Reflections: The Sermon on the Mount & the Law
As I was prayerfully reading Romans 3 this morning, I came across the passage again which says that God overlooked forgave previous sins in His divine forbearance, and Jesus was put forward as a propitiation. This entire section begins with verse 21, where Paul states that righteousness has now been made known to us apart from the Law through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul states that, even though this righteousness is made known apart from the Law, the Law and Prophets in fact bore witness to it.
Reflecting on this and on the Law, I came upon thinking about the Sermon on the Mount. A flash of lightning hit my mind as I began to see this sermon in a way I had never before. This entire sermon is one long exposition of the requirements of the Law. And the purpose of that exposition has several purposes: to instruct for obedience, to reinterpret the Law by taking these Jewish listeners back to its original intent, to begin a revolution of living for delight in God’s glory. But in this particular entry, I am going to focus on an often missed purpose of Jesus in giving this exposition – to illuminate the utter hopelessness that the Law brings.
The listeners of Jesus had only a shadow of the Law, an warped interpretation of the most apparently “righteous” people of the day, the Pharisees, who were the keepers and teachers of this shadow. They taught and lived it for strict obedience. But they had completely missed the mark of what the Law truly was in its intent. When Jesus preached His Sermon on the Mount, His aim was not to explain the Law so the people could see how to behave, but to expose every way they hadn’t. Paul made very clear in Romans that “the law came in to increase the trespass” (5:20). A true understanding of the Law would reveal just how far off the Jews were from the righteousness of God and how impossible it was ever to meet the requirements of God’s Law, for God’s Law revealed the righteous requirement of God’s holiness.
The people, as long as they were looking at outward appearances could put up a good front. But when Jesus exposited the Law in full, showing it to be far above outward ritual – He showed it to be a matter of the heart – the response was not to be, “Okay, let’s go out and do this.” No, the appropriate response would be one of horror, “Woe is me. I am doomed.” Jesus was the first Reformed preacher, teaching the total depravity right here in the Sermon on the Mount. This is what Jesus meant when He said that He did not come to do away with the Law but to fulfill it – to fill it full of its true meaning (Matt 5:17-18).
Paul wrote that there is no humanly possible way to keep the whole Law, which is God’s perfect standard of holiness, because through the Law comes not righteousness but knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20). The Law served to show us how truly degenerate and sinful we were. If one were to only look at the Law at face value, with its many rule, regulations and rituals, one might dare attempt to live righteously. But wasn’t the rules, regulations and rituals that Paul was referring to. He was referring to the whole Law, the intent of the Law. One would have to look at the Law’s intent, that one’s heart also had to be in the right place. The Great Commandment clarified this. Love the Lord with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. It was a Law that required heart transformation, that required love. But, as Paul emphasized, though it required these things, it made no provision for them (Rom 8:2). There is no greater sermon exposition on the full intent of the Law than Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. As I read the sermon in this light, it came alive to me a way I had never experienced it before. God's Spirit was opening my eyes and conforming my understanding to His heart.
In Matthew 5, Jesus opens with the Beatitudes. Jesus insisted that we be poor in spirit, meaning we come knowing how hopelessly depraved we are. We were to mourn out of despondency for this state of affairs, knowing our lostness. We were to be meek, coming in humble weakness to receive God mercy in our unworthiness. Now this poverty of spirit, mourning and meekness was not to discontinue once we received Christ. Since sanctification would never be complete until glory, the sinful nature would also never be completely expunged as long as we bore this mortal coil.
Now, since we have been shown mercy, we were then to show forth that mercy to others, in an attitude of contrition. We were to continually have a hunger and thirst for righteousness, which Paul clearly teaches us cannot be apart from a working of the Spirit, for apart from His Spirit, no one was righteous and no one was seeking after/hungry for God (Rom 3:10-11).
When Jesus required purity in heart (v 8), He was going for the jugular, getting to the crux of the Law – the heart had to be pure. And how could the heart be pure when it was a heart of stone (Ezek 11:19), deceitful above all things and beyond cure (Jer 17:9)? The only way this could be is by a work of the Spirit, turning our stone heart into a heart of flesh (Ezek. 11:20).
We were to be peacemakers – an inward working of God's Spirit.
And Jesus finally warns us in this last Beatitude that we will be persecuted because we would be different, transformed inwardly by God’s Spirit.
This stuff, these Beatitudes, were all inward transformations. Jesus did not say, blessed are you who sacrifice, bring offerings, etc., but blessed are you who are poor in spirit, pure in heart, etc.
The statements that we are salt and light and a city set on a hill (vv 13-16) are metaphors for outward displays of inward transformation. We are to outwardly display God’s glorious work within us. This is in contrast to the hypocritical Pharisees who displayed their good works but had no inward transformation. “They were whitewashed tombs filled with dead men’s bones.”
Jesus then, in verses 17-20, emphatically states His purpose in this sermon and His mission on earth. In this sermon, He was not doing away with the Law but merely fulfilling it. Jesus rebukes anyone who does not keep even the iota, even the dot of the Law. His command was to read between the lines and live accordingly. Then Jesus pointed out a group of people, the religious leaders, who were dishonoring the intent of the Law, strictly living its outward requirements and imposing it on others, rather than obeying its underlying intents and implications. God's standards were heart standards lived out in practical love and service, not merely empty, outward acts.
If I were listening to Jesus at that point, I might think about the Ten Commandments. This Decalogue was never meant as an outward list of requirements for righteousness; they revealed a glimpse into the heart of God. The Pharisees just didn't get this. They did everything right on the outside. But they were inwardly depraved and degenerate, whitewashed tombs (Mat 23:27). Jesus came to fulfill the law, to expose depravity by revealing the entire meaning of the Law.
So Jesus takes His listeners back to the Ten Commandments. Do you see what He’s doing? Now if someone were to try to plead his innocence before the Law of God, and you hear people do this all the time when asked why they should go to heaven, the first thing he would probably say is, “Well, I’ve lived a pretty good life. I haven’t…killed anybody.” It’s interesting that times haven’t changed that much. The Jewish listeners were thinking the same thing, a thought no doubt put their by their religious leaders. And you can see Jesus go right to this first defense a person might offer for his own righteousness. In verse 21, Jesus starts here with murder. But what does He do? He exposes the full meaning of the Law, the heart of the command, the true standard of God. “If you're angry at your brother or hate him, you are a murderer!” Woe! It was easy to be righteous when the Law was really about not physically murdering someone. But if God weighs the heart, and if anger is murder, that’s a different matter altogether. Who has not been guilty of hatred at one time or another? No one!
What about adultery (vv 27-30)? Jesus said if you ever entertained a sexual thought about a woman other than your wife, you're an adulterer. God has ordained marriage as a sacred unity, a symbol of His divine love for His elect. If one’s heart is not for one’s spouse, he is guilty of adultery. God never abandons His covenant to His own, and His standard for us is that we never break our covenant either, which is why Jesus condemns divorce (vv 31-32). This is the full meaning of marriage, a human representation of God’s divinity and His love for His elect, and so any violation of the sanctity of marriage is a violation against the character of God.
What about oaths (vv 33-38)? God, again, is a covenant keeper. He speaks and it comes to pass. He does not turn to the left or right from His sovereign decrees. And we, His people, are to be like Him. If you say you are going to do something, it should be as good as done, no oath required. This is a standard of holiness that, again, debased the listeners’ standards of righteousness.
What about retaliation and revenge (vv 38-42)? Love your enemies (vv 43-48)? (I am getting most of my information on these verses from John MacArthur’s sermon, which amazingly came only two days after I set these verses aside for more prayer and research. His sermon podcast is entitled “Love Your Enemies, Part 3”). Nowhere in Law of the Old Testament did it ever say to hate your enemies. That was an implication the Pharisees added.
Deuteronomy 22:1-4 gives a command to look out for your brother and his possessions (his ox or donkey, in this case). What’s interesting is Exodus 23:4 makes the same command for one’s enemies. There are two implications: 1) We are to demonstrate love toward others by meeting their needs, and 2) A syllogism can be applied here to incorporate one’s enemies into the definition of brother. We are to consider our enemies our brothers. This implication was seen again in story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told.
In Job 31:29-30, Job defends himself by telling very plainly that if he had rejoiced in the ruin of his enemy, which he did not do, he would have sinned. David gave the same sentiment in Psalm 7:3-5, saying that it is wrong to do evil to our enemies. It is a sin. And in Psalm 35:13-14, David again shows great love for his enemies, fasting and praying for them when they fell into calamity. The Law and Prophets never once said to hate one’s enemies. This interpretation slipped into the mix somehow through the course of time, and Jesus set them straight again, showing God’s standard for holiness, to show even your enemies great love .
This section and chapter end with this command, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is huge. It totally proves the point that the Sermon was meant to demonstrate our utter inability to fulfill the Law of God, for this is its requirement boiled down to the core. We are to be perfect JUST LIKE GOD! That is impossible! We just can’t do that. We are depraved. And so we need a Savior.
Next, in 6:1-6, Jesus rebuked outward displays of righteousness that had no heart value. The Pharisees, the pinnacle of outward righteousness, were carcasses on the inside, notorious for doing their good deeds to be seen by others, to feed their pride. But God weighed the heart, and so their deeds were worthless because they were motivated by pride, not worship. But here’s the standard. Keeping it a secret from others is not enough. One must keep it a secret from his own proud heart. That was impossible, and so again Jesus demonstrates our utter inability, in our natural state, to obey the Law of God.
Prayer, as demonstrated in the Lord's Prayer (vv 7-15), was to be an offering from the heart that expressed contrition and absolute dependence on God’s mercy and grace to meet our needs. Prayer is communion with God. Jesus condemned ritualistic chants and repetitions as a demonstration of faithlessness in God’s sovereign benevolence and providence. Pray, when done from the heart, puts us in our place by putting God in His, on the throne of our hearts. It shows our utter dependence on Him in every thing of life. We acknowledge God’s greatness, then confess our many shortcomings and present our many needs to Him, including both physical and spiritual.
Verses 19-34 lay down the kind of heart a kingdom person will have, and it deals with absolute trust of God in all circumstances of life. The treasure of a true child of God awaits us in heaven, and all our efforts and desires are to be to invest in those other-worldly treasures. This is the Law of God.
Verses 22-23 are commentaries on our own desires. If the desires of our eyes are for earthly, materials pleasures or comforts, then our entire existence will be to satisfy that end, and we will be judged accordingly. If our desires or for heavenly treasures and God’s glory, then that desire will permeate every area of our lives, showing us to be truly righteous. Here, Jesus again shows the full extent of the Law by explaining that our heart’s desires will be judged, not merely our outward actions. God’s eternal glory and our eternal delight in Him is to be the focus of every desire of our hearts, to glorify God and be totally satisfied in Him. Falling short of this is a violation of God’s holy Law.
How is righteousness going to look in our attitude toward God in the everyday matters of life? It will be a total trust in God for the food and clothing we require. The righteous standard is complete and total trust in God’s benevolent providence. Jesus addresses this is vv 25-34. He commands us never to worry or be anxious about any of these temporal things, implying that to do so is sin, a breach of God’s holy Law.
Jesus’s commands not to judge in 7:1-6 are also heart matters. They go right along with the Beatitude of being poor in spirit. An honest self-evaluation on God’s scale of holiness will show us once and for all that we are too flawed and morally filthy to ever make an acceptable judgment on someone else’s righteousness. Most judgments we make of others are not predicated on God’s highest law, the law of love, and so we are instructed not to judge. .
In all this, in Jesus’s exposition of man’s state of helpless depravity and utter inability to fulfill God’s law, He gently speaks to us now in verses 7-11 as His children whom He has called out of this rabble, assuring us that He will by no means reject those who come to Him. All who seek are invited to come to receive Christ and His many blessings. The Law also bids people to come to God with their heart offerings, even though they were corrupted by sin. And here, in verse 11, Jesus reiterates our degenerate state by stating, “If you then, who are evil…” We are evil when measured to the standard of the Law. Even in our evil state, we still do benevolent things. But God’s holiness remains the perfect standard – giving to God and others, and humbly trusting God to meet our needs.
There is no more clear a picture of God’s character and love than what is stated next, in what has come to be known as the Golden Rule (v 12). When we live the Law of God in its fullest sense of meaning, we are living a life that looks to the needs of others and seeks to meet them, just as God in Christ Jesus met our deepest need for redemption.
In all these teachings, the gate and road seemed to be becoming more and more narrow and hard, and Jesus comes right out and says this in verses 13-14. This path, this way of holiness, this righteous life required of us by the Law, is very narrow and hard. Jesus said in another place, “Many are called, but few are chosen” (22:14).
What are these fruits Jesus speaks of in verses 15-20? The context indicates these are outward demonstrations of true righteousness. But didn’t Jesus just condemn outward displays of righteousness? Why then, only a few moments later, does He advise His listeners that they will be able to recognize the truly righteous by their fruits?
In the following verses, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven…many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name… And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, your workers of lawlessness.’”
First observation: Good fruit, fruit born from a good tree, is distinguished from outward good deeds. Perhaps what Jesus promises is that eventually, the true fruit of a person will show itself for what it is, good or bad. This was true for the Pharisees. When Jesus began to show forth the glory of God, their ugliness came out, making them guilty of the murder of the Son of God.
Second observation: “workers of lawlessness” in verse 23. It is profound that Jesus’s sermon, being an exposition on the fullest meaning of the Law, would call these false prophets “workers of lawlessness.” They perhaps did the outward requirements of the Law, but they were considered lawless, devoid of the Law, because they failed to understand its complete and proper meaning.
Jesus’s final words were an exhortation to obey – to do the commands of God. But, according to the context, these words (7:24-27) were more than this. Jesus had already communicated quite plainly that no one was capable of obeying God’s law. It was so far above their ability to obey, so far above even their understanding. God, in all His holiness, demanded none other than perfection. And so Jesus extends hope in these words: “Build your house on the rock.” It is not the house that offers the support, but the rock beneath the house. Jesus offers this to us. He is our Rock. Only in our recognition of our utter inability to obey and fulfill even the least command of God’s law according to God’s heart will be fall completely on this Rock.
Reflecting on this and on the Law, I came upon thinking about the Sermon on the Mount. A flash of lightning hit my mind as I began to see this sermon in a way I had never before. This entire sermon is one long exposition of the requirements of the Law. And the purpose of that exposition has several purposes: to instruct for obedience, to reinterpret the Law by taking these Jewish listeners back to its original intent, to begin a revolution of living for delight in God’s glory. But in this particular entry, I am going to focus on an often missed purpose of Jesus in giving this exposition – to illuminate the utter hopelessness that the Law brings.
The listeners of Jesus had only a shadow of the Law, an warped interpretation of the most apparently “righteous” people of the day, the Pharisees, who were the keepers and teachers of this shadow. They taught and lived it for strict obedience. But they had completely missed the mark of what the Law truly was in its intent. When Jesus preached His Sermon on the Mount, His aim was not to explain the Law so the people could see how to behave, but to expose every way they hadn’t. Paul made very clear in Romans that “the law came in to increase the trespass” (5:20). A true understanding of the Law would reveal just how far off the Jews were from the righteousness of God and how impossible it was ever to meet the requirements of God’s Law, for God’s Law revealed the righteous requirement of God’s holiness.
The people, as long as they were looking at outward appearances could put up a good front. But when Jesus exposited the Law in full, showing it to be far above outward ritual – He showed it to be a matter of the heart – the response was not to be, “Okay, let’s go out and do this.” No, the appropriate response would be one of horror, “Woe is me. I am doomed.” Jesus was the first Reformed preacher, teaching the total depravity right here in the Sermon on the Mount. This is what Jesus meant when He said that He did not come to do away with the Law but to fulfill it – to fill it full of its true meaning (Matt 5:17-18).
Paul wrote that there is no humanly possible way to keep the whole Law, which is God’s perfect standard of holiness, because through the Law comes not righteousness but knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20). The Law served to show us how truly degenerate and sinful we were. If one were to only look at the Law at face value, with its many rule, regulations and rituals, one might dare attempt to live righteously. But wasn’t the rules, regulations and rituals that Paul was referring to. He was referring to the whole Law, the intent of the Law. One would have to look at the Law’s intent, that one’s heart also had to be in the right place. The Great Commandment clarified this. Love the Lord with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. It was a Law that required heart transformation, that required love. But, as Paul emphasized, though it required these things, it made no provision for them (Rom 8:2). There is no greater sermon exposition on the full intent of the Law than Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. As I read the sermon in this light, it came alive to me a way I had never experienced it before. God's Spirit was opening my eyes and conforming my understanding to His heart.
In Matthew 5, Jesus opens with the Beatitudes. Jesus insisted that we be poor in spirit, meaning we come knowing how hopelessly depraved we are. We were to mourn out of despondency for this state of affairs, knowing our lostness. We were to be meek, coming in humble weakness to receive God mercy in our unworthiness. Now this poverty of spirit, mourning and meekness was not to discontinue once we received Christ. Since sanctification would never be complete until glory, the sinful nature would also never be completely expunged as long as we bore this mortal coil.
Now, since we have been shown mercy, we were then to show forth that mercy to others, in an attitude of contrition. We were to continually have a hunger and thirst for righteousness, which Paul clearly teaches us cannot be apart from a working of the Spirit, for apart from His Spirit, no one was righteous and no one was seeking after/hungry for God (Rom 3:10-11).
When Jesus required purity in heart (v 8), He was going for the jugular, getting to the crux of the Law – the heart had to be pure. And how could the heart be pure when it was a heart of stone (Ezek 11:19), deceitful above all things and beyond cure (Jer 17:9)? The only way this could be is by a work of the Spirit, turning our stone heart into a heart of flesh (Ezek. 11:20).
We were to be peacemakers – an inward working of God's Spirit.
And Jesus finally warns us in this last Beatitude that we will be persecuted because we would be different, transformed inwardly by God’s Spirit.
This stuff, these Beatitudes, were all inward transformations. Jesus did not say, blessed are you who sacrifice, bring offerings, etc., but blessed are you who are poor in spirit, pure in heart, etc.
The statements that we are salt and light and a city set on a hill (vv 13-16) are metaphors for outward displays of inward transformation. We are to outwardly display God’s glorious work within us. This is in contrast to the hypocritical Pharisees who displayed their good works but had no inward transformation. “They were whitewashed tombs filled with dead men’s bones.”
Jesus then, in verses 17-20, emphatically states His purpose in this sermon and His mission on earth. In this sermon, He was not doing away with the Law but merely fulfilling it. Jesus rebukes anyone who does not keep even the iota, even the dot of the Law. His command was to read between the lines and live accordingly. Then Jesus pointed out a group of people, the religious leaders, who were dishonoring the intent of the Law, strictly living its outward requirements and imposing it on others, rather than obeying its underlying intents and implications. God's standards were heart standards lived out in practical love and service, not merely empty, outward acts.
If I were listening to Jesus at that point, I might think about the Ten Commandments. This Decalogue was never meant as an outward list of requirements for righteousness; they revealed a glimpse into the heart of God. The Pharisees just didn't get this. They did everything right on the outside. But they were inwardly depraved and degenerate, whitewashed tombs (Mat 23:27). Jesus came to fulfill the law, to expose depravity by revealing the entire meaning of the Law.
So Jesus takes His listeners back to the Ten Commandments. Do you see what He’s doing? Now if someone were to try to plead his innocence before the Law of God, and you hear people do this all the time when asked why they should go to heaven, the first thing he would probably say is, “Well, I’ve lived a pretty good life. I haven’t…killed anybody.” It’s interesting that times haven’t changed that much. The Jewish listeners were thinking the same thing, a thought no doubt put their by their religious leaders. And you can see Jesus go right to this first defense a person might offer for his own righteousness. In verse 21, Jesus starts here with murder. But what does He do? He exposes the full meaning of the Law, the heart of the command, the true standard of God. “If you're angry at your brother or hate him, you are a murderer!” Woe! It was easy to be righteous when the Law was really about not physically murdering someone. But if God weighs the heart, and if anger is murder, that’s a different matter altogether. Who has not been guilty of hatred at one time or another? No one!
What about adultery (vv 27-30)? Jesus said if you ever entertained a sexual thought about a woman other than your wife, you're an adulterer. God has ordained marriage as a sacred unity, a symbol of His divine love for His elect. If one’s heart is not for one’s spouse, he is guilty of adultery. God never abandons His covenant to His own, and His standard for us is that we never break our covenant either, which is why Jesus condemns divorce (vv 31-32). This is the full meaning of marriage, a human representation of God’s divinity and His love for His elect, and so any violation of the sanctity of marriage is a violation against the character of God.
What about oaths (vv 33-38)? God, again, is a covenant keeper. He speaks and it comes to pass. He does not turn to the left or right from His sovereign decrees. And we, His people, are to be like Him. If you say you are going to do something, it should be as good as done, no oath required. This is a standard of holiness that, again, debased the listeners’ standards of righteousness.
What about retaliation and revenge (vv 38-42)? Love your enemies (vv 43-48)? (I am getting most of my information on these verses from John MacArthur’s sermon, which amazingly came only two days after I set these verses aside for more prayer and research. His sermon podcast is entitled “Love Your Enemies, Part 3”). Nowhere in Law of the Old Testament did it ever say to hate your enemies. That was an implication the Pharisees added.
Deuteronomy 22:1-4 gives a command to look out for your brother and his possessions (his ox or donkey, in this case). What’s interesting is Exodus 23:4 makes the same command for one’s enemies. There are two implications: 1) We are to demonstrate love toward others by meeting their needs, and 2) A syllogism can be applied here to incorporate one’s enemies into the definition of brother. We are to consider our enemies our brothers. This implication was seen again in story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told.
In Job 31:29-30, Job defends himself by telling very plainly that if he had rejoiced in the ruin of his enemy, which he did not do, he would have sinned. David gave the same sentiment in Psalm 7:3-5, saying that it is wrong to do evil to our enemies. It is a sin. And in Psalm 35:13-14, David again shows great love for his enemies, fasting and praying for them when they fell into calamity. The Law and Prophets never once said to hate one’s enemies. This interpretation slipped into the mix somehow through the course of time, and Jesus set them straight again, showing God’s standard for holiness, to show even your enemies great love .
This section and chapter end with this command, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is huge. It totally proves the point that the Sermon was meant to demonstrate our utter inability to fulfill the Law of God, for this is its requirement boiled down to the core. We are to be perfect JUST LIKE GOD! That is impossible! We just can’t do that. We are depraved. And so we need a Savior.
Next, in 6:1-6, Jesus rebuked outward displays of righteousness that had no heart value. The Pharisees, the pinnacle of outward righteousness, were carcasses on the inside, notorious for doing their good deeds to be seen by others, to feed their pride. But God weighed the heart, and so their deeds were worthless because they were motivated by pride, not worship. But here’s the standard. Keeping it a secret from others is not enough. One must keep it a secret from his own proud heart. That was impossible, and so again Jesus demonstrates our utter inability, in our natural state, to obey the Law of God.
Prayer, as demonstrated in the Lord's Prayer (vv 7-15), was to be an offering from the heart that expressed contrition and absolute dependence on God’s mercy and grace to meet our needs. Prayer is communion with God. Jesus condemned ritualistic chants and repetitions as a demonstration of faithlessness in God’s sovereign benevolence and providence. Pray, when done from the heart, puts us in our place by putting God in His, on the throne of our hearts. It shows our utter dependence on Him in every thing of life. We acknowledge God’s greatness, then confess our many shortcomings and present our many needs to Him, including both physical and spiritual.
Verses 19-34 lay down the kind of heart a kingdom person will have, and it deals with absolute trust of God in all circumstances of life. The treasure of a true child of God awaits us in heaven, and all our efforts and desires are to be to invest in those other-worldly treasures. This is the Law of God.
Verses 22-23 are commentaries on our own desires. If the desires of our eyes are for earthly, materials pleasures or comforts, then our entire existence will be to satisfy that end, and we will be judged accordingly. If our desires or for heavenly treasures and God’s glory, then that desire will permeate every area of our lives, showing us to be truly righteous. Here, Jesus again shows the full extent of the Law by explaining that our heart’s desires will be judged, not merely our outward actions. God’s eternal glory and our eternal delight in Him is to be the focus of every desire of our hearts, to glorify God and be totally satisfied in Him. Falling short of this is a violation of God’s holy Law.
How is righteousness going to look in our attitude toward God in the everyday matters of life? It will be a total trust in God for the food and clothing we require. The righteous standard is complete and total trust in God’s benevolent providence. Jesus addresses this is vv 25-34. He commands us never to worry or be anxious about any of these temporal things, implying that to do so is sin, a breach of God’s holy Law.
Jesus’s commands not to judge in 7:1-6 are also heart matters. They go right along with the Beatitude of being poor in spirit. An honest self-evaluation on God’s scale of holiness will show us once and for all that we are too flawed and morally filthy to ever make an acceptable judgment on someone else’s righteousness. Most judgments we make of others are not predicated on God’s highest law, the law of love, and so we are instructed not to judge. .
In all this, in Jesus’s exposition of man’s state of helpless depravity and utter inability to fulfill God’s law, He gently speaks to us now in verses 7-11 as His children whom He has called out of this rabble, assuring us that He will by no means reject those who come to Him. All who seek are invited to come to receive Christ and His many blessings. The Law also bids people to come to God with their heart offerings, even though they were corrupted by sin. And here, in verse 11, Jesus reiterates our degenerate state by stating, “If you then, who are evil…” We are evil when measured to the standard of the Law. Even in our evil state, we still do benevolent things. But God’s holiness remains the perfect standard – giving to God and others, and humbly trusting God to meet our needs.
There is no more clear a picture of God’s character and love than what is stated next, in what has come to be known as the Golden Rule (v 12). When we live the Law of God in its fullest sense of meaning, we are living a life that looks to the needs of others and seeks to meet them, just as God in Christ Jesus met our deepest need for redemption.
In all these teachings, the gate and road seemed to be becoming more and more narrow and hard, and Jesus comes right out and says this in verses 13-14. This path, this way of holiness, this righteous life required of us by the Law, is very narrow and hard. Jesus said in another place, “Many are called, but few are chosen” (22:14).
What are these fruits Jesus speaks of in verses 15-20? The context indicates these are outward demonstrations of true righteousness. But didn’t Jesus just condemn outward displays of righteousness? Why then, only a few moments later, does He advise His listeners that they will be able to recognize the truly righteous by their fruits?
In the following verses, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven…many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name… And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, your workers of lawlessness.’”
First observation: Good fruit, fruit born from a good tree, is distinguished from outward good deeds. Perhaps what Jesus promises is that eventually, the true fruit of a person will show itself for what it is, good or bad. This was true for the Pharisees. When Jesus began to show forth the glory of God, their ugliness came out, making them guilty of the murder of the Son of God.
Second observation: “workers of lawlessness” in verse 23. It is profound that Jesus’s sermon, being an exposition on the fullest meaning of the Law, would call these false prophets “workers of lawlessness.” They perhaps did the outward requirements of the Law, but they were considered lawless, devoid of the Law, because they failed to understand its complete and proper meaning.
Jesus’s final words were an exhortation to obey – to do the commands of God. But, according to the context, these words (7:24-27) were more than this. Jesus had already communicated quite plainly that no one was capable of obeying God’s law. It was so far above their ability to obey, so far above even their understanding. God, in all His holiness, demanded none other than perfection. And so Jesus extends hope in these words: “Build your house on the rock.” It is not the house that offers the support, but the rock beneath the house. Jesus offers this to us. He is our Rock. Only in our recognition of our utter inability to obey and fulfill even the least command of God’s law according to God’s heart will be fall completely on this Rock.
posted by Ron | 12:50 PM
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