Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount is so famous and powerful that it’s impossible to overstate its influence. St. Augustine described it as “a perfect standard of the Christian life.” The great preacher-poet John Donne spoke of it in the most ornate terms:

“As nature hath given us certain elements, and all our bodies are composed of them; and art hath given us a certain alphabet of letters, and all words are composed of them; so our blessed Savior, in these three chapters of this Gospel, hath given us a sermon of texts, of which, all our sermons may be composed. All the articles of our religion, all the canons of our Church, all the injunctions of our princes, all the homilies of our fathers, all the body of divinity, is in these three chapters, in this one sermon on the Mount.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his classic book, The Cost of Discipleship, as an attempt at a complete exposition of Christ’s sermon, because the Sermon on the Mount is worthy of our full human reckoning.

The Sermon on the Mount has even exerted a great influence on those outside the Christian faith....