How to be Righteous
Matthew 5:17-20
Sermon on the Mount Series ・1・2・3・Part 4
This week I was in a conversation with a friend who used the word “whip” in a context that made no sense to me. When I hear the word “whip,” I picture Indiana Jones fighting bad guys or swinging across a chasm. Never in my life had I heard the word used as slang for a person’s car. But evidently, it’s been used that way since the late 20th century. Somehow I missed that; but thanks to my millennial friend, what comes to mind when I hear the word “whip” will forever be changed.
My hope is that when you’re done reading this post, you will see another word in a different light. It’s the word that is key to understanding the entire Sermon on the Mount.
Righteousness.
Righteousness is one of those words that can be hard to understand. Sometimes it stirs up negative feelings. We might think of people who seem “self-righteous,” looking down their noses at others. I don’t hear people say they aspire to be righteous. In fact, we might consider them arrogant if they did. And yet, righteousness is at the heart of what Jesus calls us to in his Sermon.
To understand what Jesus means by righteous, we need to recall that from the beginning of his ministry, Jesus found himself at odds with the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. They had accused him of breaking the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament known as the Law. They believed they were the ones upholding the Law and Jesus was casting these Scriptures aside. These religious leaders prided themselves on their superior righteousness. And Jesus wasn’t playing by their rules. They believed that he was lowering the bar on faithfulness to God’s commands.
Jesus counters this in the Sermon on the Mount when he says:
“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. For 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.” -Matthew 5:17-18
Jesus makes it clear that he hasn’t come to throw out the Law but to fulfill it. What this means is that everything in the Old Testament was leading us to him.
And then comes the clincher. Jesus goes on to say:
“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.” -Matthew 5:20
Jesus is not lowering the bar; he’s actually raising it. He’s calling his apprentices to a new way of living out the Scriptures. And he says that in this new way, his followers will surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.
That claim would have shocked his listeners. After all, the Pharisees and teachers of the law were considered the most righteous people around. They were meticulous about following the Torah. And yet, according to Jesus, they had it all wrong. How could that be? And more importantly, how do we make sure we don’t make the same mistake?
New Testament professor Scot McKnight refers to this passage from the Sermon on the Mount as:
“…the most significant passage in the entire Bible on how to read the Bible.” -Scot McKnight, The Story of God Bible Commentary
The mistake the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law made was to focus on the letter of the Law instead of the heart of the Law. They were focused on external conformity.
Now, before we are too hard on them, I have to say I can relate. I know some of you out there are born rebels, but I’ve always been the girl who wants to follow the rules. I remember once when one of our church buildings was under construction, I was riding in a friend’s car when she zoomed around the construction barrier to take a short cut to the parking lot. I cried out, “What are you doing?” To which she replied, “Relax, I do it all the time.” So the next time I found myself behind the wheel in that same situation, I decided just this once I’d be a rebel and swerved around the barrier. I got a nail in my tire.
Bottom line, I can sympathize with the Pharisees.
The Pharisees wanted order and control so they obeyed the letter of the law. They approached righteousness like the famous monkeys who are determined to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. But the problem was their righteousness went no deeper than their external behavior; and as a result, they missed the most important thing that undergirds all of God’s commands: love.
To understand what Jesus is getting at here, it is helpful to look ahead to something else he’ll say about the Law and the Prophets. Later on in the book of Matthew, Jesus says:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” -Matthew 22:37-40
When Jesus says that everything in the Law and Prophets hangs on loving God and loving people; he’s telling us that in his kingdom, the way to live out the Scriptures is to love. Unlike the religious leaders, Jesus isn’t after mere external conformity to a list of commands, he’s after the heart. Jesus wants transformed hearts, not just right behaviors.
The righteousness Jesus calls us to is a whole-person way of being in the world that conforms to God’s will. Not just outward behavior, but inward transformation.
In this way, Jesus is raising the bar for his followers on what it means to be faithful to God’s commands, on what it means to live a righteous life. To walk in the way of Jesus isn’t just to do the right thing, but to have the right heart. Jesus wants to empower us to live lives of radical love. He wants to teach us, his apprentices, to love like he loves.
The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel foresaw this when he recorded these words of the Lord:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” -Ezekiel 36:26-27
Jesus wants to give you and me a new heart. Through the Spirit, he wants to empower us to live out the Scriptures by loving like he loves. In the verses that follow, Jesus teaches his apprentices how to walk in the ways of his kingdom by sharing six examples of this radical way of love. In each example, he’ll start with an Old Testament command, and then demonstrate how that command is to be lived out in his kingdom. We’ll take a look at these examples in the next post. Get ready to be challenged! Get ready to be inspired! And, get ready to imagine what might happen if all of us followed him in his way of righteousness.
What do I think would happen? The world would know we were Jesus’ disciples by our righteousness because that righteousness would be love (John 13:34-35).
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Recommended Resources on The Sermon on the Mount
What If Jesus Was Serious? - Skye Jethani
Short reflections on the Sermon complete with Skye’s own doodles and drawings. This isn’t a deep dive into the Sermon, but it is an insightful and enjoyable read.
The Story of God Bible Commentary - Sermon on the Mount - Scot McKnight
A readable commentary by one of the most respected contemporary New Testament scholars. This commentary series not only explains the text, but provides insights on how to live out the Sermon in day-to-day life.
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God - Dallas Willard
A theological work that is about more than the Sermon, but uses the Sermon as the key text to helping us live the life Jesus intends for us to live. This is not an easy read, but is a classic in Christian spiritual formation literature.
The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing - Jonathan T. Pennington
A theological commentary that contains 130+ pages on overall themes of the Sermon before going into verse-by-verse commentary. I like how this author ties the Sermon into a vision for human flourishing.
