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| Makarios: Happy, Blessed. Bible Quotation: NKJV. Source: BibleGateway.com Image by Mary Katherine May |
The word blessed in New Testament Greek is Makarios (Strong's G3107) and translates both as happy and blessed.
An explanation in Thayer's Lexicon adds this: joined to the names of God, which as a Christian I find most pleasing to think about. Beatitude: Supreme Blessedness or Happiness
Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, tells us why and how we are blessed and what the consequences are. In this case, the consequences are most wonderful.
Joined to the Names of God
There is an awareness that develops in living as a Christian through study and reflection upon Scripture and Godly teaching, of exactly how wretched the state of the human race is without the saving act of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a spiritual relationship like nothing else that forms in part out of an overwhelming gratitude for a gift given so freely by God, through his Son, from pure love.
BE Attitudes vs. Beatitudes
Sermons have been preached, books written, and Bible teaching presented on the Beatitudes as BE Attitudes where these blessings have been promoted as a state of mind in which Christians are supposed to dwell, yet there is still so much more.
Being blessed in the Beatitudes as Christ taught, however, is not something that we can manufacture to our benefit or acquire ourselves, but instead are blessings that are given to the committed Christian as rewards for the life well-lived, the race run past the finished line...all the way to Heaven.
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