Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  LIVE the Story

  Bible Reading

  We do not read the Bible aright until we learn to read it as the Story of Israel that comes to completion—fulfillment—in the Story of Jesus Christ. This is the essence of what Paul means by “gospel” in 1 Corinthians 15:1–28, and it is the way the early apostles evangelized when they were telling the gospel: one simply needs to read the sermons in Acts 2; 3;10–11; 13; 14; and 17 to see this.14 This leads me to say that Matthew 5:17–20 is one of the most pristine expressions of the gospel in the New Testament. Why? Because this passage says overtly and boldly that the Story of Israel is fulfilled in Jesus himself. His life, his teachings, his actions—everything about him completes what was anticipated in the Old Testament. That’s the gospel!

  From the moment these words were uttered nothing was the same. From that moment Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy … all the way to Malachi (though in Jesus’ day the Old Testament ended with 2 Chronicles) were read as texts that in a large canvas and in small brushstrokes pointed toward Jesus. From this point on purely historical readings (what it meant then) will be unsatisfactory; the Story must be read toward Christ the way someone has learned to read a good novel, say Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, or a good short story, say Parker’s Back by Flannery O’Connor. We read them and then reread them, and the more we know them, the more we read from the ending and not from the beginning. We read the Bible the way we “interpret” a great season for our favorite sports team; we learn to see the first competition as setting the stage for the victory at the end of the season.

  Thus, Genesis 1 is not simply about God in heaven, who is called YHWH or Elohim, but about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; it is about Jesus Christ as God; it is about the Holy Spirit. In other words, we are to read Genesis 1 in a Trinitarian manner now that we know where the “God” of Genesis 1 was headed. And the “image” of God that we find in Adam and Eve is not just about their ability know and to relate to God, nor is it just about the ancient Near Eastern sense of representing the king. Rather, the “image” of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 is a reflection of Jesus Christ, who is the true and perfect “image” of God (cf. 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; 4:4; Col 1:15; 3:10). In technical terms this is not eisegesis, or the reading into the texts, but it is a reading of the text in light of the whole Story.

  I urge you to be a Bible reader—from Genesis to Revelation. The number of Christians who read the Bible today is not high; in a day when the Bible is more available than ever in history, the Bible is being less read by those who have the Bible in hard and electronic copy. I urge you also to be one who sees the whole Bible through the Story of Jesus, and I urge you to commit to doing what Jesus teaches. A student of mine told me he took an introduction to the Bible class with a “bundle of pastors.” The first day the professor asked the class for a show of hands: “How many of you have read the Old Testament?” My student told me no more than five raised their hands—in a class of more than twenty (pastors). Time to commit yourself to reading the whole Bible—front to back.

  Ethics

  This passage also instructs us how to live the Story. Jesus is not offering a lecture in hermeneutics here, though there’s plenty of hermeneutics here. Rather, he’s explaining how the Bible really works—it comes to completion in him (5:17–20)—in order to tell his followers how to live (5:21–48). Perhaps the words of an early anonymous Jesus-following commentator on the Sermon say it best:

  Christ’s commandment contains the law, but the law does not contain Christ’s commandment. Therefore whoever fulfills the commandments of Christ implicitly fulfills the commandments of the law.15

  Take kosher laws. We learn that water-dwelling animals that crawl, like the lobster, are unclean because they don’t have fins or scales. Israel followed this commandment (Lev 11:9–12; Deut 14:9–10). A simple “follow the Torah” approach will mean one can’t eat such things, but I do and you probably do as well. Are we right? How do we follow what Jesus says here about the fulfilled Torah? I begin with this: kosher, or purity, is now established on a new basis. Jesus is the one who makes clean, and these laws anticipate the purity that is to be found in Jesus.

  Furthermore, as these texts are clearly about order and taxonomy and putting things in their proper place, we observe that Jesus has established an entirely new order: he is Lord, his people are his body. Jesus makes clean—and that means those laws are now secondary to him. This is precisely the point made in 15:1–20. It is not what enters the mouth—food—but what comes out of the mouth that makes clean. And what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and it is the heart that matters most of all. Jesus wants followers who are purified from the heart out. So, kosher food laws can be observed from a clean heart, but if the heart is clean—by contact with Jesus—then whatever one eats cannot make unclean.

  Now I can hear a friend of mine pushing back that kosher food laws do require observance by messianic Jews but not by Gentile Christians, and I can agree to that view. But even if one takes that view, one still defines kosher in a new way: Jesus the Messiah makes people clean, and food is but a sign of their messianic purity. This view neither relaxes nor abolishes the Torah but sets it firmly within the hermeneutic of Jesus: kosher is defined by completion in Jesus Christ, and kosher means living a life of loving God and loving others with everything we’ve got, including food.

  I have Jewish friends and I have messianic Jewish friends. I’ve shared a table with both. Once I was eating breakfast with a well-known Jewish scholar at a buffet. After observing what I was eating, the Jewish scholar asked, “Is there pork in those eggs?” I said, “Yes.” I asked him, not knowing his kosher food habits (but I was about to learn), “Do you want me to get you some?” His response: “No. My God cares about what I eat.” Matter of fact, no hint of humor. He observed the kosher food laws. Another time I was sharing breakfast with a messianic Jew when the waitress came by and took our order. I asked for a breakfast with some bacon and my messianic friend said, “You’re kidding me!” Having recently eaten with my previously mentioned Jewish friend, I said, “My God doesn’t care what I eat.” He laughed and said back, “My God does. But that’s fine.”

  With my messianic friend I had a wonderful conversation about the gospel—not that I didn’t have a wonderful conversation with my rabbi friend. We talked about Christ and about preaching, studying, writing, and attending academic meetings, and about our families and our God. While we differed on the implications of kosher food laws for today, our fellowship was rooted in Christ, not on our kosher food habits. Never did he question if I should be at the table, nor did I question him. He reads the Bible messianically, and so do I. He may have wondered if I should respect his kosher condition by not eating pork, and I may have wondered if the Torah was to be lived differently for messianists than for Gentile Christians. But those were not obstacles to Christ or in our fellowship in Christ.

  Extensions

  The uncompromising rigor of Jesus in these verses points an accusing finger at a powerful tendency at work in American culture where an increasing number of Christians are posing two kinds of moral standards: one drawn from the Bible/Jesus and one drawn from the Constitution or culture. That is, some say, “I’m personally against abortion but the law now permits it.” Or, “I’m personally against homosexuality, but civil unions are now law so I support them.” This posture of two moral stances is a fundamental moral failure. Yes, as citizens there is the legal or constitutional question, so we are to ask if the law supports or does not support civil unions or the marriages of gays and lesbians, and yes, we are to examine if the law supports or does not support abortion. But what is legal is not the same as what is moral or what is right: the Christian’s morals are not determined by whether something is legal or constitutional, but by what the Story of God in the Bible reveals. A Christian citizen may think civil unions are legally permissible on the basis of legal precedent or legal gaps, but constitutional legality d
oes not determine what is right or wrong, regardless of how much citizens are to respect or live within that law.

  The teachings of Jesus are to shape my life, and that means my whole life. I return once again to the Jesus Creed: we are to love God and to love others with “heart, soul, mind, and strength” (cf. Deut 6:5; Mark 12:30)—and surely that last term is an embracive term describing all of our resources and externalities. That is, “and strength” would include our political behaviors and actions. If we think the teachings of the gospel are against abortion, we are bound by conscience to support bans on abortion because of what the gospel requires, even if the law permits such. The same applies to so many things, not excluding civil unions, Christian participation in business, the relations of Christians to wartime activities, and divorce, which is one of the topics toward which Jesus turned his gaze in the next passage.

  What this passage teaches is that followers of Jesus are called both to teach and to do what Jesus teaches, and through following Jesus they are to do what the Torah and the Prophets reveal. These are the north star for the follower of Jesus, not the US Constitution or the law of the land.

  Notes

  1. A good introduction to this issue is Edward Klink III and Darian R. Lockett, Understanding Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012).

  2. For Jewish texts, see Garland, Reading Matthew, 61. The least-exploited source for evaluating how the early Christians understood Scripture is Jewish evidence. For a place to begin, EDEJ, 1041–42 (Pentateuch) and 1316–17 (Torah); another sketch in “Scripture in Classical Judaism,” in EJ, 3:1302–9. One book of colossal importance here is C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures: The Sub-Structure of New Testament Theology (Welwyn, Hertfordshire: James Nisbet, 1961).

  3. Lapide, Sermon on the Mount, 14.

  4. S. McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 22–79.

  5. For similar language, cf. 9:13; 10:34.

  6. Lapide, Sermon on the Mount, 15.

  7. Allison, Sermon on the Mount, 59; Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 106; France, Matthew, 182–83; Turner, Matthew, 157–58.

  8. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon, 109–90.

  9. A parallel can be found in Luke 16:17. There are two clauses here that are virtually synonymous and not far from our “until hell freezes over”: “until heaven and earth disappear” and “until everything is accomplished.” See Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 106–8.

  10. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 108–9.

  11. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 220, who cites Chromatius and Chrysostom from the early church as well as both Luther and E. Schweizer from modern times. Chrysostom’s words: “But when you hear ‘least in the kingdom of heaven,’ you are to think of nothing but hell and punishment” (italics added; from ACCS: Matthew, 98). Also Kinghorn, Wesley on the Sermon, 134–35.

  12. The Greek reads perisseusē … pleion, not just perisseusē. In other words, “surpass … greatly.” Almost all translations ignore the adverb pleion here. But see Luz, Matthew 1–7, 211, and the discussion in Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 63–65. Righteousness was discussed briefly at 5:6, above.

  13. Stott, Message, 75. Here are his words: “Christian righteousness far surpasses pharisaic righteousness in kind rather than in degree. It is not so much, shall we say, that Christians succeed in keeping some 240 commandments when the best Pharisees may only have scored 230. No. Christian righteousness is greater than pharisaic righteousness because it is deeper, being a righteousness of the heart” (emphasis added). Thus it is a “new heart-righteousness.” See also the four points of Quarles, Sermon on the Mount, 103.

  14. McKnight, King Jesus Gospel.

  15. ACCS: Matthew, 101.

  Chapter 5

  Matthew 5:21–26

  LISTEN to the Story

  21“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’1 is answerable to the court.2 And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.3

  23“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

  25“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: Genesis 4; 9:6; Exodus 20:13; Numbers 35:16–34; Deuteronomy 5:17; 19:1–14; Mark 1:41; Ephesians 4:26, 31.

  Here begins the first of six “antitheses,” a word describing the “you have heard … but I say to you” statements of Jesus.4 The emphasis here is on Jesus’ antithetical relationship to what his Jewish listeners had heard.5 In each antithesis Jesus quotes Scripture, but Jesus’ antithetical relationship is not against the Scripture itself but the interpretation of that Scripture. Jesus actually probes behind the Scripture into the intent of God. Each of these elements is important and so deserves repetition in simple form:6

  Jesus quotes from the Bible.

  Jesus interprets, extends, or counters that quotation.

  But his opposition is against how that Scripture has been interpreted.

  Jesus probes behind the original Scripture into God’s mind.

  Jesus reveals what that intent is and how his followers are to live.

  Thus, it can be said that in these antitheses we are given the original and full intent of God, which both was only partly revealed in Scripture and had been misread by some of Jesus’ contemporaries. We have, then, an Ethic from Above. Jesus reveals a fuller expression of God’s will for God’s people.7 In our specific text the prohibition of murder is the surface expression of a deeper divine intent: God’s people aren’t to be angry at one another. If one masters one’s anger, murder will never occur.

  Anger was not taken as seriously in the Old Testament as Jesus takes it here, nor was murder deepened to anger as Jesus does here. It makes sense, then, to see Jesus “deepening” the Torah here. It ought also to be observed that the Jewish world knew considerable variety on what it meant to follow or practice the Torah, and exceptions were made, adjustments occurred (as when financial payment was rendered instead of physical punishment), and circumventions were permitted; and it is said Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai annulled the bitter waters test of Numbers 5.8 To use the terms of the Jewish world Jesus constructs a “fence around the Torah.”9

  Jesus’ statement in 5:21–26 both interacts with and transcends the laws about murder, trials, and revenge found in Numbers 35:16–34 and Deuteronomy 19:1–14. Striking another human with a fatal blow with an iron object, a stone, a wooden object, or a fist, or intentionally shoving or throwing something at a person so that the person dies makes the one so acting a “murderer.” That person, properly tried, was to be put to death by the “avenger of blood.” If an action that led to death, however, was not intentional, the accused person was not liable for murder and was to be protected from the avenger; this is why there were cities of refuge in the Land. While Jesus will undo retaliation in 5:38–42, in this section he enters into the heart of the “murderer” and condemns the anger and revenge that precipitate murder. Instead of anger, the aim—the transforming initiative—is reconciliation with others.

  EXPLAIN the Story

  There are three parts to this passage: Jesus’ redefinition of murder (5:21–22), an exhortation to reconciliation (5:23–24), and a repetition of the exhortation that results in a warning (5:25–26). The second and third parts vary by offering two different sorts of (exaggerated) examples: interrupting a sacrifice in the temple
and finding agreement with an adversary on the way to the court.

  Redefining Murder

  Jesus quotes Exodus 20:13 or Deuteronomy 5:17: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder.’ ” What follows (“and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment”) summarizes what is found in a variety of texts, including Numbers 35:16–34 and Deuteronomy 17:8–13; 19:1–14. Some see a connection to Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. In Jesus’ context “murder” refers to intentional manslaughter (and not to the sort of death that occurs during warfare), and it was understood almost the same way we would today: it was against God’s Torah and against the image of God (Gen 4; 9:6) to murder someone. The laws around the prohibition to murder were designed not to mitigate murder but to protect the innocent and restrain vengeance.

  Murder is wrong, but that judgment requires some facts and discernment of intention. Sometimes murder is downgraded to “manslaughter,” but Jesus works to reverse the thunder. He probes into what is behind murder, namely, desire, by saying: “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” (5:22). Jesus then turns the more general “angry with” to specifics: calling someone “Raca” (an Aramaic word for “empty head” or “fool”) and/or accusing someone of being a “Fool!” Jesus here specifies the consequences for each offense: “judgment,” “the court” (see also 10:17), and “the fire of hell.” One can see these two sets of categories (crime and consequence) in different ways: thus, perhaps there is an escalation of consequence (from judgment to eternal destruction) in accordance with an escalation of crime,10 but it is more likely that crimes and consequences are synonymous.11 Jesus knows anger leads to murder, so he prohibits anger and spells out consequences for the “crime of anger.” Later Christians made the same connection: “Do not become angry, for anger leads to murder” (Didache 3:2).12