Be Merciful (6:27–36)
When Israel asked who their God was, they were given an answer from the cleft of a rock. Moses had asked to see God’s glory, and what passed before him was not a vision but a name, recited aloud: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod 34:6). The first word in that confession, in the Greek of the Septuagint, is οἰκτίρμων (oiktirmōn), “merciful.” It became the center of how Israel spoke of God. The psalmists return to it; the prophets appeal to it; the whole sacrificial life of the nation rested on the conviction that the God they served was, before all else, merciful.
Israel was supposed to mirror the mercy. The holiness code framed Israel’s obligation to God as an act of imitation: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Lev 19:2). The logic is that God’s people should take on the character of the God who claimed them. It’s in this same chapter that we find the command that Jesus is about to stretch past its original limits: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18).
Jesus takes up that whole tradition and presses it further than the neighbor:
“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (6:27–28).
The love commanded in Leviticus had a horizon: the neighbor, the member of the covenant community. Jesus removes that horizon. The enemy, the one who hates and curses and strikes, is now the object of the same love. And Jesus grounds the command exactly where Israel grounded its holiness, in the character of God:
“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” (6:35).
Then comes the line that grounds the whole teaching. Where Matthew’s version reads “you therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48), Luke writes, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (6:36). The word for “merciful” is οἰκτίρμων, the word from the cleft of the rock. Luke has Jesus complete the holiness formula of Leviticus by filling it with the name God spoke to Moses.
We tend to imagine mercy as the response we extend once someone has earned their way back, once the apology has been made and the debt acknowledged. The God of Exodus 34 is merciful to people who have not done that. He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil, and his people are to be like him toward the people we have most reason not to be.
Blessed Are You (6:20–26)
When Jesus begins his Sermon on the Plain, he is not presenting a moral agenda for self-improvement. He looks up toward his disciples, the same people who have just left everything behind to follow him, and declares them blessed (Luke 6:20).
The Greek word is μακάριος (makarios), and it functions more as a statement of status than an invitation. It does not mean “you will become blessed if you develop the right virtues”; it indicates that you are, right now, in a state of divine favor. The people being addressed are the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, and those hated because of the Son of Man (6:20–22).
What makes Luke’s beatitudes unique is their direct address to the second person. Matthew’s version refers to “the poor in spirit” in the third person (Matt 5:3); Luke’s Jesus looks at his disciples and says, “blessed are you who are poor” (Luke 6:20). The poverty highlighted here is social and economic first, then spiritual. Luke has been leading up to this moment since the Magnificat, where Mary sings of a God who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty (1:52–53).
The four woes that follow mirror the beatitudes with striking accuracy. Wealthy, joyful, cheerful, and well-regarded: these woes are for those who, by every objective measure, seem to be thriving (6:24–26). But the crucial word in verse 24 is the verb ἀπέχετε (apechete), a business term found on ancient papyrus receipts to indicate an account paid in full. The wealthy have already received their comfort. Their account is settled, and there is nothing more to draw from.
The woes are not curses. The Greek interjection οὐαί (ouai) aligns more with “alas” than with a statement of condemnation. Jesus is not delivering damnation but rather announcing an upcoming reversal that will reveal how fragile apparent prosperity truly is. The kingdom of God, as Luke describes it from the very first chapters, is not a slightly improved version of the current order. It is a true inversion of it.
The core question isn’t “have I internalized the right spiritual dispositions?” but something more uncomfortable: which side of the reversal am I on, and why does that question make me uneasy?