The life of heaven – the life of the World where God is already King – is to become the life of the World, transforming the present Earth into the place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who believe in Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That’s the point of the Sermon on the Mount (SOM). It is a summons to live in the present that makes sense of God’s promised future.; because the future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. We find it in Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5-7. A great chunk of the teachings of Jesus, which on at least one occasion he delivered from some way up a ‘mountain’.

Is it actually possible to live this way? The standards of the SOM are neither readily attainable nor totally unattainable. They are attainable but only by those who have experienced the new birth which is the indispensable condition of seeing and entering God’s Kingdom. The Christian is to live up to what they already are.

Also, take a look at this video produced by the Bible Project