**Why Do the Meek Inherit the Earth?
Grace Hamman / September 15, 2025
Why do the meek inherit the Earth? That seems … wrong. And
inaccurate.
Meekness is not a word we use regularly. When I googled
meekness, the example sentence provided was, no joke, “All his best
friends make fun of him for his meekness.” Yikes. We associate
meekness with timidity or mousiness, something closer to a vice
than a virtue.
Yet Jesus states it baldly, in the Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5,
NRSVue). He is indirectly quoting Psalm 37:11, where the meek also
inherit the land.
Jesus even cites his own meekness as a reason for people to
trust him. “Follow me,” he says later in that same gospel, “for I
am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29, KJV). Surely Jesus is not
calling himself a doormat. And even if he was, timid passivity is
certainly not a good reason to follow someone, nor is it a reason
to inherit the Earth.
Newer translations of Matthew 11:29 often use “gentle” instead
of “meek,” as in the NIV, NRSV, and many others. But Matthew 5:5
often remains “meek,” even in the newer translations.
So, what is meekness with which Christ identifies himself? The
kind that makes him worthy to follow to the end in our weariness,
the kind of meekness that inherits the Earth, in the repeated phrase
of the Beatitudes and Psalm 37?
We have clearly become squirmy around this word — but meekness
actually expresses something central to the Christian life, some-
thing we would do well to reclaim as followers of Christ. Gentleness
is a good word, but it doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as his-
torical meekness. Let us become word nerds for a minute and look at
the medieval meanings of meekness.
*Medieval Meanings of Meekness
For medieval theologians and thinkers, meekness was a virtue,
a habit of being in the world, that measured angry responses. In
Thomas Aquinas’s words, meekness “moderates anger according to right
reason,” regulating the desire for vengeance, destroying hatred
itself.
In other words, meekness is not quite the same as gentleness.
It can be quite stern. Meekness adapts anger as it needs to be
adapted to contexts and circumstances. It is a form of patience
specifically geared for handling anger. In a little fifteenth-
century treatise with an evocative title, The Tree and the Twelve
Fruits of the Holy Ghost, the author writes that “patience ordains
us to the fruition and use of endless peace.” As the type of
patience measuring anger, meekness, too, ordains us towards
cultivating peace. In practicing meekness, we become someone who
can catch an elusive glimpse of the eternal peace of the Kingdom
of Heaven even in anger and then chase that vision.
Meekness really has nothing to do with being a mouse or a
doormat. A meek person is someone who handles her anger well. She
is angry in the right contexts, with wise responses that are
neither overheated nor too cold. The meek person is never bitter
nor hateful, both of which are warped forms of anger.
The meek are not controlled by their anger, though they can still
be angry. In fact, the anger of the meek has the power to change
unjust social systems or to reset relationships, because it is
oriented ultimately to the abiding peace of Jesus and towards
recognizing the image of God in each person, however much of a jerk
they may be.
*Christ the King, the Meek Lamb
We begin to see why meekness is a virtue that Christ claims
for himself. Christ the King is the meek lamb who did not open his
mouth before the slaughter. We witness his crucifixion as the great
final rejection of humanity’s wasting wrath.
But we also see Jesus flip tables, we see him call out reli-
gious leadership, we see him heal the ill and speak to the outcast
and violate social taboos.
The meek do not wilt under pressure, submitting to oppression
because they are too weak to fight back. Only the meek are coura-
geous and loving and powerful enough to refuse to return violence
in the face of the sword that pierces the soul and the nails that
perforate the hands and feet.
And yet they are no passive or repressed bystanders; they act
upon their anger in moments and places where it would be wrong not
to act upon anger at religious hypocrisy, at exploitation of the
needy, at cultivated ignorance.
*The Only Free Person
So then, back to my original question: why do the meek inherit
the kingdom? A collection for preachers which offered material for
sermons shockingly claimed that “meekness deserves to be a leader.”
We can begin to see how this surprising statement can be true. Only
the meek are not purely reactive to and within their contexts; they
alone can reject an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and
break the perpetual cycle of human violence. A meek person is a
free person, the only truly free person.
The meek inherit the earth because they are the only ones who
can be trusted with that truly kingly inheritance. Only meek Mary
is mother of Jesus. Only the meek Jesus can judge hearts; only the
meek Savior can rule the world.**
When Jesus said "the meek shall inherit the earth", did not
mean that Jesus was the only meek being capable of inheriting the
earth. Singles out the humility, gentleness, and having one's
strength under control. Also bending and a posture of submission and
trust in God.
Pray that more can set aside their anger learn to love God.
Conservatively,
John
Conservativelyjohn.com 