“The Good Life”
Luke 6:17-23
May 18, 2025
What makes a good life? What is a happy and satisfied life? Is it even possible in this broken world — a world where there are broken relationships, broken cars, broken bodies, and broken economies — to have a good life? People have been asking that kind of question for millennia. Certainly that question is part of the questioning between Job and his friends. And the ancient Greek philosophers also debated it:
- Epicurus suggested that the good life is the experience of pleasure — hedonism — though he qualified that the greatest pleasures were things like friendship and study and that pleasure had to be virtuous to be genuinely good and happy.
- Aristotle said the good life is a happy life. But he disagreed that a happy life was merely pleasurable subjective and individual experiences. Happiness is determined by certain objective realities, things like: moral virtue, health, prosperity, friendships, respect, luck (avoiding bad luck), and engagement (using their abilities for the betterment of others).
It’s not too hard to figure out what you need to do to get what men like Epicurus and Aristotle suggest is the good life — but what about Jesus? Does He offer a good life? How do you receive it? That is the focus of Jesus’ first extended recorded sermon and teaching, the Sermon on the Mount.
Having revealed the authority of Christ in chs. 4-6 (primarily through His acts and works), Luke now reveals the authority of Christ in His preaching and teaching. Specifically, Luke is revealing the gospel message that Christ proclaimed — what kind of people get to enjoy life with Christ and the Father? Who gets to enjoy the good life that only Christ offers? This well-known sermon by Christ is not an ethical sermon; it is a gospel message. And we can summarize the teaching of the opening section this way:
To receive the blessing of Christ’s good life, be humbly dependent on Him.
And in these opening verses (vv. 17-23, beatitudes), Luke reveals five attributes of the people who receive Christ’s “Good Life.”
- Christ’s “Good Life” is For All People (vv. 17-19)
- Christ’s “Good Life” is For Spiritually Impoverished People (v. 20)
- Christ’s “Good Life” is For Spiritually Hungry People (v. 21a)
- Christ’s “Good Life” is For Spiritually Grieving People (v. 21b)
- Christ’s “Good Life” is For Spiritually Persecuted People (vv. 22-23)
Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 6:17-23.
The audio will be posted on the GBC website by Tuesday.
Rafael, “Plato and Aristotle,” Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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