Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  I make only one more point: it is unnecessary to require Jews to surrender their Jewishness in order to convert to Jesus as the Messiah. The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews, and they did not cease being Jews when they converted but became messianic Jews, or Yeshua-following Jews. There’s so much more to say here, but this should suffice.18

  Danger of Diminishment

  This passage comes with a powerful warning, and that warning concerns diminished witness. Jesus uses a metaphor here: when salt loses its saltiness, it is tossed aside for road grit. With light Jesus speaks less about judgment and more about the incomprehensibility of something being lit and then covered so that the light’s value is undone. But the image of being “thrown out” uses a word that is connected to judgment in Matthew’s gospel:

  “thrown into the fire” (3:10; 6:30; 7:19; cf. 18:8)

  “thrown into prison” (5:25; 18:30)

  “thrown into hell” (5:29; cf. 5:30; 18:9)

  “threw the bad away” (13:48)

  “throw them into the blazing furnace” (13:50)

  Jesus’ language is shaped to warn the followers of Jesus of the consequences of diminishing their impact: saltless salt is thrown away and covered lights are useless.

  With this as our basis, we can consider the implications for us: to live this Story today we must take to heart what Jesus says. If we damage the impact we already have, that impact may never be regained (as is the case with some leaders who have fallen, with parents who have sacrificed their integrity in a family or neighborhood through morally reckless behaviors, etc). What’s worse, Jesus evidently warns of judgment. I am less concerned here with the Calvinist-Arminian debate on whether or not a person can “lose his/her salvation” than I am with the rhetorical power of the image Jesus uses. Consequences follow in the Story of the Bible for those who are unfaithful to God’s covenant blessings, and we can begin with the implicit warning of God walking between the cut up animals in Genesis 15, the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28, the sad collapse of leaders like Saul and Solomon, the diminished leadership of David, and the exile of both the northern and the southern kingdoms into Assyria and Babylon, respectively.

  Instead of dwelling on the debatable, the text ultimately guides us to think about the need to be faithful—and again the Story of the Bible gives us powerful examples of covenant faithfulness, like Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, David, Isaiah, and Esther, and like Mary, Jesus, Paul, Peter, and Junia. No one is perfect, but all are called to remain faithful to Jesus.

  Notes

  1. KNT: “You might as well throw it out and walk all over it.”

  2. KNT: “bucket.”

  3. KNT: “what wonderful things you do.”

  4. I disagree, then, with the classic view of John Stott that this refers to our evangelism and social action, even if I agree with him on the relation of these two and their fundamental importance in Christian witness; see his Message, 57–68. For a diamond-cutting discussion of this theme in Stott’s career, see J. Greenman, “John R.W. Stott,” in The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries (ed. J. P. Greenman et al.; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007), 266–79. Greenman’s conclusion resonates with my own experience of the same time period.

  5. For discussion, see Wright, After You Believe, 73–100.

  6. W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew (ICC; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 1:471.

  7. Note that in the Greek of vv. 13 and 14, “you” is emphatic.

  8. Stott, Message, 60.

  9. Kinghorn, Wesley on the Sermon, 111–13.

  10. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 208; Keener, Matthew, 172–73.

  11. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 111–12.

  12. Isa 2:2–3; Ezek 5:5. That Jerusalem is in mind is a common observation: see, e.g., Garland, Reading Matthew, 59.

  13. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 114.

  14. If one can read German, there is an exceptional sketch of Jewish information in H. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament (Munich: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung/Oskar Beck, 1928), 4.1.559–610.

  15. J. Dickson, The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission: Promoting the Gospel with More than Our Lips (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010).

  16. Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God on the Path to a Spiritual Life (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2002).

  17. You can find this study in ch. 2 of my Finding Faith, Losing Faith (with Hauna Ondrey; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 65–122.

  18. I recommend Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Messianic Judaism (New York: Cassell, 2000), and M. S. Kinzer, Post-Missionary Judaism (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005); D. Rudolph and J. Willitts, eds., Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013).

  Chapter 4

  Matthew 5:17–20

  LISTEN to the Story

  17“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. 18For truly I tell you, 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. 19Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly 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. 20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: Exodus 19–24; Deuteronomy 5–8; Jeremiah 31:31–34; Hebrews

  There are two ways of reading the Bible so that we can live before God properly. One way reads the Bible from front to end as the gospel Story, and the other way reads the Bible from Genesis to Malachi with no preconceived Christian beliefs, no gospel orientation, and in a historical manner.1 The moral life that follows from each reading will vary. The question for the second one is simple: What did this passage mean in its day? The question for the first one is different and looks like this: What does this passage say in light of the Story of the Bible and how do I live faithfully? If Jesus is the goal of that Story from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, then reading the “Old Testament” without reference to Jesus will be a misreading. But this means learning to read the Bible the way Jews, Jesus, and the apostles did.2

  Our passage is the most significant passage in the entire Bible on how to read the Bible, with a nod to Luke 24:13–49; Galatians 3:19–25; Romans 9–11; and the book of Hebrews, because Jesus tells us here how to read the Bible. The entire Old Testament or, in Jesus’ Jewish shorthand summary, the Law and the Prophets, aim at and are completed in/fulfilled in Jesus as Messiah. Yet these words, “completed” and “fulfilled,” do not mean “abolished.” Rabbi Pinchas Lapide makes this potent observation: “In all rabbinic literature I know of no more unequivocal, fiery acknowledgement of Israel’s holy scripture than this opening to the Instruction on the Mount.”3 This Jewish scholar thinks these words “acknowledge”—he means “affirm”—the Bible of Israel. This passage is also the thematic statement for what follows in Matthew 5:21–48; that is, we will be treated to five cases of how to read the Bible: about murder, adultery, oaths, retaliation, and love for enemies. Bible reading is at the heart of Jesus’ mission, and this passage reveals what makes that heart beat.

  So we need to be listening more carefully in our churches to this question: How do church folks read the Bible?4 Some people read the Bible formationally; they read with the heart open to receive from God at a spiritual, intuitive, devotional, and relational level. Others read the Bible informationally; they read it to know what it said—and many such people have acquired the original languages so they can examine tenses, cases, and sentence structure. Others read the Bible canonically; they read it with their ears open to the rest of the Bible. Others read the Bible historically; they only want to know what Jesus’ int
ent was in his world or what Matthew’s intent was in his context. Others read the Bible socio-pragmatically; they read it to foster and further their own political, theological, ideological, or social agenda. Others read the Bible according to what their guru says; they read it—usually in a group, or a church, a sect, or a school of thought—according to how their favorite teacher or prophet or charismatic leader teaches the Bible. Thus, a “Catholic,” a “Calvinist,” an “Arminian,” a “Barthian,” a “Hauerwasian,” an “N.T. Wrightian,” or a “John Piperian” reading of the Bible, so they say, would look like this—you can fill in the blank.

  Is there a right way? Or are there only ways of reading the Bible? Are some ways better than others, or do we simply read the Bible for ourselves? We can learn to transcend our own readings of the Bible by focusing on how Jesus read the Bible. What does he say?

  EXPLAIN the Story

  There are four elements to our passage, and they need to be put in outline form perhaps to see how this passage is put together:

  First, the claim of fulfillment (5:17).

  Second, an elucidation of the claim (5:18).

  Third, the consequences of the elucidated claim (5:19).

  Fourth, an elucidation of the consequences (5:20).

  Here’s a more concrete, straightforward outline:

  First, Jesus fulfills the Torah and Prophets (5:17).

  Second, everything in the Torah is true (5:18).

  Third, everything therefore must be observed (5:19).

  Fourth, your obedience therefore must surpass the experts (5:20).

  Whenever I read or teach this passage, I paraphrase a statement attributed to Mark Twain but which never shows up in his many writings: “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me; it is the parts I do understand.” Whoever said that may well have been thinking about Matthew 5 or even our specific passage.

  The Claim of Fulfillment (5:17)

  From the opening of 5:17, with its sudden and out-of-nowhere “Do not think,” we can infer that some had accused Jesus of breaking the Torah or teaching something that deconstructed the Torah.5 We might pause to speculate what his opponents found so objectionable about him that they could accuse him of abolishing the Torah and the Prophets. In light of what we learn in 5:21–48, where Jesus is seen to be anything but a softy, at the heart of their worry was probably Jesus’ willingness to see the entire Torah (and the Prophets) as expressions of the Jesus Creed of loving God and loving others,6 or the Golden Rule as a variant of the Jesus Creed. The Jesus Creed threatens the legalist and the minimalist, but it expands the Torah to its divine expectations for the one who genuinely loves God and loves others. There’s more. It was not that Jesus had an Ethic from Above, Below, or Beyond, but that he had the audacity to think he was the Messiah and taught a Messianic Ethic, reorienting the whole Torah and Prophets. This is what disturbed some of his contemporaries.

  In the face of some accusations, Jesus asserts in the strongest of terms that his mission (“I have not come”) is not to “abolish” the Torah or the Prophets. Notice that his focus is on both—both Moses and Elijah, as the Transfiguration will also show (17:1–13). Instead of abolishing the law, Jesus says his mission is to “fulfill.” On this word hangs the meaning of this passage, and the word is used emphatically in Matthew to refer to the salvation-historical, theological, and moral Story of Israel coming to completion in Jesus.

  The term fulfill relates to Old Testament patterns and predictions coming to realization. Nothing makes this clearer than reading Matthew 1–2, though one can also observe the same at 3:3; 4:1–16; 5:17–48; 8:16–17; 9:13; 10:34–36; 11:10; and 12:16–21. While some have suggested that Jesus “fulfills” by teaching the true meaning of Torah or by “doing what it says,” the use of this term “fulfill” in Matthew makes the sense of an eschatological completion the most accurate meaning.7 In summary: to “fulfill” or “complete” means history has come to its fulfillment in Jesus himself—that is, in his life, death, resurrection, and exaltation and in his teachings.

  We must consider the mind-numbing claim here by Jesus: he is claiming that he fulfills—in a salvation-historical, theological, and moral manner—what the Torah and the Prophets anticipated and predicted and preliminarily taught. What kind of person makes claims like this? It is one thing to say, as Jesus could have, I can do miracles as mighty as Elijah, or I can predict the future as clearly as did Isaiah, or I can do miracles as astounding as Moses. It’s altogether different to claim that he himself fulfills the Torah and the Prophets. But that’s precisely the claim Jesus makes here. Nothing in history would ever be the same. The Torah had come to its goal. The Torah hereby takes on the face of Jesus. His claim is thoroughly Jewish (Isa 2:1–5; Jer 31:31–34), but of a particular sort: messianic.8 The first lesson we get in reading the Bible is this one: Look to Jesus as its central Story.

  An Elucidation of the Claim (5:18)

  The claim by Jesus that he fulfills the Torah and the Prophets might suggest we can be done with the Torah, but Jesus says precisely the opposite. Surprisingly, neither does this passage teach a simple return to the Torah. Our next verse props up the previous one by clarifying just how serious Jesus is when he says “fulfill” and “not … abolish.” He’s saying that everything in the Torah (or Prophets) is true, and every bit of it will come to pass just as it is written.9

  But what needs to be observed here is that Jesus is not a Pharisee or a Qumran sectarian, nor is he a later rabbi, each of whom was scrupulous in Torah observance. For Jesus the real Torah is permanent as Jesus teaches it, which is the point of 5:21–48 and which illustrates our category of a Messianic Ethic. Still, that Torah and those Prophets are not done away with; they remain in effect (in an even greater way).

  The book of Hebrews, not to mention the tensions we find in Paul over the Torah (Rom 7:1–6; 10:4; Gal 3:19–26; 5:1–6), illustrates the tension over what to do with the Torah. In Acts 10–11, in the encounter of the Torah-observant Peter with the God-fearing Gentile Cornelius, we see what “fulfill” looks like for the apostles: it means some radical revisioning without abolishing. Paul’s words about accommodating himself to Gentile ways in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 also illustrate how the apostles “applied” this claim by Jesus. Second lesson in Bible reading: looking to Jesus means following him and through him the Torah.

  The Consequences of the Elucidated Claim (5:19)

  Jesus’ logic is relentlessly practical. If he is the fulfillment, and if in that fulfillment everything is established as true and realized, then morality changes. The clearest way to put this is to say that Jesus thinks that following him means following the Torah. Those who follow him (and his teaching of the Torah) will be called “great” in the kingdom. Anyone who denies his teachings and teaches others not to follow him (and through him the Torah) will be called “least” in the kingdom.

  What about the “least” and “great”? Will both enter the kingdom eventually? Are we to see “great” and “least” as two levels of kingdom participation? Some see this distinction (see 18:4; 20:16, 21, 23, 26),10 but it is more likely that Jesus is using typical Jewish/Hebraic contrasting results for the ones who will enter the kingdom (the doer) vs. the ones who will not enter the kingdom (the nondoer). In other words, “least” in the kingdom is a kind way of saying “suffering eternal judgment.”11 What leads us to this view is the end of the Sermon (7:21–23), where we see that only those who do the will of God (as Jesus teaches it) will enter the kingdom. In addition, 8:11–12 says the “subjects [sons] of the kingdom will be thrown outside,” so that being in the kingdom and eventually being tossed outside the kingdom are not incompatible ideas for Jesus. Third lesson in Bible reading: following Jesus really means following Jesus, and it matters eternally.

  An Elucidation of the Consequences (5:20)

  If that statement by Jesus is not clear enough, Jesus makes it more concrete by comparing his followers to existing religious groups. If thei
r righteousness—and here he means “behavior that conforms to the will of God as taught by Jesus” or, as Tom Wright captures it, “your covenant behavior” (KNT)—does not greatly surpass12 that of “the Pharisees and the teachers of the law,” they will never ever enter the kingdom. The language is as emphatic as the claim is shocking. If you want to pick an example of the pious, you pick the Pharisees, who famously mastered the Torah and all its interpretations and rulings or, like them, the “teachers of the law.” Jesus takes such examples—somewhat like taking a Mother Theresa or a John Stott or a Dallas Willard or a Francis Chan—and says, “You’ve got to be much, much better!”

  It is far too easy for Protestants to take the sting from Jesus’ words by thinking what Jesus was really saying was not that his followers had to do more, but that they were to trust in the righteousness of Christ while the scribes and Pharisees were trusting in themselves. Or to say the Pharisees were externally righteous only. For this view, “surpasses” is really about kind of righteousness and not degree.13 Yes, there’s a place for such a concern with externals, and one can find it in some Pharisees and find support in Luke 18:9–14 or Romans 10:3, but it is unlikely that we need to think this way here. Others contend that Jesus has in mind not justification but sanctification.

  Yes, righteousness emerges out of communion with Jesus and redemption; it is a kingdom righteousness, a kingdom that comes with new covenant power to heal and transform. Yes, this is righteousness under the cross. But it is a righteousness that is done. The ethic of this verse is more an Ethic from Above, designed rhetorically to strike the followers with a demand. When we recontextualize it into sanctification, which is where it might fit in our theology, we run the risk of destroying its original rhetorical power. Fourth lesson in Bible reading: we are challenged to be better than nonfollowers. Followers are marked by a greater righteousness or by more righteousness. (Just what that more will look like can be found in the antitheses of 5:21–48.)