When Jesus first preached the Sermon on the Mount, he spoke in Aramaic. When Matthew recorded it, he wrote in Greek, which means that if you are reading it in English, you are already two languages removed. The inevitable result is that, sometimes, subtle nuances get lost in the translation.

Consider the series of blessings—better known as the Beatitudes—that Jesus proclaims at the beginning of the sermon. The Greek word that we usually translate as “blessed” can also be translated as “happy.” Hence, Robert Schuller’s cleverly-titled bestseller, The Be Happy Attitudes. That translation is not necessarily wrong, but it may be slightly misleading, since our understanding of happiness is quite a bit different from the people of Jesus’ time.

For starters, the groups that he mentions in the Beatitudes—those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are persecuted and reviled—don’t seem like the kind of folks whom we would ordinarily call “happy.” But more importantly, when we think of happiness, what we usually mean is, “Am I having fun? Am I enjoying myself?” In other words, for us, the question of happiness tends to be directed inward. It’s basically a “me” question. Even the “pursuit of happiness” extolled in our Declaration of Independence is generally understood to mean one’s individual pursuit of whatever it is that will make you happy.

However, in the Beatitudes, when Jesus speaks of happiness, or blessedness, he is not referring to anything we can pursue, or achieve, or even cause to happen. The “-ed” ending on the word “blessed” should be a hint. Being blessed is not something we accomplish; it is something we receive. Simply put, being blessed is a gift from God!

If Jesus had wanted us to focus on what our own resources could bring us, then he probably would have said something along the lines of, “Blessed are those who climb the corporate ladder, for they will have a comfortable retirement,” or “Blessed are those who invest shrewdly, for they will own a second house on the coast.” But instead Jesus seems to want us to focus on those times when we have absolutely nothing.

Notice that he doesn’t lift up the spiritual giants of the world; he lifts up the “poor in spirit”—the ones whose faith is so fragile that they have nowhere else to go but to God. He doesn’t praise the self-reliant; he praises those whose hearts are so heavy with sorrow that they can only look to God to comfort them. He doesn’t commend the popular; he commends the persecuted—the ones who are left feeling that the entire world is against them, and then discover that God has been in their corner all along!

Please don’t misunderstand; Jesus didn’t have anything against personal happiness. He’s just pointing out that, rather than trying to chase it down on our own, we would be better off receiving it from God.