Golden Rule. Often quoted other lines are the references to ‘salt of the earth’, ‘light of the world’ and ‘judge not, lest ye be judged.’

Some Christian scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount is a commentary on the Ten Commandments, portraying Christ as the true interpreter of the ‘Mosaic Law’. Many others consider the Sermon on the Mount as the central tenets of Christian discipleship. Also it is considered as such by many religious and moral thinkers and writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr.