The Radical Righteousness of Jesus

The structure of the Sermon on the Mount is remarkably beautiful. It begins with the Beatitudes, which give us a penetrating description of the inner character or righteousness of those who are members of the kingdom of heaven. Next follows two brilliant metaphors -- salt and light -- indelibly impressing upon us the effect of such inner righteousness upon humanity. Then Jesus gives a summary description of the radical righteousness of the kingdom and explains exactly how this righteousness is in continuity with the Old Testament Law and Prophets. Each example, and there are six of them, is introduced with a variation of His formula, "You have heard it said ... but I tell you ... "

I think this significance of Jesus switching to the first person cannot be overstated as it makes it highly personal. In the Beatitudes Christ speaks in the third person: "Blessed are the ... " But in the final Beatitude and in the subsequent metaphors He switches to the second person: "Blessed are you ... you are the salt ... you are the light." Then in the applications that follow, He moves to the first person: "But I tell you ... " No scribe or rabbi had ever spoken like this. They typically spoke in the second or third person quoting the many rabbis that came before them who quoted the rabbis that came before them. Jesus' revolutionary style of teaching, especially concerning righteousness was, "I tell you." This was both radically personal as well as authoritative.

After Jesus had presented both the Beatitudes and the two metaphors, He sensed that some of His listeners thought He was advocating an overthrow of the Old Testament Law. So He gave His unforgettable disclaimer, which set down for all time His relationship to the Law:

"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 shall disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished" [Matthew 5:17, 18].

It seems clear enough from Jesus' own words that He came to fulfill the Law, not to annul it. However, some have actually taught that Christ came to destroy the Law. For example, the second-century heretic Marcion [see my December 31, 2010 entry: Mt. Sinai, Mt. Zion, and the Consuming Fire of God] rewrote the New Testament by eliminating its Old Testament references and simply removed this passage. And some of his disciples went even further by exchanging the verbs in the sentence so it would read: "I have come not to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, but to abolish them!" Two centuries later Dr. Faustus, a leader of the Manichees who also repudiated the Old Testament and its God, attacked Augustine. According to Harvey MacArthur, Augustine's Reply to Faustus became the classic answer to such thinking. In a nutshell, the answer was this: Jesus was not abolishing the Law when He countered the Pharisees saying, "You have heard it said ... but I tell you." Rather, He was correcting the perversions that the scribes and Pharisees had made of the Law.

In reality, Christ established the Law and the Prophets in six distinct ways. First and foremost He fulfilled their messianic predictions. Both the Prophets and Law pointed to Jesus. Here the terms "the Law" and "the Prophets" can be taken together to signify the entire Old Testament. Jesus Himself said, "For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John" [Matthew 11:13]. Thus the entire Old Testament had a prophetic function that was fulfilled in Christ. Some of it was clearly predictive [such as the predictions of His birthplace, Micah 5:2 and His crucifixion, Psalm 22:16] and other parts were not so clear [such as His call from Egypt, Matthew 2:15 and Hosea 11:1]. But whether obvious or hidden, Jesus fulfilled all the messianic predictions of the Old Testament. This was His principle fulfillment.

However, He also fulfilled the Old Testament in other ways. He fulfilled the Law by dying on a cross and satisfying the demands of the Law against those who would believe in Him. The entire sacrificial system in Old Testament times pointed to Him as they prepared the people by instilling in them the conditioned reflex that sacrifice meant death. A third area of fulfillment is that Jesus perfectly kept all the commands of the Old Testament Law. He was "born under the law" [Galatians 4:4] "to fulfill all righteousness" [Matthew 3:15]. He kept the Law perfectly, never falling short in a single point.

The fourth way Jesus fulfills the Law in His believers is by means of the Holy Spirit which, of course, was Paul's argument as stated in Romans 8:2-4: "Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." Thus we are able to fulfill the righteousness of the Law by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is exactly what Ezekiel prophesied: "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws" [Ezekiel 11:19, 20].

Another example of Jesus' fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures is how He brought their great doctrines to fruition by His teaching and person. It has been said that the Old Testament is the Gospel in the bud and the New Testament is the Gospel in full bloom. Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets in such a multifaceted, dynamic way which in no way destroyed the Law, but rather completely superseded and fulfilled it. His claim to this effect is the most stupendous ever made! And we stand in awe at the matchlessness of Christ! He both the Author of the Law, and He is its Fulfiller. Nothing compares with the superb and mysterious authority with which He puts forth the truth.

Notice, too, the perpetuity of the Law: "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" [v. 18]. Jesus' language is compelling. "The smallest letter" is the Hebrew yod which looks something like an apostrophe. According to Albert Bengel, there are approximately 66,420 yods in the Old Testament. "The least stroke" is the Hebrew serif, a tiny extension on some letters that distinguishes them from similar letters. Not one of the 66,000-plus yods or innumerable little serifs will pass from the Law [which here includes the Law and the Prophets] until "everything is accomplished." Our Lord is here teaching the inspiration and immutability of the Old Testament. He is not only saying that the Old Testament contains the truth or that it becomes the truth, but that "the Scripture cannot be broken" [John 10:35]. Holy Scripture and its teaching will not change. Time and time again when our Lord quotes the Old Testament, He used the perfect tense, gegraptai -- "It is written" -- which means "it was written, it is written, and it always will be written." The Scriptures are more enduring than the universe. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away" [Matthew 24:35].

Now we must see the profound continuity between Christ's righteousness and the righteousness called for by the Old Testament. The radical righteousness Christ lived and taught, including here in the Sermon on the Mount, is not out of line with the Old Testament. His righteousness is not radical because it was new but because He actually lived it! No one else before Him or since Him has. Though we live under grace, the Old Testament is still very important. It instructs us in the demands of a righteous God and through it we see how high His holiness and standards are, and as such, we see how short we fall and how desperately we need His grace.

Verses 19, 20 give us specific advice as to how we should relate to the Old Testament: "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." Notice the word "great" ... in our society to be called "great" is not too remarkable or meaningful as the term has become so ubiquitous that it has almost lost its meaning. But when God says certain people will be called "great" -- megas -- big in the kingdom -- He means it! And we should take notice!

The keeping of the precepts of God as recorded in the Old Testament will make a difference in our eternal reward. Following Christ is not simply following subjective inner impulses. It involves knowing what He desires. We need to be in touch with the teaching of all of God's Word as to the nature of righteousness. We need the Holy Spirit. Jesus' words have set us up for a supremely radical call. True belief necessitates radical personal righteousness. "For 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" [v. 20]. To the average man on the street, the Jews of Jesus' day, this statement was absolutely shocking! The scribes and Pharisees made obedience to God's Law the master passion of their lives. They calculated that the Law contained 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions, and they tried to keep them all. How could anyone surpass that? And how could such righteousness be made a condition to entering the kingdom? Jesus seemed to be saying, "Don't think I have come to make things any easier by reducing the demands of the Law. Far from it! In fact, if your righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees [your spiritual leaders], you'll never make it!"

Talk about a dilemma! Is there no solution? We must first understand that the Pharisees' righteousness was not as great as it appeared to be. It was merely external focusing primarily on the ceremonial. Its man-made rules were actually unconscious attempts to reduce the demands of the Law and make them more manageable. These rules were attempts to insulate them from the Law's piercing heart demands. This allowed them to be self-satisfied. A Pharisee could stand on a corner and look down on a publican, and say, "I thank God I am not like that man." Jesus was demanding a deeper obedience. The Pharisees saw obedience quantitatively [obedience to myriad little laws], but Jesus saw it more qualitatively. The righteousness that Christ demands is supremely radical. It is immeasurably higher than the rabbis' concept of righteousness. To further complicate matters, Jesus will end up closing this portion of His sermon with the demand to "Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect" [v. 48].

Christ's intransigence, His hard unbending words, were actually full of grace. When He said "For 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," He was speaking as kindly as He ever spoke, for He was explaining in the most dramatic terms the impossibility of salvation apart from His grace. This then takes us right back to ground zero of the first Beatitude: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God" [5:3]. However you want to phrase it, "Blessed are those who are spiritually bankrupt, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" or "Blessed are those who realize they cannot make it on their own, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Do we really fully understand and acknowledge that there is no way but that of grace? If so, then we also see that Jesus' words in v. 17 are our only hope: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." This is our hope because Christ did what we could never do -- He fulfilled the Law. His righteousness far exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees. And because He fulfilled the Law, He can give us a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. He fulfilled the Law by leading a perfectly righteous life. He fulfilled it demands against us by dying for us. And that is the gospel and our only hope.