Kingdom of Heaven: Jesus, Christian, Law (Matthew 5:17-48)

Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of New Testament Studies from Matthew 5:17-48.

---

Our Father, our God, there are some difficult things to understand in this passage, but there are even more difficult things to do. Grant us your Spirit to understand. Grant us your Spirit also to be able to perform the calling to which we have been called. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, amen.

We are sometimes in danger of treating God’s Word like a collection of unclassified and unconnected precious stones. The Bible becomes a sourcebook for precious thoughts, but we fail to see the historical and theological development and growth of God’s redemptive purposes. Let me give you an example.

If you were randomly to open the book of Genesis and stumble upon Genesis, chapter 38, you would read there the story of the incestuous relationship between Judah and Tamar, his daughter-in-law. When you look at the chapter before and the chapter after, the connection is not immediately obvious. Before, it’s talking about Joseph going into captivity. Afterwards, it’s talking about Joseph in captivity. Why the break?

Well, besides the fact that it serves as a foil for Joseph’s purity when he is tempted similarly in the next chapter, there is the far more important fact that this relationship between Judah and Tamar produced Perez, who is in the direct line of the Messiah. From Judah came Jesus, and that line came through Perez. All through the pages of the Old Testament, God’s unfolding purposes of salvation are being opened out before the eyes of his people.

So also with Jesus Christ. He did not just appear on the scene as a savior in isolation from history, as it were. Rather he is the one of whom Moses and the prophets wrote. He is the one toward whom history has been moving, and he is the one from whom history has been moving. He was a Jew living in a first-century Jewish family. Last week, we introduced the whole concept of the kingdom of God in this sermon and saw how it permeates the whole, but also in this Sermon on the Mount there is this recurrent note of the Law and the Prophets.

So if, on the one hand, we’re drawn to the theme the kingdom of God, God’s saving reign breaking in on us and opening up all the benefits of the age to come to his people now, as well as insisting on the norms of the age to come now, nevertheless that kingdom is related to what has gone before, the Law and the Prophets. They’re not completely isolated phenomena. The kingdom of God is related to what has gone before.

This theme, the Law and the Prophets, comes up first in chapter 5, verses 17–20. “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets.” The same expression is found in chapter 7, verse 12, which is the end of the main body of the sermon. After that comes the conclusion. Before that comes the introduction. Jesus is here establishing the relationship of his own ministry and the kingdom of God to that which has come before.

Let me acknowledge right off the bat that these four verses, Matthew 5:17–20, are some of the most difficult in the New Testament. They are extremely difficult to understand. I will try to explain how I understand them, but I will outline some of the difficulties too. The difficulties are not to do with language or whatever. It’s to understand exactly what Jesus is getting at.

Let me read first of all verses 17–18. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

What is the meaning of this word fulfill? Jesus has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. He has not come as an iconoclast simply to crush them and smash them and say they aren’t important, but what does it mean to say that he came to fulfill them? When you think of fulfilling the law, you usually think of it in a manner different from the way you would think of fulfilling prophecy.

If prophecy is predictive prophecy, then to fulfill it means it comes to pass or to bring it to pass, but to speak of fulfilling law means to do what the law prescribes. So what does Jesus mean when he says, “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them”? Some suggest it means to confirm them in some sense, to validate them or deepen them.

Some say just to confirm, and they suggest that in the early decades of the Christian church, Jewish Christians, in point of fact, were practicing all of the laws of the Old Testament and were demanding that they be practiced, as well as following Jesus as the Messiah. They say this is what Jesus is here teaching.

The difficulty with this sort of thing is that elsewhere in the Synoptic Gospels, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus specifically abrogates, for example, the food laws. He specifically abrogates them, and he abrogates a great deal else. So it can scarcely mean confirm in the sense of make fixed exactly as all the laws of the Old Testament stand or something like that.

Furthermore, where in Christianity is the sacrificial law of the Old Testament? Where is that penal law, for example, which prescribes death by stoning to the persistently impenitent rebellious son? I confess there have been times when I think I would have qualified, but that law is gone. So what does Jesus mean?

Because this is a problem, Christian theology for many centuries has differentiated between moral law, ceremonial law, and civil law, and, according to this thinking, the moral law of God is the same in the Old Testament and in the New and it is this Jesus here confirms and deepens. The civil law, that which had to do with the nation of Israel, has passed. God’s people are not now located, as it were, in a race but rather under the umbrella of the whole kingdom of God’s sovereign rule, and it is international.

Similarly, not only the civil law is gone but the ceremonial law in like fashion. Jesus is the sacrifice, who died to pay for the sins of men, so all the sacrificial system of the Old Testament that pointed to him is forever gone. Although that is true, although there is valid distinction among these three, nevertheless you really have to strain the text here to think this is what Jesus is saying, because in the next verse, verse 18, he says, “Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law.”

Not the smallest letter in the Greek testament. It’s not the iota, not the yod, is probably what is meant. Not the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, not the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Nothing will pass until all is fulfilled. It’s not likely, therefore, that Jesus is picking and choosing from the Law and saying, “Well, this part stays, and it’s eternal, and this part is put aside.” That can’t be what is meant by fulfill.

Therefore, I have come to the conclusion, with some others, but not everyone takes this view.… Let me acknowledge that frankly. Most, as I’ve said, take the view I’ve just described, but I’ve come to the conclusion myself that the proper way to understand this verse is in the light of what Matthew elsewhere says. Matthew 11:13 tells us that the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and from that time the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing.

“The Prophets and the Law prophesied until John.” That suddenly changes the whole picture. At this point, it’s no longer a question of trying to see how law is fulfilled as opposed to how prophecy is fulfilled, but rather Prophets and Law both prophesy. Both Law and Prophets point forward. They have a prophetic ministry. Both the Prophets and the Law.

For example, the epistle to the Hebrews makes much of this. It says again and again that the sacrificial system of the Old Testament pointed forward to Jesus. Aaron’s priesthood pointed forward to Jesus as the High Priest. The old covenant pointed forward to the new covenant. So under this view, which is enunciated in Matthew 11, both the Law and the Prophets prophesy concerning the age to come.

Therefore, when Jesus says here that he did not come to abolish but to fulfill, he fulfills in the sense that they point to him and he is their fulfillment. He is the fulfillment of the prophecies embraced by both the Law and the Prophets. In verse 18, “I tell you the truth” is an emphatic utterance. “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the least bit will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

The expression until heaven and earth disappear cannot be taken absolutely, because it is balanced against the last clause in the same sentence: until all of these things are accomplished. The expression until heaven and earth disappear is a very strong common Jewish idiom in the first century, and it means never under any circumstances until. These things will not disappear until every stroke, every element of the Law, is accomplished.

What does this mean? Does this mean at the end of the age or does this mean until all the law is obeyed? Well, if the Law and the Prophets prophesy until Jesus, what it means is that they will in no way be set aside in any way, shape, or form until everything they predict of Christ comes to pass. From his first coming right through until his second coming, the kingdom stretches out, and all will come to pass.

Therefore, the validity and continuity of the Law and the Prophets from the Old Testament are in terms of their fulfillment, their introduction, their outworking in Jesus. Whatever is prophetic, in a sense, is provisional. When the thing prophesied comes, the prophecy itself goes. Whatever is prophetic is by nature, in a sense, provisional. So the Law and the Prophets are not abolished. They have pointed to and do point to Jesus Christ and all that he is and does until the end of the age.

But since he has come, they have pointed to him, and now he is, in a sense, over them as their fulfillment. Therefore, this brings us to the next two verses. “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

These commands are Jesus’ commands, the commands Jesus is about to enunciate. Because these things have pointed to him, therefore, whoever breaks these commands about to be enunciated will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Some here argue that these commands refer not to Jesus’ commands but to the commands of the Law. I would argue against that. First of all, because the Pharisees in verse 20 keep many of the commandments in Matthew’s gospel.

For example, in Matthew 23:23 they’re keeping even the smallest tithing regulations, and yet here in verse 20 they are excluded from the kingdom, whereas in verse 19 someone breaks these laws and is not excluded from the kingdom but is simply a little lower in the kingdom. He is ranked lower. In other words, the very context of verse 19 is about being in Jesus’ kingdom, being part of this new band of disciples under Jesus’ lordship. It is not talking about the Old Testament Law.

Second, Jesus elsewhere in this gospel speaks of his commandments. Someone earlier cited the Great Commission in Matthew 28. There Jesus says the church is to teach all the disciples “whatever I have commanded you.” So also it is here his commands that are in view. So then, verse 19 does not tell us how to enter the kingdom. That was told us in verse 3. Poverty of spirit, the deepest form of repentance. Verse 19, rather, tells us how those in the kingdom are ranked, and this has to do in large measure with obedience to Jesus’ commandments.

Verse 20 then speaks of the need for a surpassing righteousness to enter the kingdom. Here it is no longer a question of simply obeying rules, the rules of the Pharisees and scribes. Rather, what is in view is all the righteousness described in the ensuing verses. In other words, the Old Testament pointed to Jesus, and now Jesus, the King himself, introduces the kingdom of God, and those who follow him stand under his authority, moving away in history the other way.

This theme comes out again and again and again in these next verses. In a sense, therefore, we have come by another route to the inner purity described in the Beatitudes. This is really what is described at length in the rest of the chapter in five large blocks of material, five large heads. Let me again negate the idea that Christianity pictures Christian righteousness in terms of a sort of sentimental glowy do-good-ism.

Some people picture Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount as a sort of soporific, sentimental, romantic view of righteousness as opposed to the rigors of the Law, but the more you meditate on these verses, the more you see how rigorous are the demands of Jesus. They are far more rigorous than anything the Pharisees ever set up.

The righteousness that is demanded of the children of God is not simply conforming to prescribed and accepted rules. It demands that commitment of heart and life, love and affection, adoration and devotion, loyalty, already introduced in the Beatitudes and now nailed down, as it were, in these five separate areas. These five subjects each begin with this paired statement: “You have heard that it was said … but I say unto you.” You have heard that it was said is a regular statement among the Jews to the effect that, “You have understood that the Old Testament teaching is …”

In other words, what the people have heard that the Law meant is what is in view. Sometimes what they had heard that the Law meant is what the Law meant, and sometimes it’s only what they heard that it meant. That’s very important in all the rest of this chapter, because Christ is not citing from the Old Testament in all of these cases. He is citing from what they thought of the Old Testament. You will see how this works out in the verses to follow.

Therefore, when he is negating, he is generally negating their opinion of what the Old Testament said, as we shall see. His comeback, “But I say unto you,” reveals his matchless authority, but more, he is authoritatively pointing to the real direction toward which the Old Testament points. Now let us see how this works out.

1. Vilifying anger (verses 21–26)

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ ” The word here is literally murder or assassinate. It does not simply mean kill in general but murder. The reference is to Exodus 20:13, the sixth of the Ten Commandments. The person who murders will be subject to judgment, a legal proceeding in condemnation. That’s what they have understood.

Verse 22: “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ [an Aramaic word meaning something like blockhead or imbecile] is answerable to the Sanhedrin [the supreme Jewish ruling council]. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

In many English translations, you will find the words without cause added to verse 22. “Anyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be subject to the judgment.” Those words were added later to the biblical manuscripts because the statement is so strong it wasn’t a very comfortable thing to live with. Some bright scribe figured Jesus couldn’t have been quite that strict and stuck in the two words without cause.

The reference to the brother as opposed to anyone may suggest he is specifically dealing with relationships in the Christian community. This person will be subject to judgment. So also the one who says, “You blockhead,” in some sort of condescending way, and even more so the person who turns and says, “You fool.”

Some have tried to see here that Jesus is outlining gradations of punishment, but I think that rather misses the point of what he is saying. What he’s after, rather, is this. Behind the murder proscribed in verse 21 is personal anger, deep, burning anger, and this is at the root of the commandment that is given … not simply the act of murder but the anger which leads to it. This leads all the way to punishment of hell.

The fire of hell here, the expression in the original, is gehenna, which comes from two Hebrew words meaning valley of Hinnom. Hinnom is a ravine to the south of Jerusalem where the refuse of the city was burned, and fires burned there continually. Therefore, it became a symbol for the place of punishment after death, hellfire. Now he says it’s not just murder, as if that’s the whole point of the proscription of the sixth commandment, but animosity, hatred, that leads to it.

Now then, what are we to make of Jesus saying elsewhere to his opponents, “O fools and slow of heart to believe,” or turning on the Pharisees and saying, “You generation of snakes”? What shall we think of his anger in the temple when he knocks together some ropes and lashes out the animals and upturns the tables of the moneychangers? Is he not contradicting his own teaching?

In each of these blocks of material, it will become obvious that Jesus is after certain specific things, not least here. There is a place for burning with anger at sin and injustice, but our problem is that we get angry not at sin and injustice but at offense to ourselves. It’s that sort of offense that arouses the animosity and hatred, which leads to murder. Jesus is the supreme example when it comes to enduring personal offense.

He, when he was reviled, reviled not again. When they scoffed him and blinded him and smote him and mocked him and planted a crown of thorns in his head, he could go to the cross and say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” All his anger was vented at the injustice and sin of the men, not at any personal offense. Whereas we are very quick to be angry when we are offended and affronted but very slow to be angry when there is sin and injustice.

That the text is dealing with anger in this personal area of relationship is clear from the two examples Jesus then gives. First in verses 23–24: “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” Notice that the brother has something against you. You have offended him.

If you have offended him, Jesus here says, and then you’re coming to perform your religious duty and you remember that you’ve offended him, you remember that he has something against you, it’s far more important that you be reconciled with your brother than that you perform your religious duty. It’s far more important that you be cleared of the offense of all men than that you appear tomorrow morning at church at 11:00 and sing hymns.

In fact, this means that if you have the cheek, the gall, to go and stand before God and offer hymns of praise to him when deep down you are a person who has caused resentment and hatred and animosity among others by your actions, you should forget the worship service and go and make amends first with the brother whom you’ve offended. It’s that strong.

Later, in Matthew 18:15, Jesus also says the same sort of thing to the person who is offended. Supposing you are not the person who has caused the offense but the person who has been offended. Then what are you to do? There Jesus says similarly that you are to seek out the brother who has offended you and try to get things sorted out.

In other words, in no case is animosity to be built up. It’s to be answered. If you’re the brother who has caused offense, you are responsible for setting it right. If you are the brother who has been offended, you are responsible for setting it right. These things take priority over religious duty. Then there is the second example.

“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”

The word for penny here is for a very small coin, one of which made up two mites, like the widow’s mite in Mark 12. Very, very small coins. “You won’t get out until you’ve paid the last little bit.” Again, I’m not sure the brief parable here is to be made to walk on all fours and to picture a court scene with being thrown into prison and there having to pay from it in the confines of prison.

The thing that is at stake is the matter of reconciliation with your brother is urgent. Don’t put it off. You may suffer a great deal for it. Indeed, within the context of judgment in the earlier verses, it is quite possible that there is an allusion here to God as Judge. One day we will stand before him, not only I but the brother whom I have offended, and before that court, justice will be meted out. Penalties will be paid to the uttermost.

The point of Jesus’ saying here is that we are not to turn to the Ten Commandments and come to the sixth one and say, “Ah, it says you shall not murder. That doesn’t apply to me.” The point, rather, is it does apply to you. The whole movement of the Law, the thing toward which the Law is pointing, is not simply the act of killing, of assassinating, of murder, but rather of hatred, of personal animosity.

Have there not been times in each of our lives when we’ve been so full of steaming hatred that whether we’ve expressed it or not we have thought, “I wish you were dead”? Jesus is pointing out that the Law does convict all men, and it is not meant to be fenced off to refer only to the extreme sin of murder, or extreme as men would call extreme.

2. Adultery (verses 27-32)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ ” Here there is a reference to the seventh commandment in Exodus 20. It’s strange how far we’ve moved from then. Even the command itself sounds rather harsh in twentieth-century ears. In a few words more, Jesus is going to show how sweeping it is, but in our generation we say there is no such thing as adultery provided there is love.

After all, isn’t it far, far better that I live with someone I love, even if I have to divorce the first two or three? I mean, after all, isn’t that what the gospel is about? It’s about love, isn’t it? We’ll see in a moment that this is based in an entirely false view of marriage. Jesus begins with the Old Testament Law, and now he’s going to show how deep it really penetrates. He deepens it in terms of the tenth commandment, which is the prohibition of covetousness.

“I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” This is not a reference to the normal attraction of men for women, but as one person has put it, “You can let birds fly overhead, but you can prevent them from making nests in your hair.” In other words, this is not the normal attraction that exists between men and women but that deep-seated lust that consumes and devours.

When I was 10 or 12, there was a song on the hit parade in North America, which by modern standards is very tame, but I can remember how shocked my father, who is a very godly man, was when he heard it. “Standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by.” It’s not very funny. Pathetic. Jesus says, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” All those who have never committed adultery, please stand up. Do you see the point?

To interpret this law on the side of stringency is not to annul the law but to change it in accordance with its own intention. One of the first house parties I ever spoke at in Canada about eight years ago, I took one of the young chaps out canoeing. We went up the Muskoka River. All of a sudden, just out of the blue, he said, “Do you know what I want more than anything in the world? I want to be pure.” I wondered who was ministering to whom.

One thing I of the Lord desire

For all my way has darksome been

Be it by earthquake, wind, or fire

Lord, make me clean. Lord, make me clean.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”

What does Jesus mean here? Does he mean you to take that literally? Some have thought so. It is said of Origen, the early Christian saint, that he castrated himself so he would not be tempted. Is that what Jesus means? Of course not. The point is even if I gouged out my right eye, my left eye would see all that my right eye ever saw.

The point is penetrating just the same. The crux is this: we are to deal drastically with our sin. We are to refuse to pander it. We are to recall to mind Paul’s words: “I mortify my body. I put it to death.” We’re not to flirt with it and nibble a little bit at the edges. We’re to do everything we can to squash it, to hate it, to remove it, to dig it out.

Look at the consequences. Twice Jesus mentions it will lead to hell. Do you know Jesus speaks twice as often about hell as he does about heaven? In other words, the biblical view of sin is so much more stringent than ours. We tend to view it as mild social deformity, an aberration of the regular pattern, an exception to my normal conduct. Illness perhaps, but not sin. Jesus’ view is that it is sin which leads to hell.

So the double joke that we like with double entendre that we can snicker at and feel sort of sophisticated about is no longer sin anymore. It’s just good fun. You don’t want to be fuddy-duddy-ish do you? Puritanical. What a difference from Jesus’ perspective. We are to pray rather …

A heart in every thought renewed

And filled with love divine

Perfect and right and pure and good

A copy, Lord, of thine.

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to commit adultery, and anyone who marries a woman so divorced commits adultery.” The discussion of adultery leads naturally to the question of divorce.

This is a very big question in the pages of the New Testament, and all of the New Testament’s teachings on it are not found in only one place. It is no easy job to put together the whole. Yet this is a problem that Christians are going to have to sort out more and more in the years to come. It used to be that among evangelicals you wouldn’t find the problem of divorce or you’d find it very exceptionally. You find it regularly now.

I cannot speak for England, but in California now it’s better than one in two marriages end up in the divorce courts. In Canada, from which I spring, it’s between one in four and one in three, depending on the province, and it’s beginning to affect the church. I’m a very young man with very limited pastoral experience, but the heartbreaking cases I could tell you about that I’ve had to deal with would fill a whole evening’s discussion.

What has gone wrong? Part of the problem is that we haven’t seen the biblical view of marriage in the first place. We think deep down that our marriage will hold together as long as we love one another. The biblical view is really quite the opposite. We are to love one another, rather, because we are married. We’ve made the commitment. We’ve gotten up there and said before God and man that we will love each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness as in health till death us do part … except, of course, unless I don’t feel like it anymore.

In other words, it’s something that is a binding commitment before the Lord, and instead of viewing it as something that will go up and down according to my emotions I am to view it as something that is to be worked out. I will love because I am bound in it. I have placed myself in this agreement, in this vow, and now I will work it out.

When Jesus says, “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce,’ ” he is not citing Deuteronomy 24. He is instead citing what the rabbis thought of Deuteronomy 24. In fact, many modern translations (and old translations, including the King James) make the same mistake as the rabbis, but the Hebrew grammar itself is really quite explicit.

It does not say, “If anyone divorces his wife, he must give her a certificate of divorce.” What it says is, “If anyone divorces his wife, and then she goes and marries someone else after the first one has given her a bill of divorcement, and then she breaks up with the second one, she is not permitted to remarry the first one.” That’s what Deuteronomy 24 says.

In other words, there is not here a compulsion to give a bill of divorce but a permission, a sanction, under certain circumstances, and the thing which is permitted is an obscure Hebrew expression that says “in the unclean thing,” and nobody knows what it means. It’s a lost expression. It’s found only there and one other place in the Hebrew Bible where it means defecation.

That is why Jesus in Matthew 19, when the same sort of question arises, says explicitly, “Moses did not command you to put away your wife. Rather, because of the hardness of your heart he permitted it, but from the beginning it was not so. In the beginning, God made one man and one woman, and they were joined together and bound together, and no divorce was allowed for. Even the allowance of divorce in Deuteronomy 24 is because of the hardness of your heart.”

Jesus says, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to commit adultery (because she is likely to go and marry someone else), and anyone who marries a woman so divorced commits adultery.” This has a very high view of sin in the area of sex and man/woman relationships, and it must not be played down or put aside or minimized. This is something the church is going to have to confront and give a clear sound on at the end of the twentieth century.

3. Swearing oaths (verses 33–37)

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ ” The Mosaic law forbade only false or irreverent oaths, which were regarded as profaning God’s name, but the Jews built up a whole system around these prescriptions. There is one whole tractate on oaths in a Jewish code of law called the Mishnah … when they’re binding, when they’re not.

For example, one rabbi says that if you swear by Jerusalem you’re not bound by your vow, but if you swear toward Jerusalem, then you’re bound by your vow. In other words, the prescriptions on oaths become a whole legal system of dos and don’ts, when you can get away with telling the truth and when you can get away with not telling the truth. At that point, oaths are destroying the necessity for truthfulness at all times, so Jesus does away with them, and he cuts behind them.

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ ” Here he does not cite any particular Old Testament passage. He alludes to the many passages that prescribe oaths, but now he is alluding directly to their practice of not breaking certain oaths and keeping the oaths made to the Lord.

“But I tell you, do not swear at all.” Here Jesus cuts behind all the rigmarole of rabbinic legalism and instead insists that truthfulness is required of the Christian constantly. He seeks to establish the principle of truthfulness, because he is more interested in that righteousness which does not require any oaths to attest its sincerity.

Then he gives some examples. “I tell you, do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is God’s footstool …” The two references together bring back suggestions of Isaiah 66, where God says, “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool.” “… or toward Jerusalem …” In the Greek it’s literally toward not by.

“… or toward Jerusalem …” Digging the knife in a little. “… for it is the city of the Great King.” Maybe you’re just swearing, taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Nor by your head …” They would swear by their head. We would swear by our heart, when we say, “Cross my heart and hope to die,” or whatever it is you say in this country. They would swear by their head. “No,” says Jesus, “you cannot make one hair white or black.”

Do you see how he relates all of these things … heaven, heart, head, Jerusalem … to God and says, “When you start swearing like that, you are swearing in the presence of God. So don’t swear at all. Just tell the truth. Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ ” The earliest book of the New Testament is most probably the epistle of James. James himself records this saying of the Savior. “Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

Here the supreme question is truthfulness. It’s not simply a question of whether you can say oaths or not. For example, supposing you are called up in a court of law, and the justice of the peace or whoever does it in this country gives you the Bible and says, “Put your hand on the Bible, raise your right hand, and swear, ‘I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God.’ ” Do you as a Christian do that or do you not?

Some take this text legalistically.… Jesus said, “Swear not at all,” so I don’t swear at all … when it was given precisely to cut away legalism about oaths. The whole point is to tell the truth, to tell it all the time, to tell it without exception. This brings home to me the importance of truth in our day-to-day conversation. There are always cartoons, whether in Harper’s Magazine or Punch magazine, about the fisherman describing the size of his fish. “About this big.”

I suspect we all do it one way or the other. Just watch a group of people telling stories. I don’t care if they’re Christians or not. Just watch them telling stories. There is a tendency, just a small edge, to tell the story in such a way that my esteemed role comes out looking just a wee bit rosier than it would if the bare facts were described without any embellishment at all. Lying, lying.

“I’ll see you at 8:00.” A few minutes before 8:00: “Well, he won’t mind if I’m a little late.” If it’s a question of not being able to make it because of some unforeseen circumstance it’s different, but if you said you’ll be there at 8:00, then you ought to be there at 8:00. You’ve said it. That’s your word. Didn’t you mean it? Lying, lying.

4. Retaliation against personal abuse (verses 38-41)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ ” This famous law is found in Exodus 21, Deuteronomy 19, and Leviticus 24, but in the Old Testament, this “eye for an eye,” this “tooth for a tooth,” was restrictive not prescriptive. It indicated the limits to which punishment should go. It did not necessitate that this punishment be enforced.

The reason is quite simple. It was a very good way of eliminating the possibility of blood feuds. Somebody cuts off my brother’s right hand. I go and knock off his head. Then there’s warfare. But if the limit of the punishment is that the chap who knocked off my brother’s right hand gets his right hand knocked off, that’s it. That’s the end of the matter. “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” It’s restrictive. That’s it. Not prescriptive.

The difficulty is that as legalism developed, it became prescriptive and often exercised in the nastiest way. Jesus says, “I tell you, do not resist an evil person.” What does this mean? Again, there are some who have taken it to illogical extremes. Tolstoy, for example, is the most famous. He says that because we are not to resist an evil person, therefore we should not have soldiers, policemen, or even magistrates, because they all resist evil people.

Regularly, I walked home late at night from the seminary where I was training in Toronto to my digs half a mile away. The seminary where I trained was in the slums, in the ghetto area of metropolitan Toronto. Twice in my three years there, when I walked home late at night, usually after midnight, I came across something unpleasant. In one case, a girl was being attacked. In another case, a drunk with a knife was going after a couple.

In both cases, I could intervene and do something. The point is should I not have resisted an evil person? Is that what Jesus is after? Some take this prescription a little less severely and say, “Well, in that case, okay, but pacifism is what is taught in Scripture at the international level.” Is that what Jesus is dealing with?

This is a very difficult question, but it cannot be determined purely on the basis of Matthew 5. You are also going to have to wrestle with the fact that Paul says in Romans 13 that God gave the power of the sword to the state and that nowhere in the New Testament does either John the Baptist or Jesus or any of the apostles ever tell all of the soldiers to quit. He tells them to repent and to be content with their wages.

So there are difficulties with understanding this in a sweeping sense, yet at the same time it is not to be minimized. What is he after? Again, the failure to consider the context may become a pretext for perverting this text into a proof text. This is a regular stunt in biblical exegesis. You take something and ignore everything that is said around it and make your whole case out of that, and it’s called a PhD dissertation.

Again, this has to do with personal insult and personal imposition, as the four examples Jesus then enumerates give. First of all, the second half of verse 39. “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The word that is used is for a backhanded slap that is a gross insult. What you do in that case is you don’t get insulted. You don’t mind taking another one.

There’s a famous story of Billy Gray, the pugilist who was converted and who gave more than a few people a lot of trouble before he was converted. Apparently, one of the little chaps he had been a little hard on quite regularly came up to him after he had heard Billy Gray was converted. He came up to him and socked him one. Just as he was getting all ready to run, Billy Gray said, “I forgive you, because Jesus forgave me.”

The fellow dropped his bottom jaw, and after he had picked it up, he went home, and for a whole week he was in mental and spiritual turmoil, trying to sort himself out, until he came back to Billy Gray and asked to be introduced to Billy Gray’s Savior. The supreme example is the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and he has been followed by the saints in every age, starting from Stephen. “Father, lay not this sin to their charge.”

Verse 40: “And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” The tunic that is mentioned here is a long close-fitting undergarment worn in the East. In the Old Testament, it is considered so inalienable a possession that if someone were to give it to you as security on loan, you would have to give it back to him before nightfall so he wouldn’t be without it, yet here, if someone sues you for it, not only give him that but give him your overcoat too. Here again it seems to be a question of a personal affront, a personal getting at you.

Verse 41: “If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” The reference is probably to the Roman practice of commandeering civilians. By law, they could commandeer any civilian to help them out. It was not uncommon for them to demand that a civilian carry their luggage, apparently for a prescribed distance, possibly a mile. If you have been thus commandeered, don’t feel as if you’re hard done by and personally insulted. Offer to carry it for two.

The last example: “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” Retaliation against personal abuse. It is utterly excluded. All of the New Testament makes it clear that the Christian has given over his rights to the Lord Jesus, and he is the one who will determine that justice will be meted in due course. Meanwhile, I am not to retaliate but to love, to forgive, and to walk the way Jesus walked.

5. Love for enemies (verses 42-49)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ” The command to love your neighbor is found in Leviticus 19. There is no command anywhere in the Bible, Old Testament or New, to hate your enemy, but because the Scripture says, “Love your neighbor,” some Jews in figuring things out said, “Since it says neighbor, it probably means that therefore you can hate your enemy.”

This became a prescription that was actually taught in some Jewish circles. Not all but in some. Undoubtedly you’ve heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the scrolls that were found along the coast of the Dead Sea from 1947 on. In the community that held those scrolls, this is a repeated injunction. “Love the brothers. Hate the outsider.” Jesus says, “But I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

This expression sons is like the expression sons in verse 9. This person takes on the character of God. God loves those who hate him; therefore, ought we not so to do also? After all, God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Some try to soften this. It’s done in one of two ways.

I was talking it over with a faculty member in this university, and he told me it has to be softened because, in the first place, it can’t be done, and I thought that told more about him than it did about the text. Some try to soften it in another way. They say that in the Old Testament, as in the New, loving has to do with actions. You don’t really have to love them in any sort of emotional way; you just have to do good to them, they say. It has to do with actions. It has to do with conduct, not with emotion.

Then I have a hard job understanding 1 Corinthians 13, which says, “Even though I give my body to be burned and give all my goods to feed the poor [conduct] but have not love, it profits me nothing.” “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?” In Britain, tax collectors are getting a bad name, but it’s nothing like the bad name they had in the Roman Empire.

In the Roman Empire, there was a tax farming system. So much was required from one particular area, so the government would appoint a certain man to collect it, and he would appoint men under him, who would appoint men under him, who would appoint men under him. Then at the bottom, the chap had to get his quota, and whatever else he got was his. The potentials for bribery and corruption all the way up the farming ladder were enormous, and they were all exploited.

So tax collectors were loathed. Then they were doubly loathed in the nation of Israel because of the fact that they went into contact with Gentiles. Somebody finally had to give the money over to the Roman government. So they were traitors as well. Now even these low despicable people have their friends. Other tax gatherers for a start. So what good are you if the only people you can get along with, the only people you love, are your friends? Everybody has friends. That’s what Jesus says.

“And if you greet only your brothers …” Not just with a greeting, although a greeting itself says a lot, but in the East a greeting has an idea of well-wishing, of good welfare to you. “If you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than the others? Do not even pagans do that?” In other words, this matter of love is so all-embracing Christians will stand out and be different.

Tertullian, at the end of the second century, could say that flocks of people were crowding into the church because they said, “Behold, how they love one another.” By the fourth century, Chrysostome said the one thing that was preventing the conversion of the rest of the world was that Christians didn’t love each other enough.

Here the demand to love distinctively is undiluted by anything. So we come to the climax. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In the immediate context, it asks the searching question, “Is there anything different about me, or am I just like all the other neighborhood pagans?”

This is a challenge to make us go on with wholehearted devotion to the task of imitating God. The title for this week was The Kingdom of Heaven: Jesus, the Christian, and the Law of God. The law of God pointed forward to Jesus. Jesus came, and with him the kingdom is introduced, and then he prescribes, and Christians are under that binding commandment. These are the standards, the norms, of the kingdom.

This matchless emphasis on transparent purity and unaffected holiness entirely precludes all religious hypocrisy or all spiritual sham, all paraded righteousness, all ostentatiously performed duties. We are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, but that leads us into the subject of Matthew 6.