Matthew 5: 17-30
Old Code & Codes
I’d like to remind you of the background that provides the context for the Sermon on the Mount, because it is very significant. Jesus addresses a first-century Judaism that was divided into sub-groups—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots—all of whom had their own codes of righteousness. Each group counted on their own observances of righteousness to keep them in right standing with God. The Sermon on the Mount, among other things, completely undermines any reliance on their own codes.
For example, the Pharisees—who were called “the Righteous ones” or the “Serious ones”—believed their code was the high bar for righteousness. Centuries of rabbinical commentary established a corpus of beliefs to which every good Pharisee remained devoted. That code was their “yoke”—their means of obeying the 613 mitzvahs or commandments from the Law. To the degree they adhered to these mitzvahs and traditional observances, they believed their righteousness was well-established, and that they were justified in their practices.
To His disciples, Jesus says that unless their own righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, they will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Now the Pharisees were the ninja of religious observance—I’m sure His followers thought, “How will we ever surpass them?”
Jesus says, “I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it,” adding that not so much as the dot of an i will be removed until Heaven and Earth have passed away. This would have been a disappointment for any listeners who hoped that the Messiah might lighten the code of righteousness, but it is the beginning of even harsher news to all who felt their own codes of righteousness were sufficient to justify them with God. You might even say that the Sermon on the Mount is, in and of itself, the utter destruction of every manmade code of righteousness, for that is exactly what it is.
The Law, given by God, is good, but the Law can not save anyone. No one can be saved through obeying the Law. The very purpose of the Law is to reveal human sin—its power and extent. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and others thought they were approaching righteousness. Jesus lets them know that they’re not even close.
It’s as though their faith was like running track, leaping over hurdles. They were clearing the 3-foot-high hurdles in good form. Jesus shows them that the real hurdles are not the 3-foot-high one’s they’ve set up for themselves, but rather walls 30 feet high.
“You have heard it said,” says Jesus, quoting the Law of Moses, “but I say to you….” Jesus reveals that He is above the Law, the Author of the Law, and He defines righteousness for all, despite the little codes they created for themselves.
Now all these little codes, in and of themselves, don’t seem bad to us. After all, they are ways of calling people to righteousness before God. The problem is that they’re manmade, or at least human-altered, and all fail to improve the lot of sinners in the world. The Law can not save. Good works can not save. In all we do, we embody sin and we face a 30-foot wall that none can jump.
Yet Jesus tells us the Law is good and will remain in place. What are we to make of this? Are we Christians expected to comply with the 613 mitzvah of the Law? Let’s not jump forward to that question just yet—that’s down the road a bit—for now, let’s consider the Law that remains with us till the end of time.
The Heidelberg Catechism, written during the Reformation, expresses a three-fold function of the Law:
1. It humbles us, sending us to Christ alone for salvation.
2. It reveals our weakness, driving us to our knees in prayer.
3. It remains like a bridle in our mouths, keeping us in fear of God.
Jesus speaks of Hell several times through the Sermon on the Mount. Hell is a warning. We ought not to trust our little righteous codes; we ought not to trust our ritual observances. None of them will can save us from sin or help us over that high wall.
New Codes
Just as Israel fell again and again into idolatry, so people throughout history fall into little, made-up codes of righteousness that they depend upon to define righteousness for themselves. Every generation tries to reinvent righteousness for itself. Every generation produces its own Puritans and holier-than-thou Pharisees. It happens within the Church and outside just as easily.
The original Puritans were those who sought righteousness and purity. The word “puritanical” has come to mean something like judgmental, joyless, and holier-than-thou. Puritans did try to outdo one another in proving themselves faithful, but this often bore the fruit of self-righteousness and religious pride.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, tells the story of how the Puritans marked Hester Prynne with a red “A” for adulteress and force her to stand on the public gallows for three hours while the town publicly shames and humiliates her for her sin. She has to wear the letter for life, with no earthly hopes for redemption. Though the Puritans can accuse her and shame her, they can’t restore her.
These new little holiness codes pop up in every generation. When I was in college and seminary, the code was nuclear disarmament. It was the issue, at least for awhile. Its most devoted activists could turn any conversation into a litmus test to find out where you stood on the issue, how much you cared about it, and why can’t you care more and do more to help fix it. Classic puritanism. If your answer was less than satisfactory, an invisible scarlet letter was tattooed to your forehead. You didn’t measure up—for shame!
And yes, we see the same thing today with the new righteousness of “woke” culture. Vigilantly, they survey the social landscape with a sack-full of scarlet letters ready to plaster whomever they feel does not meet their standard of righteousness. Racist! Capital R. Sexist! a big S. Homophobe! Slap on the H. Transphobe! T. Xenophobe! X. This is the Puritanism of our day—these the new Pharisees—and some are utterly ferocious in their observances—as painstaking and detailed as any hard vegan, and ferociously self-righteous toward all who might disagree, or even show the slightest resistance in accepting and adopting their perfectionism.
No Essene monk of Qumran could be more sanctimonious in prideful, religious fervor than one of today’s militant Antifa. And, as happens with Pharisees of all stripes, they appear to be totally blind to their own hypocrisies, and with little-to-no sense of humor about themselves, they are today’s “Serious Ones.”
Two Pastoral Issues
How serious? I’ve recently been made aware of two Christian families that are being torn apart by the new code of woke righteousness. The young adult children, clearly suffering the throes of a COVID-lockdown-social-media bender, utterly drunk on internet media, have threatened their parents with disassociation—shunning, banishment—should these parents continue to support Donald Trump as president. No kidding—total abandonment of parents for their political preference. This is harsh, amounting to, “If you don’t change your politics, you will never see your grandchildren.” One of them, a Deacon in a theologically conservative Presbyterian church, has freely Facebooked his contempt. “F Trump.” These adult children (I use the word adult generously), have threatened to cut off all contact with their own parents for their failure to affirm or conform to their sons and daughters’ code of righteousness. It breaks the heart.
But worse, it reminds us of those terrible stories of children who turned their parents over to the tyrants during communist revolutions. Pavlik Morozov was called a martyr and nationally heroized by the Soviets for turning in his parents, who were murdered by the government. And there are hundreds of stories—though most of them underground—of children reporting their parents during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, resulting in their parents’ death to the greater glory of the State. Hitler Youth were known to do the same.
How much virtue is there in a moral code that sets children against their parents? What happened to plain civility and agreeing to disagree in friendship?
Codes become Hell-bent
When a code of righteousness becomes a rigid and inflexible ideology, whatever virtue was there at its founding becomes discredited. No doubt, there is good in many of our social movements. The Black Lives Matter movement—Black lives do matter—this has been part and parcel of American Presbyterian faith for several decades. Our Confession of 1967 makes very clear pronouncements against any racist ideology. We Presbyterians were anti-racism before most of the Black Lives Matter activists were even born.
There is some good in every movement: some good in veganism, some good in Pride parades, some good in just about every protest, and we shouldn’t discount that good, but when a movement morphs into a code of righteousness—and when it takes on a cult-like personality—then sin has tipped the balance away from goodness. Once any movement refuses to acknowledge its own sin, it become dangerous, self-righteous, Pharisaical—Hell-bent. The extremes of today’s “call-out and cancel” culture is the new Puritanism of the most rigid and inflexible kind. Hester Prynne is pilloried on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The righteous ones become fiercely legalistic and judgmental. These are the new Pharisees, the new Zealots, and such righteousness is a false righteousness, drunk on its own glory.
Now it is a fair question to ask, “Are we doing enough to fix our injustices?” Are we doing enough? This is a legitimate question calling for national dialogue, but dialogue only occurs with civility and something like humility, both of which seem in short supply at present.
And it’s okay to be emotionally-motivated by current events—and who isn’t outraged by the death of George Floyd? The feelings of outrage are not illegitimate. Neither is outrage illegitimate over the injustice of riotous destruction and violence. Wicked people trying to burn police officers inside their station—outrageous—and these things rightly raise our blood pressure, but we will not advance by violence, nor by shouting each other down, or shutting each other down in the new tyranny of cancel-culture. Civility. Dialogue. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Gentleness. Self-control—yes. But rage is never righteous; it is merely self-righteous.
Murder, Anger, & Hostility
Which brings us to Jesus next teaching.
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
We all know that murder is horrid, but Jesus takes the sin of murder and applies it even at the level of the heart and intentions. According to the Law, evil actions are worthy of judgment, but Jesus applies the law to our hearts as well.
Now there is a difference between simple anger and hostility. Anger—the mere human emotion—isn’t a sin. You hit your thumb with a hammer, you get a momentary rush of adrenalin and feel anger. You’re tired, or hungry, and someone pushes your buttons, you’re likely to react in anger rather than respond. Simple anger runs hot but is very short-lived.
This is why we have time outs for children who throw tantrums. Give them a little time to let the adrenalin settle, and you have your child back. Simple anger is no sin; it’s part of being human.
Real anger is what we call hostility. Jesus was angry when he cleared the temple, but this was truly righteous indignation, not hostility. Hostility is lingering anger—anger that doesn’t subside in time. The real condemnation is against anger that has been set into the will or the heart. That is hostility. Jesus was never hostile.
It’s interesting: in the gospels we see Jesus’ anger almost exclusively directed toward the self-righteous—the Scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees—Jesus was angry with them, but never hostile. He came to save them as well, though they may have been too pridefully-blind to see it.
These Scribes and Pharisees, who smiled in Jesus’ face calmly and called him “good Rabbi,” yet who sought to kill him—they were hostile to the core. “We will get him!” they said to themselves. They smoldered with the evil kind of anger, though they smiled on the surface. Hostility is seen in the passion for vengeance and/or revenge. Getting back, getting even—really sticking it to someone else. That’s hostility. That’s the evil.
Think of traffic. Merely angry drivers drive too fast to work out their anger (which they shouldn’t do), but hostile drivers drive too slow, calmly and intentionally backing up traffic from the left lane, all while cooly pronouncing, “Huh! What’s everybody’s hurry anyway?” Hostility, like revenge, can be served up cold, with one’s nose held high and a self-righteous, little pucker of a smile. That is the evil. That is anger which is not simply an emotion but a poison set into the will.
Adultery, Arousal, & Lust
Similarly, as Jesus teaches about adultery, he changes the code. While all would agree that adultery is unacceptable behavior, Jesus moves the prohibition into the heart. It’s not enough to avoid committing adultery, but if you desire adultery, you are equally guilty. The new code is not merely behavioral, but applicable at the level of our hearts and intentions. Jesus moves the code from our hands to our hearts.
Again, we need to make a distinction between lust and mere arousal. As with anger, arousal is the product of having a healthy, human body. It is good. It is God’s intention that we should function that way. But lust is a dark drive set into the will, and, like hostility, that which can be served up with cold calculation. It is that greedy, taking, using spirit set into the will that says, “I will have her!” This, says Jesus, is every bit as bad as adulterous behavior.
Jesus has taken what was the Law—a code of behaviors—and set them into the heart. The bar is way high—over thirty feet—righteousness is clearly out of human reach, for though we might do pretty well controlling our behavior, our thoughts can and will betray us all, and there is no escape.
Unrighteous
So understand: the entire Sermon on the Mount is total affront to all forms of human righteousness. All the things that we do or build to please or otherwise appease God amount to false forms of righteousness. The New Code of Christ—the one He introduces here in the Sermon on the Mount—is one that can only be fulfilled by Himself.
We do well to guard against every form of self-righteousness and to roundly reject every manmade code of righteousness, no matter how popular.
You’ll hardly believe it, but theologian Hans Kung—who is a Roman Catholic—puts it as well as any Protestant reformer:
What does it mean to be a child of God and so truly human? It means abandoning all pious dreams, ridding ourselves of illusions and admitting that no effort of our counts when it come to the final decision: admitting that we make no progress with God by observing the letter of the ritual and moral law (which can never be completely fulfilled and therefore constantly create new feelings of guilt); that all our moral exertions and pious practices are inadequate to put in order our relationship with God and that no achievements or ours can merit God’s love. —Hans Kung [On Being a Christian, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1976; p. 401].
We are utterly incapable of righteousness. So what are we to think? The good news was proclaimed to us two weeks ago in the first words of this Sermon on the Mount, for in all of this, we are driven right back to Beatitude #1: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”
May we therefore find our contentment simply in the promises of Christ, and may we never pretend to be righteous. His grace is sufficient.
QUESTIONS
- How is the Law fulfilled without being abolished?
Consider how the words themselves denote different outcomes.
- What is meant by, “until all is accomplished”?
What has to happen in order for the Law to be fulfilled?
- How can a normal person’s righteousness exceed that of the most devout and pious priests, leaders, and teachers?
- What is the difference between anger and hostility? Which is the problem?
- Why is it necessary to leave one’s gift at the altar and reconcile first?
Consider the value of relationships versus the value of religious observances. - What is the difference between arousal and lust? Which is the problem?
- What is the worth of righteousness? What are we willing to sacrifice in order to reach it?