Matthew 7:28 f. An Editorial Note (cf. Matthew 11:1, Matthew 13:53; Matthew 19:1; Matthew 26:1). Mt. uses this transition formula after each of his five chief groups of Christ's sayings. The multitudes were not present during the Sermon (Matthew 5:1), but Mt. here returns to the Marcan narrative (Mark 1:22).
The teaching brought together by Mt. in the Sermon on the Mount provides for all the spiritual needs of men, covering the whole domain of the inner life. It regulates conduct for all time by asserting principles of universal application. It fixes the highest standards, and at the same time supplies the strongest motives for endeavouring to reach them. Love your enemies, that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven. Ye shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
If it be objected that an attempt to reconstruct society on lines such as these is chimerical and as a matter of fact has never been realised, the answer is that the character which Christ sets before men and which He Himself exhibited is one which with us can have only its beginnings in the present world. He lived and would have men live, for the eternal and the infinite. The Kingdom of Heaven within us must ever be an ideal which is above our present efforts, pointing us to another state where it will have its perfect work. Meanwhile it is not inoperative or destitute of results. If the world has not yet been transfigured by the teaching of our Lord, no other teaching has done so much to make its crooked ways straight and its rough places plain. If the religion of Jesus Christ has not yet produced a perfect saint, it has planted in the lives of tens of thousands a principle which makes for perfection and will attain it, as our faith assures us, in the day when His Kingdom is fully realised. Swete, Studies in the Teaching of Our Lord, p. 185f. Cf. Rufus Jones, The Inner Life.