25 Why Jesus Says Your Anger Makes You Guilty of Murder (Matthew 5:21-26)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for downloading Wednesday in the Word, my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. I'm Krisan Marotta. This is the 25th talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 through 26. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, and you can also go to them directly by going to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 25. You can find all previous episodes in this series on Matthew on that website, wednesdayintheword.com, as well as many other series. Thank you so much for listening today. Well, we are in the second major section of the Sermon on the Mount. This was a sermon that Jesus gave early in his Galilean ministry at a time when he was very popular. We finished the first section, which was the Beatitudes. As I outline it, Jesus makes four main points in four major sections of the sermon, and we're in the second one. The first section is Matthew 5 1 through 16, which covers the Beatitudes, where Jesus describes those who have saving faith and will receive eternal life. The second section is Matthew 5 17 through 48, where Jesus corrects the vision of holiness that the Pharisees have taught, and that's the section we're looking at now. The third section begins in Matthew 6 1 and runs to 7.14. And here Jesus warns his listeners to avoid the self-deception of the Pharisees. And then he concludes in Matthew 7 15 to 29 that it's not enough to claim to believe, you must live out your beliefs. Last week's passage was an introduction to this second section. And I've argued that this sermon is targeted at the Pharisees, and in particular, the way that the Pharisees understand Scripture. Jesus is correcting and contradicting their understanding. Now the Pharisees had the reputation of being champions of the Old Testament, and Jesus challenged the way they've been teaching and applying the scriptures because Jesus is rejecting the way the Pharisees understand the Old Testament. He could be accused of rejecting the law or the Old Testament itself. But he says in his introduction, no, I came to teach and clarify the truths taught in the Old Testament. I came to implement those truths in the hearts of my people, and everything in the Old Testament finds its fulfillment and consummation in me, the Messiah. So he argues, No, I did not come to abolish the Old Testament scriptures. Instead, he wants his disciples to avoid the kind of law keeping that the Pharisees practice. He wants them to avoid holding to the letter of the law while actually seeking to avoid the genuine demands of the law. He said in 520 that your righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, and now he's giving examples of what that means. This second section also has a name, it's often called the antithesis, because Jesus will quote the law or he'll paraphrase a command of Moses and then he'll say, But I say to you, and he makes an oppositional or an antithetical statement. So we're going to be seeing this structure, you have heard X, but I say Y. So we're looking at this, not this, but that structure. Now in each case, in order to understand the point Jesus is making, we're going to look at the nature of his response. So when he says, but I say to you, what exactly is he doing? Is he adding to the first part? Is he correcting the first part? Is he saying something completely contradictory or maybe partially contradictory? So obviously he's not saying, well, you've heard that you shouldn't murder, but I say to you, go ahead, murder all you want. It's not that kind of a contrast. And what we want to figure out is what is the nature of the XY pattern? Is he explaining the laws concerning murder? Is he adding to it? Is he correcting it in some way? That's the goal of what we want to figure out. Now I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that scholars answer that question different ways and they debate exactly what it is Jesus is doing in these but I say to you statements. I'm giving you my understanding, but there are many other viewpoints out there. Some of them are very different than mine, and others are very, very similar. I do side with a relatively minority viewpoint here, and as always, you are encouraged to do your own research and thinking. Read and study what's out there and make up your own mind. All right, let's look at the next section. I'm going to read Matthew five verses twenty through twenty six. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel, and whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. So let me start by explaining the common view, and then I'll explain why I think there's a better view out there. So you may have heard this section taught something like this. The Pharisees were dedicated to keeping the law, and of course they kept the law about not murdering. They are right to obey the law in this way, and you are right to follow their example. But our righteousness must go beyond the legal requirements of the law, beyond the legal obedience which the Pharisees practice. Righteousness is not just about outward behavior, it's also about the heart and your inward attitudes and motivations. To be perfectly righteous, we have to be concerned about more than what we do on the outside. It's not enough that we refrain from committing murder, we can't even get angry because anger is like committing murder in your heart. Wishing someone dead is just as wrong as killing them. God requires us to be perfectly righteous at the deepest levels of our innermost beings. Of course, since none of us can be perfectly righteous at this deep level, we have to rely on the mercy and grace offered by the cross of Jesus Christ. Now that's a very common way of understanding this section, and it's plausible and it's possible. It is the interpretation that I held for many years. But my understanding has changed. I now think that Jesus is charging the Pharisees with a kind of faithlessness and a kind of disobedience. I'm gonna argue that he's saying something closer to this. The typical Pharisee thinks that he is holy and justified because he has obeyed the law and refrained from committing murder. He's broken no civil law, no court can charge him with murder because he's not murdered anyone, and in that sense his hands are clean. But his behavior shows that he has missed the point of the law. The law calls for a more fundamental change in how we treat each other. The Pharisees have disobediently ignored the heart of the issue. In this way, your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees. Now that's my basic understanding. Let me see if I can fill out that picture as we go through the verses. Matthew 5 21. You've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. So you have heard the Pharisees explain what it means to be a righteous person, and they have taught you that your grandfathers were told in the law not to commit murder. Now I would argue that Jesus is not really commenting on the laws about murders themselves. He's not correcting the laws about murder or adding to them. Rather, he's critiquing the way the Pharisees have applied these laws about murder. They quote this law as a way of defining who is righteous, and Jesus is saying they are misusing that law. Jesus tells us that the ancients were told two things. First, you shall not murder, and that's taken from the Ten Commandments. In fact, two of the antitheses are taken from the Ten Commandments, murder here and adultery which is coming up. Now, as I understand it, the commandment is specifically about murder and is not about killing in general. It would be hard to take this commandment as a general killing when capital punishment is allowed and in fact required in several places in the Mosaic Law. The issue in this commandment is not that you can never under any circumstances take the life of another human being. The issue is more narrowly focused on an individual acting out of hatred, vengeance, or evil to take the life of another. The second thing the ancients were told is whoever murders will be liable to judgment. Now that's not a direct quote from the Old Testament. We won't be able to find any passage that says that exactly, but it does capture the instructions that were given to Moses after the flood. As Noah's family is leaving the Ark, God gives them some instructions and he tells them in Genesis nine six, Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed, for God made man in his own image. So Noah is told If you take a man's life, then your life will be taken. And there are several places in the Old Testament law where capital punishment is prescribed as the penalty for a murderer. We're just going to look at one of them. This is Numbers thirty five verses thirty and thirty one. If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses, but no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death. So Jesus is not quoting a specific law, rather he's making a summary statement that everyone would agree with. The Old Testament law says you shall not commit murder, and the law prescribes a punishment for those who do commit murder, and that punishment is death. The judges of Israel are to pronounce death as a judgment for a murderer. It's interesting and significant, I think, that he includes both the prohibition against murder and the punishment for murder that the law demands. He doesn't do that with the next commandment, we're going to look at adultery, but he does include the required punishment here. So why would he do that? And I think because to fall under the legal punishment of a court means that you are not a law abiding citizen. You are not a righteous person. And Jesus is saying something like When the Pharisees talk about what it means to be a righteous person, you've heard the Pharisees teach that murder is wrong and there is a legal punishment against murderers. He's concerned that they think that righteousness consists of not being punished by the court. And he's going to go on to say the fact that no court can convict you of lawbreaking does not mean that you're holy, that you're righteous. Let's look at five twenty two. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel, and whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. That's the English Standard Version. Let me read the New American Standard because I think that translation is a little more clear and makes it more obvious what's going on here. The New American Standard reads But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court, and whoever says to his brother Raca shall be guilty before the Supreme Court, and whoever shall say you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Now notice the poetic progression here. The one who is angry is guilty before a lower court. Going one step further, the one who insults his brother calling him Raka is guilty before the Supreme Court, and going one step farther still, the one who says you fool is liable to hell. Now there are a few details I want to go over before we talk about his main point. First, what is this Rakah business? The word Raka is a transliteration of an Aramaic word that means basically empty headed or stupid. Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic, but Matthew wrote this gospel in Greek, and at this point Matthew chose not to translate the Aramaic word, but rather to transliterate it as raca. The New American Standard Version retains that Aramaic word, but the English Standard Version just translates it all into English. The typical understanding is that this word means an empty headed or worthless person. It's a term of bitter contempt. It's an insult that you would hurl at a worthless, foolish person. In the next phrase, the Greek word translated fool is simply the word for fool. We get our word moron from it. And Jesus uses this word a few times in the New Testament. It was considered a deep insult to call someone a fool. The reference to the Supreme Court is most likely a reference to the ruling body which they called the Sanhedrin, which functioned as their Supreme Court. The name or the word Sanhedrin simply means council, which is why the English Standard Version translates it council. If you're not familiar with the Sanhedrin, let me give you a very brief introduction. There were small Sanhedrin throughout Judea and they were not connected with the temple. They functioned as the lower courts. The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem function as a kind of supreme court for the country. It was not something that was established in the Old Testament. It appears to have developed during the Hasmonian period. The Sanhedrin was a political council that developed out of the civil authority of the high priests. The chief priests were automatically members, the high priest presided over it, and there were typically seventy members plus the high priest of the court in Jerusalem. And that court in Jerusalem then functioned as the highest court in the nation. So Jesus appears to be making this poetic progressive statement. First you're guilty in the lower court, then you're guilty in the Supreme Court, and finally you're guilty under divine judgment. This phrase fiery hell is a little tricky to understand and to translate. We could spend a lot of time on it, but without going into all the details, I am reasonably sure that this phrase refers to the future judgment of God, whether you are accepted at that divine judgment and granted eternal life or condemned and face God's wrath. In this context, I think Jesus is using this phrase fiery hell to mean the most extreme judgment that could be pronounced. He keeps upping the ante. You're found guilty at every level, starting in the lower courts and then the Supreme Court, and then finally divine judgment. While it's fairly clear that the courts are escalating or progressive, it's a little more controversial whether the offenses are escalating. The first person is angry and he's guilty before a lower court, the one who says raca is the next one at the Supreme Court, and finally the one who says you fool. Whether you see an escalation depends partly in how you understand what it means to be angry with your brother. One way to understand being angry with your brother is to see a parallel with Matthew 528. So Matthew 527 and 28 reads, You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So in 527 and 28, Jesus is contrasting the outward action of adultery with the inner attitude or desire of lust. And scholars argue that the same sort of idea is going on in the anger section, and Jesus is comparing the outward action of actually committing murder with the inward action of being angry with a person. You refrain from the outward action, but inside you're angry enough with them that you wish they were dead. And that's a very common understanding, that's a plausible option. The problem I have with that understanding is that anger can be just as much an outward action as murder is. Notice what Jesus goes on to say in verses twenty three through twenty six. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. In this section on anger and murder, Jesus gives us five different examples. The first three we looked at being angry with your brother, calling your brother raca or empty headed, and calling your brother a fool. Then in twenty three through twenty six he adds two more examples going to the altar when a brother has something against you, and going to court when you have wronged your opponent. Well, four out of those five examples do not contrast outward action and inner attitude. The last four of the five all involve outward acts against your brother. You have called this brother insulting names, either raka or fool. Your brother has something against you, presumably because you have done him wrong. If you just had bad thoughts against him, he wouldn't have anything against you because he wouldn't even know what you were thinking. You had to do something to wrong him. And in the last one, your brother's taking you to court and he's going to win because you have done something to wrong him. Since all the other examples deal with offenses that were actually committed against someone, I'm inclined to take the anger as a similar outward offense. Anger is a response or an action I take. Take against someone, my anger may manifest itself in any number of ways. It could be words, it could be gestures, it could be actions, or it could be physical violence. But my anger makes itself obvious because I do something to express it. So in all the examples he gives are ways in which we treat people badly. They're not just what I'm thinking in my private thoughts. Okay, so what's going on here? What's Jesus getting at? Well, to explain that, I want to step back and look at the opposite of anger, and that's love. Jesus tells us the two greatest commandments are love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. And I want to look at one of the places where we find the commandment to love your neighbor, and that's Leviticus nineteen verses seventeen and eighteen. And interestingly enough, the commandment is contrasted with hating your brother. This is Leviticus nineteen seventeen and eighteen. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Now as I understand it, this commandment to love my neighbor as myself is not a commandment to feel a certain way about them. Loving my neighbor means acting for their benefit, acting for the good of my neighbor. It's not a question of how I feel, it's a question of how I choose to treat them. I see my neighbors as my peers. I see my neighbors as my fellow believers before God and my fellow sinners before God. I want good things for them just as I want good things for myself. To love them is to do right by them, to do good by them rather than doing evil. And notice here in Leviticus that loving my neighbor as myself is contrasted with taking vengeance and bearing a grudge. Rather than reacting with anger and retaliation, I am to seek my neighbor's good. Presumably in this Levitical context, we're talking about how to respond to someone who has done you wrong. You should not hate that person, but reprove him. You should not retaliate, you should not nurse a grudge, rather you should treat your neighbor the way you would want to be treated and seek your neighbor's best. The issue of loving my neighbor confronts me most acutely when my neighbor has wronged me in some way. For most of us, it's easy to love those who love me back. It's easy to love those who treat me fairly and treat me generously and adore me. But it's difficult to love those people who are treating me badly. The natural response when someone treats you badly is to get angry. The next step after getting angry is to take vengeance. This phrase bear a grudge has the idea of keep or retain, and I think the emphasis is on the bearing or the keeping, not necessarily the nature of the grudge, but the holding on to it and the nursing those angry, vengeful feelings. Leviticus is saying you shall not retain or hold on to those bad feelings, rather let go of them. And notice the law is not forbidding talking, it's not forbidding strong words or even criticism. Leviticus nineteen seventeen says you shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart, you must surely reprove your neighbor, but you shall not incur sin because of him. So you may surely reprove your neighbor. The law is not saying you have to ignore the fact that your neighbor's done you wrong. The law's not saying it's inappropriate to call out your neighbor and reason frankly and talk it out with him. You can talk it out with him, you can reason frankly with them, you can say this is wrong, but you shall not incur sin over it. There comes a point when the talking becomes unloving and turns to anger and hatred and vengeance, and that's the line you want to avoid crossing. You're no longer calling your neighbor out on what she has done, you're now being unloving yourself. And notice too that Leviticus talks about the heart. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart. But I would argue hate here is not about the emotion. Hate is not how I feel about a person, it's my intention to treat that person badly. Just as love is the intention to act for their well being, hate is the intention to act against their well being, to do evil for them and not good. It's not necessarily a question of how I feel about them, but how I intend to act toward them. And the issue centers on how you intend to treat someone and ultimately do treat them. I think that Jesus understands the law against murder in the light of Leviticus nineteen. Leviticus nineteen is the moral principle that leads to the specific prohibition against murder and the civil pronouncement that capital punishment is the penalty for murder. Murder is the most extreme action of hatred you can take against your neighbor. You are so unwilling to treat your neighbor as you would wish to be treated that you want to and intend to take everything from your neighbor, including his or her very own life. Rather than contrasting an inward attitude with an outward action, I think Jesus is contrasting murder with anger in the sense that anger is the least extreme form of hatred, and murder is the most extreme form of hatred. If we were to put it on a continuum, on one end is murder and on the other end is lashing out in anger. Both responses are a kind of hatred. In both responses you are not loving your neighbor as yourself. You're not treating your neighbor as you would wish to be treated. You intend to sting and hurt your neighbor either with words or literally. So I see this as an escalation in a kind of A to Z way. We're looking at the least to the worst. On the one end I shoot him with my words, on the other end I shoot him with a weapon. Both are unrighteous responses. Both arise from an unwillingness to let go of my anger and a refusal to love my neighbor as myself. Now why would Jesus use this as an example? Well, I think he brings it up because the Pharisees are ignoring the moral principle behind the law. The least end of the continuum is not even on their radar. To them, getting angry is no big deal. It might even be justified after all, this person did me wrong. Well sure I can be a righteous person and chew out my neighbor with malice because after all, he did me wrong and he deserves it. Of course I can call him a fool. He is a fool. That's not a question of righteousness because I didn't murder him, I didn't even lay a hand on him. So I see Jesus as using hyperbole here or very strong language to make a point, and he's saying something like this. The Pharisees tell you that you are righteous because no court can charge you with murder. But as far as I'm concerned, those who respond to their brothers with anger should be charged by the court. Those who call their brothers worthless should be judged guilty by the Sanhedrin, and those who call their brothers a fool should be condemned to a fiery hell. If we understand what the law ultimately requires of us, the fact that we're not open to prosecution in civil court is not particularly significant. The law calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Refraining from murder does not make you righteous when you fail to love your neighbor as yourself in many other ways. Now, as I said, Jesus is using hyperbole here. I don't think he's suggesting that we change the civil laws. He doesn't expect the nation to start throwing everyone who gets angry in jail, and he is not suggesting that the Sanhedrin should start judging cases of anger. He's using a rhetorical device to make his point more powerful. You think you're righteous because no legal case can be made against you. Wake up. If it were the job of the courts to rule on moral issues, you'd be toast. The fact that you have not let your hatred of your brother take you to the point of actually committing murder so that you are legally guilty does not mean that you are righteous. Your civil legal standing is not a reflection of your true moral character because courts don't rule on moral issues. Now we think this way all the time. We keep the civil law, we follow social custom, we obey common sense morality, and so we think we're good people. We make that mistake every day. And Jesus is saying law keeping does not make you good. There's no civil penalty for bearing a grudge, but Leviticus makes it clear you're not to bear a grudge. There's no civil penalty for calling your brother a worthless fool, but Leviticus makes it clear that's not a loving thing to do. The fact that no court will charge me with holding a grudge does not make me acceptable and holy before God. In Leviticus, God has told us what kind of people he wants us to be. God's ultimate concern is that we learn to love our neighbors as ourselves. Sure, it is better for everyone involved that I get angry rather than commit murder. But the issue of being righteous, that was settled the moment I wanted to act on my anger. In that sense, my righteousness has to surpass that of the Pharisees. They've taught you that you are righteous if you refrain from murder and no court can find you guilty, but you need to realize the issue goes much deeper. You are righteous if you truly love your neighbor as yourself, and one evidence that you haven't loved your neighbor as yourself is if you get angry with them and you call them a worthless fool. Now I think that's his basic perspective, and now he goes on to apply it in the religious context. Matthew five twenty three and twenty four. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Jesus is speaking to Jews who are living at a time when the temple was still standing. Giving an offering at the temple was an expression of their religious devotion to God, and it was an expected part of their religious lives. They were expected to go to Jerusalem and give an offering at the temple at least once. Now Jesus is saying, Consider the situation where you want to do something that shows your devotion and obedience to God, but you have violated this law of loving your neighbor. What's more important? If someone has something against you because you did them wrong, repent and go make it right. Recognize that you have sinned and you need to deal with that sin. Then after you've repented, come make your religious offering at the temple. If you're going to perform a religious act that you hope will make you pleasing to God, it's repent. Repentance is more important than anything else. I don't think Jesus is saying anything new here. We see this idea in the Psalms. We saw it last week with Psalm fifty one. God is not interested in us merely going through the motions of offering sacrifices. He wants us to seek him with our whole hearts. He wants us to confess, repent, and be grateful first. Without those steps of repentance and humility, the religious practices we perform are worthless. Finally, he gives us a civil example, and I don't think he's giving legal advice here. Rather, this is a kind of mini parable. This is Matthew five, twenty five and twenty six. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. The New American Standard renders that make friends with your opponent. Notice that in all the examples Jesus gives there are three parties involved. There is you listeners who have done something wrong, there is God, and there is your brother or sister, the person you have wronged. And in this little parable we see those three again. There is us listeners, there is an accuser, and there is a judge who's going to decide the case. I think the language of five twenty six that you're not going to get out until you pay every last cent implies that you, listener, are in the wrong. Whatever the accuser has accused you of doing, you're guilty and the judge is going to figure that out. The point of the story is that the time to make it right with your opponent is before the judge hands down a sentence. The smart thing to do is to apologize, repent, and make appropriate restitution before you get to court. Work it out. Recognize that you're in the wrong and you're going to be found guilty, and then make some effort to put things right before you go to court. If you don't, your accuser will correctly demonstrate that you are in the wrong and the judge is going to throw the book at you. That's the point of the little story he's telling, but I don't think he intends this to be legal advice, although you could argue it's good legal advice. I think it's meant to be a parable or an analogy about how we should think about our own situation before God. Right now, before you go to trial, you have an opportunity to make things right. Right now, before the judge hands down his sentence, you have the opportunity to make sure that it doesn't go really badly for you. You don't want to wait until it's too late, you want to deal with it now. I think the analogy is just like the accused in the story, we are guilty before our heavenly judge. One day the divine trial is going to start and our divine judge is going to pronounce our destiny, and then it will be too late to make amends. But now, today, as I live this life, I have the opportunity to avoid condemnation by the divine court later on. Part of that divine judgment is going to include whether we have loved our neighbors as ourselves. He is not just going to ask whether we've murdered anyone, he's going to look at the big picture of how well we loved our neighbors and submitted to the law of love. If we fool ourselves into thinking that because we are decent, law abiding citizens and no court could find us guilty of murder, therefore God will be pleased with us, then we're going to be in trouble when our day in court arrives. We are better off now understanding what the law of love actually requires of us, and when we understand that we need to repent and seek mercy. Here then is how I would paraphrase this whole section. When the Pharisees talk about what it means to be a righteous person, you have heard them say that you shall not murder, and the law requires legal punishment for murderers. They say this as if righteousness consists only of not being caught and punished by the court. But I'm telling you that if courts were in charge of judging righteousness, then responding to others with unloving anger would get you arrested, and calling people insulting names would get you thrown into the fires of judgment. So if you understand what I'm saying, be more concerned with repenting than giving God your offerings. Your repentance is what he really wants. If you had financially defrauded someone, you would want to make amends before the judge throws you in jail. In the same way, you should make it right with your heavenly judge while you still can. Repent of your unloving actions now before you face the judgment seat of God. If I'm understanding Jesus correctly here, he's warning against legalism, which is a charge we often level with the Pharisees. Let me explain what I mean by legalism. The Old Testament law contains various kinds of commands. Some are ceremonial, and they describe appropriate religious behavior in the temple, at the feast, how to give offerings, and so forth. Some are civil in nature. These are the ones that would be adjudicated by the courts, and they would involve civil penalties. And other commands are descriptions of faithful and righteous behavior. Now Jesus says the two greatest commandments are love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. These are not civil laws with legal penalties, rather they are the moral principles that inform all the other laws. They describe what holy and righteous behavior looks like. I suspect that the Pharisees understood these distinctions and the different kinds of laws, at least in theory, it's quite likely they understood that the law contained both fundamental moral principles and civil regulations. The problem is that it's very easy and it's very tempting to start thinking that avoiding legal trouble is a sign of righteousness. Especially when I say other people who are breaking the laws, I can look at them and go, well, at least that's not me. We all have this assumption that meeting legal standards demonstrates that I'm a good person. I may not consciously articulate it that way, but it's really easy to start acting as if, well, I've got to leg up on those other poor folks because they're breaking the rules and I'm not. The temptation to start congratulating myself on my rule keeping is a very subtle and very easy trap to fall into. When Jesus says our righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees, I think he's trying to shock his listeners into waking up and taking a hard look at themselves. The temptation to legalism is thinking that I'm okay because I make a sincere effort to keep most of the rules. That's what I mean by legalism. And that temptation is so commonplace that it's almost universal. It took over the Pharisees and it takes over many believers today. Now it is a good thing to make a sincere effort to be obedient to the ways of God, but it's easy to get the cart before the horse. It's easy to think because I strive to keep the rules, I am in God's favor, rather than realizing I am in God's favor because He has shown me grace and made me the kind of person who wants to keep the rules down. It's easy to think that because I've refrained from the extreme end of the spectrum, God is pleased with me. I have to realize that I'm guilty. I should be grateful that I have not fallen into extreme evil, not boasting about it to God. The outward trappings of being religious are useless without the underlying humble repentant heart. Now many people think that Jesus is intentionally setting the bar high so that we would despair of reaching it and we will seek grace instead. And it's true, all of us have responded in anger when we shouldn't have. All of us have said a harsh word to our friends or family at some point, and it's really true, none of us can meet that standard. And Jesus knows that. There is truth in that view. The bar is high and none of us can meet it. Now maybe I'm splitting interpretive hairs here, and I'm open to that possibility, but I think Jesus has a slightly different emphasis. Let me see if I can explain. One of the great themes of Scripture is that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are all sinners and we We have seen this already in the Beatitudes. We are poor in spirit because we recognize how sinful we are. We mourn over our sins because we're sinners. We hunger and thirst for holiness precisely because we are not holy. We are merciful because we know how much we ourselves need mercy, and so on. Another great theme of scripture is that faith matters. Genuine saving faith makes a difference in the way I live my life today. That's the main point of the book of James. Faith changes my perspective on what I think is true, and that perspective changes the way I live, what I choose, what I say, how I act, what I value, and what I think. My understanding is that Jesus is dealing with what one of my mentors called the disobedient obedience of the Pharisees. Jesus talks to the Pharisees about this disobedient obedience quite a lot in the Gospels. Now not each and every Pharisee had this problem, but as a general rule, many of them did. On the one hand, the Pharisees see themselves as keepers of the law. They see themselves as blameless because they're following the rules in their minute detail. In this case, they're not murderers. No court could convict them of murder. On the other hand, they were stubbornly resistant to letting the law bring them to true repentance. They refused to take a good look at who they really were on the inside and what kind of heart attitudes the law required. Rather, they were intent on finding ways to keep the law while hanging on to their basic fundamental selfishness. That's what I mean by disobedient obedience. In this case, they discounted anger, they discounted insults as normal, acceptable social behavior. That's what everybody does. And they refuse to see that loving your neighbor as yourself actually requires something more than refraining from the act of murder. I think that self-righteous blindness is what Jesus is aiming at. If I as a Pharisee heard him and removed my self-righteous blinders, yes, I would realize that the law sets a high bar and I'm condemned by it, and hopefully that would drive me to the cross. But I don't think Jesus is encouraging us to attempt perfect obedience to the law. I think he's encouraging us rather to understand what the law requires in all its context and implications and recognize where we stand in relation to it. He's encouraging us to evaluate our standing before God and realize that we are sinners in need of a savior. The issue is a perspective change. The issue is an openness to the truth and how it applies to me. It's being honest about my own sinfulness and need for mercy. It's being willing to recognize that the law condemns me even if I haven't committed murder because I have failed to love my neighbor as myself. And that perspective change, I would see how high the bar is and how far short of it I am. And as I said, maybe this is splitting interpretive hairs because I end up in the same place, I think that Jesus gets there a slightly different way. I don't think his advice is try keeping the law harder until you realize you're failing. I think his advice is open your eyes and embrace the truth now. Notice that in his final two examples, the two people are already failures. The person going to make an offering has already wronged someone. The person being taken to court has already defrauded someone. They have already failed when the story starts. We're not talking about people who are striving to be perfect and miss the mark a little bit. We're talking about current failures who have an opportunity to fix the problem. We're talking about guilty people who still have a window of opportunity to right their wrongs. And that's what I think his emphasis is. There is still time to wake up and see the truth. The emphasis is not you must try even harder than the Pharisees. The emphasis is repent now while there's still time. Quit mistaking legal compliance with true faith and true repentance. So the point is take the law seriously. Be honest about who you are and what God requires. Repent now while you still have the chance. And when you follow the law, follow it seriously with your whole heart. When you fail, confess your failure and repent. The reason your righteousness needs to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees is because at heart you take the law more seriously and honestly embrace its moral principles. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but seeks to show you how to figure that out. You can hear all previous episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There's no charge, no spam, and no ads. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen, and most importantly, please tell a friend what you learned, and if you can, where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates of Heartfeltmusic.org. You can find all his music and CDs there. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.