Matthew 5:21-32

Jesus has concluded His introduction to this important message by stating outright that HE has come to fulfill the Law of Moses.  Can you imagine the audacity of such a statement?  C.S. Lewis famously wrote in his book Mere Christianity: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”  And it is certainly true.  The Lord Jesus prefaces His teaching on authentic Godly morality by saying that righteousness can only be found through Him.  It is His righteousness that we must cling to, not our own.

What do I mean?  We spend so much time as Christians and as human beings trying to justify our actions.  “Is this a sin?  Is this not a sin?  How much of this can I get away with before it becomes a sin?”  These are the questions that occupy the minds of too many believers.  We explore the edges of morality so we can try pushing it just a little farther than our parents’ generation did.  And this attitude comes from our desire to justify what we do as “okay,” or even “right.”  If we can justify our choices, our words, and our attitudes, then we don’t need Jesus as much.  It makes us feel better about our spiritual growth.  It makes us feel like upright, morally superior people.  And we are horribly, horribly wrong.

In this section of the Sermon On The Mount, Jesus systematically breaks down our personal morality.  He shows us that we have no hope of justification apart from Him.  The things we do that we feel “aren’t so bad,” are actually terrible.  And the things we do that we know are wrong, are revealed as worse.  Having gotten the attention of His hearers by telling them how blessed they are in their trials, Jesus immediately switches gears to let them know how hopeless they are to earn God’s salvation by their own merits.

Jesus begins by calling His hearers a bunch of murderers (5:21-26).  He tells them that harboring anger at another in your heart is tantamount to murder!  How can He say such a thing?  It’s obvious to us that another person’s thoughts don’t do us any physical harm; and our angry thoughts toward another have never struck that person dead.  And yet, Jesus reminds us that the road that ends in murder begins with harsh feelings.  In order to murder another person, we must first unhinge something in our brains that associates that human body with personhood.  Whether it’s in war, in self-defense, in robbery, or in passion, we no longer see the human being who has life, family, needs, wishes, talents, personality, and a future like we do.  We only see the situation in front of us.  “In order to get my fulfillment, I have to eliminate this obstacle.”  To take his money, to get our revenge, to save our own lives, or to win the battle.  We take what God has created in His own image and judge him bereft of humanity.  At that point, we can mentally and emotionally justify taking his life because to our eye he is no longer a person; just a situation to be resolved.

Anger is often the trigger that puts us on this road.  If we let angry feelings toward another to settle into our lives, we begin to form attitudes about that person.  Even good things they may do are seen as dubious through the red lens of our simmering anger.  Before long, those attitudes become bitterness.  Hatred takes over.  We may never act openly on this hatred – we will probably never even admit its depth to ourselves – but we are on the same road that leads some to murder.  And Jesus says that this makes us murderers, too.  Why would we ever want to play around on the road that leads to such a heinous end?

Jesus tells us that the only remedy to these murderous attitudes is confrontation.  We must go to those with whom we share bitter feelings and address the elephant in the room.  Isn’t it funny how many of us would rather harbor murderous feelings than simply talk about our situations?  Indeed, we are all guilty.

Jesus goes on by calling His hearers a bunch of adulterers (5:27-32).  We tend to think that the sin of adultery is clear cut – either you’ve had a sexual affair with someone outside your marriage, or you haven’t.  But once again, Jesus moves this law from the realm of the physical into the realm of the emotional and spiritual.  He says that if you’ve had lustful thoughts toward another person, then you’ve already committed adultery with them in your heart.  What?!  If this is the case, most of us are guilty before we even knew there was a crime.  In the Law, the penalty for adultery was to be stoned to death.  That certainly seems extreme – even for lewd thoughts or attitudes.  But God feels much more strongly about sin than we do.

And Jesus doesn’t stop there.  He addresses divorce by saying that those who end their marriages or who attach themselves to anyone who has been divorced become a part of an adulterous relationship.  What if this is where you find yourself in life?  What is the answer to this difficult situation?  Are all those who have divorced and remarried now adulterers?  The short answer is YES.  And that makes us very uncomfortable.  I probably get more questions about this teaching of Jesus than about nearly any other.  Jesus already said that lustful thoughts make one an adulterer, but we seem to bypass that one.  Many people aren’t as concerned about that teaching as the one about a marriage they are now bound to by their vow.  Should we end these marriages?  Should we live in celibacy?  What is the answer?

The answer is that we are all more guilty than we realize.  But the blood of Jesus Christ covers every sin.  Have we erred so greatly that Jesus cannot forgive it?  Of course not.  Does this give us license to live any worldly or selfish way we choose?  Also, of course not.  Jesus’s teaching here is to convince us of our need for our Savior’s grace and that we are to live differently than the world; keenly aware of the depth of our sin and the depth of God’s forgiveness.  We are terribly, terribly guilty.  And yet, God’s grace is deeper still.  So whatever vows you are under right now, keep them in faithfulness.  The vows of a former marriage are already shattered.  Confess and repent.  Then thank God for your current spouse and live a life of sacrificial righteousness together for the world to see.  Start where you are and glorify God in every way you can.

We spend so much of our time and attention trying to justify our actions to ourselves and others. But Jesus declares absolutely in this teaching that we are completely depraved and hopeless to be righteous by our own merits. As stated, we were guilty before we even understood what the expectation was. From the church house to the jail house, every single one of us desperately needs a Savior. And our loving God has come to provide.