Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Two Discouragements

  The single biggest discouragement in prayer is unanswered, deeply felt petitions. Sometimes we ask God for something that doesn’t matter that much, but when we ask for what we most want—the conversion of a friend or healing, employment, or justice in the face of massive injustice—and when we go before God time and time again with that single issue, and God seems distant or uninterested or flat-out does not answer our prayer (someone dies prior to conversion, someone dies without healing, or someone’s life goes south because of unemployment), we can become discouraged about prayer.

  I have no answer to the problem of unanswered prayer, and frankly the typical answers don’t do much for me—that God does answer but not the way we expected, that we are to keep on praying, that we are out of God’s will, that our motives are impure, that we are really only learning to adjust our wills to God’s will, that we really don’t want what we are asking, that the answers are given as “yes, no, or wait a little longer.” None of these really get to the heart of the heartfelt yearning for God to act. I don’t appeal here to mystery. Instead, I focus on who God is, and I continue to lay my petitions before that God in faith, trust, and hope. Sometimes hope lags behind our petitions, and sometimes hope sustains us. But I keep on praying because I believe God is good. Sometimes it is discouraging, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit it.

  A second discouragement to petitions is that if God knows, why bother? If we think about this, it makes only partial sense. Some gifts are surprises, but often gifts come as a result of asking. Those who love others often ask one another for things, so God beckons us to ask—sure, God knows, but God also wants us to interact so that out of our love for God we petition God. I don’t want to enter the lofty places of the debate about open theism and how much God knows (some think God knows all things while others think God interacts with humans at such a level that our communications with God actually result in God’s comprehending things not previously knowable), but petitionary prayer can assume that God both knows and wants to know what we want. I believe that the broad sweep of the way in which prayer works in the Bible—and I’m thinking here of Jonah and the repentance of Nineveh—teaches us that God, in his sovereignty, has established a kind of contingency in the universe, and that God genuinely interacts with humans who pray in such a way that the universe changes as a result of our prayers.13

  Two Beliefs

  Theology reshapes prayer. What happens to our prayers if we really do believe that God is good? I am convinced that many of us, while we affirm that God is good and that God listens, do not act as if God cares and listens. In other words, we wouldn’t be caught dead not affirming God’s care for our every moment, but we act as if God is up there not all that bothered with us and our world, let alone something so small as our next putt on the golf course, our next answer on a test, or our next conversation with the one we love. But Jesus wants us to see in this text that our God is the Father who really does care and wants us to ask. We must learn to believe that God is good and answers our prayers. As Ulrich Luz says so memorably, “The certainty that prayer will be heard does not make it superfluous; it makes it possible.”14

  A second belief is that God is good because God is Father. The “ontology” of this text is not that we infer God’s fatherliness from ours but that our fatherliness is rooted in and emerges from God’s. Because God is Father, and because we as fathers respond to our sons with good gifts, we are to see our goodness not as something we produce and hope that God will imitate, but as something that derives from the goodness of God as Father.

  Now, let’s make this equal: we are not talking just about males here. We as mothers and fathers respond to our children (male and female) in good ways. We do this because God has made us like himself. The ontology of God—who God is, God as Father—shapes who we are and how we act. This is at the root of what Jesus teaches us here: because God, the Father, is good, we see something of God in the simplest of kindnesses between parents and their children. Our kindness, then, is a window—let’s call it iconic in the Eastern sense—onto who God is and what God is really like. We are to learn to take this belief and let it flourish: if we are good and if we reflect God, God is even “good-er.”

  Two Questions

  This exploration of prayer in light of who God is and how God treat us leads me to ask two questions as we finish this passage:

  • What kind of parent doesn’t give good gifts, so far as the parent is able, to her or his children? (If this is the way we are, we are to think of God as even better.)

  • How much do we not have because we do not ask and we do not ask because we do not believe God is good—and yet every day we see or experience the goodness of parents blessing their children?

  Let us pray to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father who is good.

  Notes

  1. Seeing persistence here is common; thus, see Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 234; Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 174. Hagner cites Clement as seeing persistence here.

  2. In the notes of 6:7–15 we provide bibliography.

  3. R. J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 179–90.

  4. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 1:72.

  5. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 173; France, Matthew, 278–79.

  6. G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 69–72.

  7. It is unlikely that Jesus is here alluding to other events in his life, though they do make for interesting parallels: cf. 4:3; 14:13–21; 15:32–39.

  8. Jesus’ take on original sin is not explicit here. Luz sees the “evil” as forming a rhetorical foil to God’s goodness, while France warns about pressing this word to find original sin (Luz, Matthew 1–7, 359; France, Matthew, 281 n. 8). Allison (Sermon on the Mount, 157) proceeds to list all the sins that are implicit in the Sermon on the Mount.

  9. For a good discussion, Keener, Matthew, 246–47.

  10. See L. Dorsett, A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer (Chicago: Moody Press, 2008), citing from p. 121.

  11. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 231–32.

  12. John Stott provides three problems with what Jesus says here about prayer: that prayer is unseemly (for a sovereign God), unnecessary, and unproductive. See his pastoral discussions of each: Stott, Message, 186–89.

  13. The best I’ve seen on this topic, though I don’t always agree, is Tiessen, Providence and Prayer.

  14. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 359.

  Chapter 20

  Matthew 7:12

  LISTEN to the Story

  12“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”1

  Listening to the text in the Story: Exodus 19–24 (esp. 20–23); Leviticus 17–26; 19:18; Deuteronomy 6:4–5; 11:13–21; Numbers 15:37–41; Matthew 19:16–30; 22:34–40; Romans 13:8–10; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8; b. Šabbat 31a.2

  Of the many ways to describe or articulate the Torah, two are pertinent in our text: one can either multiply laws so as to cover all possible situations, or one can reduce the law to its essence. Clearly the Bible shows the multiplication orientation in the Covenant Code (Exod 19–24, or 20–23), the Holiness Code (Lev 17–26), and the Deuteronomic Code (Deut 12–26). By the time of Jesus those codes expanded enormously: think Dead Sea Scrolls to the rabbis. Many Christians think multiplication means legalism, the perfect foil being rabbinic rulings,3 while the essence approach is closer to liberalism, this time the foil being the über-tolerant. Some find solace in the Golden Rule, though more careful consideration of the Golden Rule, which is a variant on the Jesus Creed (Matt 22:34–40), reveals that Jesus is not giving either the legalist or the liberal a pat on the back. He wags his finger at both of them.

  In summary, many are uncomfortable with the legal texts of the Bible, but Jesus wasn’t. So Jesus reduced the Torah to two points—loving God, loving others (the Jes
us Creed)—not to abolish the many laws but to comprehend them and to see them in their innermost essence. Jesus himself was law observant, but what distinguished his praxis was that he did so through the law of double love. To do the Torah through love is to do all the Torah says and more.

  Of course, each of the two major alternatives carries its own temptations. The multiplication approach intends to make the law more (not less) doable by making problem situations clear. No one wants to fault this in principle; in fact, it is at the core of modern law throughout the world. It has always tempted some to a sense of superiority because of one’s greater rigor. As well, some have virtually come to the conviction that they are worthy of God because of their moral condition of observance.

  The reduction model has led at times to Antinomian freedom to the degree that one can sin it up in order to find the magnitude of grace in forgiveness. Others found in the reduction model self-justification to do what they wanted instead of what God wants.

  The law is a good revelation from God and is the premier example of an Ethic from Above. Jesus reduced the Torah to its basics in order to make the Torah more understandable and doable. So we are back to the Golden Rule to see that Jesus does not abolish law (5:17–20) but establishes it: loving God and loving others. Or, doing to others what we want done to us.

  EXPLAIN the Story

  This text has no obvious connections to what is before or after. A quick look at Luke’s parallels illustrates Matthew’s collection of sayings:

  7:1–5

  →

  Luke 6:37–38, 41–42

  7:6

  [no parallel]

  7:7–11

  →

  Luke 11:9–13

  7:12

  →

  Luke 6:31

  7:13–14

  →

  Luke 13:23–24

  7:15–23

  →

  Luke 6:43–45, 46; 13:26–27

  7:24–27

  →

  Luke 6:47–49

  Perhaps Luke scattered the sayings. Either way, the Golden Rule was part of the prewritten Sermon on the Mount and was probably in Q. Yet we cannot fail to observe that the Golden Rule of 7:12 officially closes the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon and summarizes the essence of the Sermon. It sounds somewhat like 5:17–20 (where Law and Prophets are mentioned), leading some to think it summarizes all that has been said from 5:17 to 7:11.

  The Golden Rule (7:12a)

  The first word of 7:12 in Greek is panta: “in everything.” The language is emphatic. When “all” is combined with “whatever” (hosa; cf. RSV), one gets perhaps more than a simple “all.”4 And if one ties this to 5:17–20, it is reasonable to translate “in all things” or even “the sum of the matter.” Twice Jesus probes into the essence of the Torah by appealing to self-love: here and in the Jesus Creed (22:34–40). As his followers were to love their neighbors as they loved themselves, so they as disciples were to do to others what they would want others to do to them. This principle is neither selfish nor narcissistic but expansive—we are to extend our self-care to others.

  There is nothing complex about this most simple of moral maxims; its difficulty is in the doing, not in the knowing. There is a simple reciprocity at work: the very thing, whatever it is, that you want others to do to you, that is the very thing, whatever it is, that you should do to others. There is also nothing new in Jesus’ Golden Rule. A similar saying is attributed to the great rabbi roughly contemporary with Jesus, Hillel (teacher of Gamaliel, who was the teacher of the apostle Paul). The story for Hillel’s saying derives from the Babylonian Talmud (some three to four hundred years after Jesus and Hillel), but some trust it as an authentic remembrance of the historical Hillel:

  On another occasion it happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai [Hillel’s more “conservative” rival teacher] and said to him, “Make me a proselyte on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Shammai drove him out with a builder’s cubit which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he made him a proselyte. He said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and learn!”5

  Jesus’ version is positive and Hillel’s negative, and there is a difference when one frames something in either way. But we also need to exercise some caution here. If we press the distinction too much, we begin to dabble in speculative psychologizing if not a sense of superiority that Jesus’ positive version trumps the negative version. But Jesus too can express his teachings in a negative, and Hillel can be positive, and both ways are an effective means of communication. Jesus’ saying and Hillel’s are almost certainly near equivalents.6 A later text tips the balance in favor of not making any difference between the negative and the positive. The early Christian text Didache (1:2) provides Jesus’ Golden Rule in the negative form: “First, love the God who made you, and second, your neighbor as yourself. And whatever you do not want to happen to you, do not do to another.”

  There’s something radically important in the Golden Rule, and perhaps Matthew 5:43–48 is the place to find that radicality: self-love is the fertile ground for growing love for all, including one’s enemies. The Ethic from Beyond finds its paradigmatic form in the Golden Rule.7

  The Significance of the Golden Rule (7:12b)

  The next line is profound: “for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” This has to be tied to two other statements by Jesus, both given in variant form in the Jesus Creed.

  Matthew 22:40: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” [The KNT has a more graphic and literal translation: “The entire law hangs on (or ‘from’) these two commandments—and that goes for the prophets, too.”]

  Mark 12:31: “There is no commandment greater than these.”

  To these I want to add James 2:8: “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right” (italics added). There is a shocking claim made here by King Jesus for kingdom citizens: the entire Torah is summarized by or hangs down in dependence from the Golden Rule. In fact, James sees it as the capital command of the entire Torah. If you get that one right, you are the truly obedient and observant Jew! Three times the apostle Paul supports the Golden Rule, though again in the Jesus Creed (Lev 19:18) form:

  Romans 13:9: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

  Romans 13:10: “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

  Galatians 5:14: “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

  Two more grandiose terms are used this time by Paul in this reduction approach to the Torah: the love command sums up (Paul’s term can be translated “recapitulates”) the Ten Commandments and “whatever other command there may be”! Or, the “entire law” finds its goal and fulfillment in the observance of this one command to love others as oneself. The entire will of God is about learning to love others, or to treat others, the way we treat ourselves! So the NIV’s “sums up” is one way of putting this.

  LIVE the Story

  The Golden Rule sums up the whole ethic of Jesus: our calling as followers of Jesus, from morning to night, is to monitor our behaviors toward others in accordance with our own self-care. Jesus is not hereby encouraging selfishness but instead selflessness. This Messianic Ethic comes to us both as an Ethic from Above and Beyond.

  Listen to Yourself

  It may be against every grain in our bodies, especially if we are trained well in the theology of the Reformation to see ourselves as sinners and to know our need of grace, but we must learn that self-care is a grounding for how to treat others. Instead of being just self-care, however, this will lead to other-care. We
must be willing to listen to ourselves first to make this happen. So when we see someone else in need, we have to ask ourselves “What would I want? How would I want to be treated?” Maybe the bracelet can be WWIW: “What would I want?”

  Listen to Yourself at Home, in the Neighborhood, at Church

  It is perhaps easier for us to do this in some contexts than in others, but when we tie the Golden Rule to the enemy-love teaching of Jesus in 5:43–48 and to the Jesus Creed in general, and when we see how Paul applied this in Romans 14 or James in James 2, we get the distinct mentoring focus that we are to listen to ourselves in all contexts. So we need to relate to our spouses and our siblings, our parents and our children, along the same line, learning to listen to the inner voice that says: “This is how I would want to be treated in this same situation.”