After Jesus finishes the "Beatitudes" in the Sermon on the Mount and calls us to be salt and light, He continues on with:"Don't misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to fulfill them". (Matthew 5:17 NLT) And boy did He ever! The list of Old Testament prophecies that Christ fulfilled can be found on countless websites.
Jesus uses the following statement to introduce His new laws. He warns:
"But I warn you—unless you obey God better than the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees do, you can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven at all!" (Matthew 5:20 NLT)
Tough words considering the Pharisees had dedicated their lives to keeping the law. The Bible teaches us though, that their righteousness was superficial and hypocritical. They had missed God’s heart. Jesus spends the next part of the Sermon on the Mount not abolishing the law but making it even harder to follow. He talks about the heart behind our actions.
This is contrary to how we as humans often judge our relationship with one another since we tend to focus on outward appearances and actions and fail to look into the hearts and minds of our family members, co-workers and friends. Although we can fool each other some time, over the long term it is tough to fake it. Eventually, our true feelings or intent show through, don ’t they?
The thing that strikes me about the "tougher standards" Jesus institutes is that outward rules and legalism are in a way comforting to us. I think we all have our little sets of rules that we keep as our standard of establishing who is " in". We all have our own little list that we can check off to say that we are doing OK spiritually. And we all can be tempted to judge ourselves in comparison to others. This takes us right back to what Jesus is trying to get beyond - judging based on outward actions. As we go through the list that is to come, it is difficult for us to know how much anger, lust, or lack of forgiveness we have in our hearts in comparison to others.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus takes away our ability to comfort ourselves by looking around and saying "I am better than most". We need to examine our hearts and be honest about what is in there that no one else sees.
Jesus didn’t abolish the law. He made it way tougher.
Jesus uses the following statement to introduce His new laws. He warns:
"But I warn you—unless you obey God better than the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees do, you can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven at all!" (Matthew 5:20 NLT)
Tough words considering the Pharisees had dedicated their lives to keeping the law. The Bible teaches us though, that their righteousness was superficial and hypocritical. They had missed God’s heart. Jesus spends the next part of the Sermon on the Mount not abolishing the law but making it even harder to follow. He talks about the heart behind our actions.
This is contrary to how we as humans often judge our relationship with one another since we tend to focus on outward appearances and actions and fail to look into the hearts and minds of our family members, co-workers and friends. Although we can fool each other some time, over the long term it is tough to fake it. Eventually, our true feelings or intent show through, don ’t they?
The thing that strikes me about the "tougher standards" Jesus institutes is that outward rules and legalism are in a way comforting to us. I think we all have our little sets of rules that we keep as our standard of establishing who is " in". We all have our own little list that we can check off to say that we are doing OK spiritually. And we all can be tempted to judge ourselves in comparison to others. This takes us right back to what Jesus is trying to get beyond - judging based on outward actions. As we go through the list that is to come, it is difficult for us to know how much anger, lust, or lack of forgiveness we have in our hearts in comparison to others.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus takes away our ability to comfort ourselves by looking around and saying "I am better than most". We need to examine our hearts and be honest about what is in there that no one else sees.
Jesus didn’t abolish the law. He made it way tougher.
Mark Wallace
Manager of Pastoral Supports
Christian Horizons
Christian Horizons
1 comments:
Such a good reminder of something we need to be reminded of over and over again.
Jesus's standard is at once much deeper and higher, and yet full of hope and peace because our righteousness is not based on who we are but on Who he is!!
When we judge others we enter into the work of the enemy who is The Accuser. God alone judges justly and God alone has the right to judge.
Our response of love to him is to want to live a righteous life and yet knowing that even that must be him living his life through us.
Post a Comment