Christian Ethics in the Light of Matthew 5:20

Transcript

As you may already know, we're going to be considering Christian

ethics and the moral teachings of Christ, we might say, as represented and as presented by Matthew's Gospel. Now, the reason we're leading with Matthew rather than a collation of the four Gospels, well, that's for a number of reasons, but I think that Matthew's Gospel is maybe most interested of the four in what Jesus is doing as a moral teacher. And that isn't to say that there aren't important elements of Christ's moral teaching that come up in the other four Gospels. They obviously do, and they are important, but I think that some of the specific details that we have that are unique to Matthew or are being focused on more by Matthew's Gospel are really important for us to notice, appreciate and take advantage of. Not least because they serve to stand against some of the, I suppose we might call them popular misreadings of Christ's teaching, ways in which Christ's moral teaching tends to be either misunderstood or misconstrued, either by accident or on purpose. It doesn't really matter.

the verse that I've given as a heading is Matthew 5 verse 20. Now, I'm not going to have us read through the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount as, well, it's several chapters long and we're likely already fairly familiar with it, but there are some strong words in the section of Matthew 5 verses 13 to 20 that really do merit some consideration and perhaps when we read over these familiar chapters, we're perhaps too used to it, too used to the wording to really think about what exactly this implies. So I'm just going to read Matthew 5 up to verse 20. When Jesus saw the crowds, he sat up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps them and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Now this last verse, I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven, is in many ways, should be a bit of a reality check. Now, there's a whole host of things that we like to imagine the Pharisees to be like, and that we might perceive the Pharisees to be. And if we have a perception of the Pharisees that's particularly low, it might not sound like that's saying much, to have a greater righteousness than the scribes and the Pharisees. But we must of course remember that these people are considered religious leaders and authority figures. And Matthew's gospel is perhaps more interested in construing these groups as

authority figures than any of the other gospels. Matthew makes a particular effort to identify all of these leaders together and amplify Jesus's sort of confrontations with authority figures. Matthew isn't presenting Jesus's conflicts as being like with people on the ground level, rather this is about Jesus's ability to lead versus the leaders of the day, their lack of ability to do so. Matthew is interested in a Jesus who is better than these leaders. Jesus has compassion on the people because they are like sheep without a shepherd. These would-be shepherds of the time are not doing their job very well. And now, of course, that sheep without a shepherd language connects back to a number of passages, not least in Ezekiel and Jeremiah, but that's not the point that we're getting into right now.

But in understanding what Jesus sort of has to say and the conflicts he has with these scribes and Pharisees, we're going to take a look at how Christ comes into contact with them, what he has to say about them throughout Matthew's gospel. And I'm going to start by taking us to Chapter 16 and the first 12 verses. The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came and tempting him, desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the prophet Jonah. And he left them and departed. And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. For they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets ye took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Thank you very much. Now, this little stretch has a number of interesting details. And the first section of it is really concerned with the type of wisdom that the Pharisees and the Sadducees would like people to perceive them to have. The Pharisees and Sadducees would believe themselves to be discerning. They consider themselves to be knowers and readers of signs in the sky. But Christ says that the signs of the times are every bit as simple and yet they don't know them.

And this idea of leaven is very interesting. The idea that their teaching might be like leaven speaks to a manner of inflation. That what the scribes and the Pharisees have done is they are in their teaching are adding to what has already been said. They are adding to the law in some sense. They are adding to the things that God has said. And we see this kind of problem rear its head just in the previous chapter, actually. In chapter 15, with the controversy about the washing of the hands,

they come to Jesus from Jerusalem and they say, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders when they do not wash their hands when they eat bread? But Jesus answers and says, Why do you yourself transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God has said, Honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say, Whoever says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you has been given to God. He is not to honor his father or his mother. And by this you've invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, The people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. After this, Jesus calls the crowd to him and he said to them, Hear and understand is not what enters into the mouth of a man that defiles him, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man. Now, here we have a very explicit example of one such tradition that the Pharisees and the scribes have added to

the law. Now, it's very important to note that they are by no means the only group doing this. And we now have a lot of quite interesting information about the various different Jewish groups going around at this time, slightly before and slightly after. And what we can say as a sort of general observation about the pattern of their thinking is that a lot of these groups are very concerned with

the problem that they had been exiled. They're all sort of thinking, well, we didn't manage to keep the law properly last time and it got us taken to Babylon. So we need to be really careful that we're doing it right so that the same thing doesn't happen to us. And this sort of question of how do we do the law right is what leads to a lot of these new traditions becoming put forward. So how do I go about doing these things? And that's why we get all these examples of decisions being made and proclamations being made about, well, how much can I walk before it becomes work on the Sabbath? What do I do about all of these various different minutiae and specifics, these controversies between different passages? And the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and various other groups would like to tell you exactly what you can do.

But Jesus seems to have a problem with the idea that there is a adding to. Because, of course, the law and the prophets are the word of God. And these interpretations and traditions on the parts of these various Jewish groups are squarely not. Now, that being said, there's some very, very interesting things that we can observe from these different Jewish groups. And one of them is that the Pharisees are not actually the most sort of egregious literalist ones out there. Actually, a lot of these groups are very, very, very, very firm about how you go about keeping the law, such that if you've heard of the Essenes, the group at Qumran who are responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, they actually fled or went out into the wilderness for 40 years to go out where they could keep the law properly, so to speak. And they believed that eventually God would get rid of all of the people in the temple because they were doing the temple service wrong. And now they actually had a little pun about the Pharisees. The word Pharisee is similar to the phrase seeker after smooth things.

And that was what the people at Qumran referred to the Pharisees as, because to them, the Pharisees were making it too easy, which sounds very different to what we might imagine of them. We perhaps imagine the Pharisees to be the sort of

hyper literalist, extremely committed, you know, the tithing of mint and dill sounds like so much focus on the literalistic aspects of the law. But ultimately, we're going to see that when Christ talks about those sort of literal details that they are so finicky about, Jesus actually doesn't tell them to not do those. Jesus tells them to keep doing those and then add other stuff to it.

And so what we might actually come to see is that on the whole, Jesus doesn't think that the Pharisees are

making things too hard, though there are a few verses about them putting burdens on people. It might seem actually that what Jesus has a problem with is the fact that they're so concerned with this doing that they're simplifying the law to make it doable, which is in stark contrast to the type of moral teaching that Christ puts forward on the Sermon on the Mount, which we're very familiar with. It has been said, do not murder, but if you have even been angry, you're already guilty. That's the level of law keeping that's the floor for Jesus. And now that's not less extreme than the Pharisees. That's more extreme than the Pharisees, which of course it is. And that shouldn't surprise us. And I hope it doesn't surprise us.

Now, one of the most famous stretches of Christ's words on the Pharisees is, of course, Matthew 23, which is a whole chapter specifically targeted. And Jesus says a whole lot of things about them here, some of which are really quite aggressive. He says in verses two and three, the scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. Therefore, all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds, for they say things and do not do them. So here, Jesus seems to condone certain elements of their instruction that you should go out and do. Now, we might ask whether or not this is like what he says about the temple tax, which is, you know, we'll pay it so that we don't offend them. It might be that what Christ is saying is something like that, although that isn't explicit. So we might want to be cautious on that question. But the thing that's wrong here is that you can't do according to the actions of the Pharisees because they don't do what they teach.

And that's the real problem. It's not that they're teaching on some or some elements of their, yes, what they tell you, you should go out and do it.

But their deeds are not to be emulated. In verse four, they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. So they're very willing to make all of these onerous claims and get other people to try and try and pick up, pick up the weight of their interpretations. But as as came up in the last verse, they're not doing it themselves. And now, verses five to twelve of Chapter 23, all of that is to the general pattern of saying what the Pharisees do, they're only doing it so that they'll be noticed or praised. And Jesus also encourages us not to desire that kind of recognition or praise and also not to give it out. And now that's an extremely hard thing to do.

But yeah, both in terms of our own humility and not desiring recognition from others. But giving out that kind of recognition is also a very, very natural human behavior that we're really, really being encouraged quite firmly to keep reined in. And then we hit the section that is often known as the eight woes.

Verse 13, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people and you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. They prevent entry to the kingdom of the heavens and they aren't going in themselves and they're barring those who are.

Verse 14, they devour widows houses and they give prayers deserving to be noticed. Now, what I think devouring widows houses probably refers to is perhaps that's demanding or requesting heavy donation from people who can't afford it. That's maybe an option of what that actually is.

But again, that's just a possible interpretation. Verse 15, they expend all kinds of great effort to gain proselytes, to convert people. But they make those people even worse than themselves. And then verse 16, they're blind guides and they make false proclamations and Jesus rebukes some of their less sensible teaching. They say apparently that the gold is better than the temple, that you should swear on the gold because it's more important. And Jesus says, that's ridiculous. They say you should swear on the offering and not on the altar. And Jesus says, no, that's ridiculous. So it wouldn't seem that they even know what they're talking about, at the very least on some issues. And now verse 23, which is of particular importance, which I'll read verbatim. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tie the mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. But these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others, you blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. They are overly concerned with minutiae, but neglect weightier matters. But Jesus's answer is not stop tithing. Jesus's answer is do justice, mercy and faithfulness as well. Which to me, to me at the very least, is a particularly intimidating wake up call at the best of times and is outright terrifying at the worst. You know, that's the kind of three dimensional commitment that Christ is actually putting forward as being right and best. It's a wholesale commitment, doing both the weightier matters and the little things. It's all of it.

And then there's this few verses that talk about this tendency to clean up the outside. They clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but the insides are full of robbery and self-indulgence. And you should clean the inside first so that the outside can be clean as well. Jesus rebukes that they clean up their outward face, as is kind of referred to in a lot of other segments, especially that five to twelve stretch on desiring recognition and praise. It only makes sense that they'd be cleaning up their outward appearance so that they don't look to be sinners or deceivers. But in reality, there is a deep-seated rottenness.

But rather, they should clean the inside of themselves first so that the outside can be clean as well. And then there is the comparison to whitewashed tombs, which is very much making the same point. The outside, they appear beautiful, but inside are full of dead men's bodies and uncleanness.

And then 29 to 36 is a particularly fiery rebuke. They adorn and build tombs and monuments to the prophets and the righteous whom their fathers killed. And they think that they are better than their fathers, that they are wiser and wouldn't do the same thing. But Jesus says they are no better than them. Christ will ultimately send prophets, scribes, and wise men whom they will kill, crucify, and scourge, and that all innocent blood will be on their hands, and that they murdered Zechariah. So that's not at all good.

So there is a deep-seated rottenness that has been a problem in the past and will be a problem in the future. They're not able to receive the criticism from God that was brought to them in the prophets in the past. And they're not going to be able to receive the criticism that Christ has for them. And they're not going to be able to receive the criticism that the apostles have for them afterwards. And so that begs the question, if our righteousness is going to need to far exceed, how do we actually go about doing that? How can we do better and what should we do instead? Now this kind of begs the question, is the law replaced or changed? And if so, how? And this brings us all the way back to Matthew 5, 17 to 19. Now of course, some of Jesus's rebukes to the Pharisees, they focus on the inability to do these sort of weighty spiritual principles. But it's not like Christ is telling them that tithing is stupid. It's not like that.

It's not as clear-cut as we might like it to be, so as to make this easy. Christ says in verse 17 of chapter 5, Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets, I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished. Now Christ comes to fulfill the law and the prophets, what exactly does that mean is a question that is absolutely confounding to be honest. But there's a number of options there. That's either that Christ is coming to fulfill them in the sense that he will live out fully the principles therein, so that Christ would be like the exemplary doer of the law and the prophets, or

that Christ is going to fulfill them by a new teaching. I don't think it's the second, I think it's the first, and

because of that,

Now Christ does say things that have led people to believe that Jesus is

fulfilling the law, like completing them by adding new sayings, and that can sound kind of compelling with some of the wording that comes immediately after this. You heard the ancients, that the ancients were told, but I say to you, is the point that Christ is replacing? I don't think it is. There are some very smart people who do think that it is, I don't think that that's the point.

I think rather that Jesus is exposing the onerous spiritual principle, the spirit of the law, so to speak, that is behind all of these commands and is exposing them to us, rather than that he is replacing these commandments with new principles. No, this is about peeling back to show what was always underneath. This is a fulfillment, this is about Christ as an exemplary doer. Now, regarding the fulfillment of the law and the prophets as a specific category, later in the Sermon on the Mount, on verse 12 of chapter 7, Christ says, in everything therefore treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the law and the prophets. So Christ does in some way condense elements of the law into smaller sayings or into a smaller principle. But are we left then with only a command to love and the spiritualization of the Sermon on the Mount? Are we only left with this?

And what I mean by spiritualization of the Sermon on the Mount, I mean they said, do not murder, I say to you, don't be angry. They said, it was said, do not commit adultery, I say to you, do not even look at a woman in such a way. That kind of, you know, the spiritualization where we move from an explicit command towards an implicit underlying moral or ethical element.

No, we are not left only with a command to love. It's not quite as simple as that.

There are things that cannot be spiritualized. There are things that it's very clear that Christ and the New Testament authors with him truly expect us to actually do.

This isn't just about condensing things into like an abstract ethic. This is still about doing things.

Repent and be baptized. Good luck spiritualizing that one. Do this in remembrance of me. Good luck spiritualizing that one. There isn't a repentance without baptism and there isn't a

way of remembering Christ that's purely spiritual, that's acceptable. We are given certain ways of doing things that's important that we respect. There are certain commands for us to keep in a physical way that are set up across the New Testament and in the scriptures as a whole. And if a principle can't be removed from its act, from the act, then the act is undoubtedly necessary. So in that sense, it's not possible to reduce the entirety of Christian life and the morality of a Christian life lived well to just a notion of love. I mean, to live such a life would be indeed a truly loving life. But the reason I say it can't be reduced is because we don't understand love well enough to do that. We're not going to be able to reverse engineer the adequate Christian life on the basis of our understanding of love. Simply, I think that would be too one dimensional and maybe even subjective. After all, Christ says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And so the way we actually go about loving is by doing and

by doing what has been said.

And so in that way, the scriptures tell us how to love God and how to love one another. And it's not then love that is teaching us how to read the scriptures. Our own picture of love is is fallen and limited, just as we are imperfect reflections of the image of God. But that being said, Christ's interpretation and teaching on the law and teaching on on on how we should live, it serves to expose how radically we need him. Christ's teaching about the law removes any possible sense that you can do it or that you have been doing it. And that's that's really the thing that separates him from these from these Jewish groups. They're all saying, how can we keep the law properly this time so we don't get exiled? And then Christ says, Who has ever kept the law fully? None of you yet. The Pharisees desire to be completionists. They wanted to complete the law. But Christ's exposition of it reveals our lack of capacity to do so, that that we actually really, really need him.

And and it's that balance that his fulfillment of the law in his action and his the clarity of his teaching about how difficult it actually is to do that makes especially Paul's writings about about the law so much more understandable. The idea that the law was serving the purpose of bringing us to Christ makes so much more sense in that kind of way.

And so when when we consider the Gospel of Matthew as a whole, as focusing on Christ's teaching, it becomes clear that Jesus is not Jesus is not reducing the moral the moral burden. Jesus is not reducing the law to something simple or basic. Jesus is not telling us, telling us or giving us an easy way out. Jesus is not giving us a a perfect case by case example of how we go about doing all of these perfect maintaining the perfect path in all sorts of complex scenarios. But rather, Christ is showing us that keeping the law is unbelievably hard. Jesus is showing us what God has always wanted. And in that sense, the moral teaching of Christ serves the purpose of exposing the moral expectations that God has always had in a

truer way and in some ways a clearer way than it ever has been.

Not least for the fact that he actually did it and how glorious a thing that it is, how glorious a thing it is that he indeed did actually do it and how glorious a thing it is that we get to That we get to participate in that that we have been afforded an opportunity to be made acceptable by what has been done for us. And so the purpose, the purpose of all these things is that Christ's presentation, Christ's presentation of the law shows us what God has always wanted and the manner in which Christ lived and died served to do the very same.