Christ Came To Make You Righteous (Matthew 5:17-20)
Introduction
Jesus’s sermon on the mount continues this morning
Last week, we heard the call to live salty and bright lives in the kingdom. Those who follow Jesus would increasingly become like him in thought, word, and deed, making them like flavor enhancing salt and like a bright light on a hill bringing glory to God in lives of those who see and believe. But those who live the salty and bright life will be persecuted like Jesus was and the prophets before him. But even still, Jesus says, you are the truly blessed of this world because yours is the kingdom of heaven. That is incomparable with the treasures of this world.
These statements today seem like an abrupt change of topic coming off the salt and light teaching. But actually, Jesus is not departing from these salty, bright, and blessed foundations. Rather, he continues to lay the foundation for what will make his people uniquely kingdom people.
Particularly, Jesus charges his disciples to obey God in everything from the heart.
Let’s listen, starting again in verse 17.
“Not To Abolish The Law or the Prophets”
English Standard Version Chapter 5
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. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
The Law refers to the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, given to Moses by God. And the Prophets sums up the rest of the Old Testament writings, which gave description and interpretation to Moses’s Law in real time application. In other places, like Luke 24:44, Jesus includes the Psalms in the summation of the Old Covenant writings, which probably sums up all the wisdom literature. Jesus doesn’t separate the importance of some writings over others like the Samaritans did or as many Christians seem to do with the New Testament Scriptures, but upholds them as equally important,
Jesus is giving a preface to the teaching he is about to give. He’s going to challenge the current interpretation of God’s Law and call for even greater obedience to the Law from the heart. God is not just after us doing everything to not murder or not commit adultery. No, he wants to kill the root of murder in our hearts, which is sinful anger. He wants to kill the root of adultery in our hearts, which is lust. He wants to change our hearts and empower us to live holy lives from the heart, not just external obedience to the Law.
But Jesus knew how people could and would misunderstand his teaching, so he starts by explaining his commitment to God’s Law and the Prophets. He’s not throwing them out. He’s not even trying to trying to reinterpret them altogether and make them say whatever you want them to say like false teachers in the 21st century love to do. But rather, he goes so far as saying that he intends to obey every single Law down to the dotted I and crossed T. He came not to destroy the Law. He actually came to fulfill the Law completely. He needs his disciples to understand the relationship of God’s Old Covenant Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, to their New Covenant fulfillment of them all in Jesus.
Jesus Is Not Throwing Out Authority
The Jewish people who Jesus primarily spoke to were deeply committed to the Law of Moses. Matthew Scholar John Noland points out that, culturally speaking, it would be highly unfavorable amongst the people to try to reinterpret or overturn the Law, including the customs and traditions of the people. Unlike our culture, which seems to want to “progress” at all costs, unwilling to consider any tradition or custom of the past that hinders freedom and autonomy, the Jews, even the peoples of the world, celebrated their history and the things passed down by their elders. The Jews entire lives were built on God’s Law given through Moses. So the people celebrated those who sought to uphold them like we see in the stories of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers recorded in the Apocrypha.
Jesus, likewise, born as a Jew under the Law, celebrates his heritage and is eager to submit to the authority of God’s Word even as he exposes the hypocrisy of the people.
Again, this idea grates on our Western culture, so much so that in the American spirit of freedom and self autonomy, many people have viewed Jesus through the lens of a revolutionary. They interpret his life and teachings as an overthrow of old systems and old bad laws and justify throwing out anything that seems old and oppressive and opposing progression. But that’s absolutely not what Jesus is doing here. Unlike our culture, Jesus loves authority. He loves submission to his Father and to the Scriptures. We see him even submitting to parental, governing, and spiritual authority throughout his life. This is why it is so vital that we understand this teaching of Jesus. It is so foundational to his teaching and ministry, that if we miss it, we may miss God and the salvation he is extending to all of us.
So, lest his listeners misunderstand him, Jesus speaks first to his commitment to the authority of the Law of Moses and the Prophets.
In verse 18, he ups the intensity of his first statement:
English Standard Version Chapter 5
18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
God’s Word is sure. It’s set and firm and Jesus has no intention of contradicting God’s Word or tossing anything out. Instead, he says, down to the finest details, until the end of all things, until all is accomplished, God’s Word will stand.
Jesus speaking of the iota or a dot is hyperbolic language to make his point abundantly clear. Down to the least important mark in the Hebrew Scriptures, it will stand. In a similar way he speaks of the importance of “the least of these commandments”. These commandments express God’s heart down to the smallest details.
Therefore, Jesus is commited as a teacher to uphold the Word of God. Even though he has authority as the Son of God, as the Word made flesh, the Word of God himself, to write Scripture and to show how it ought to be understood, he calls all of us back to a deep commitment and trust in the authority and truth of the written Scriptures and to thorough obedience to them.
Jesus was upholding the Scriptures by fulfilling them.
But this should raise questions for every student of the Word who understands that Jesus teaching and work makes some Laws obsolete.
So then we need to understand what Jesus means that he came not to abolish but to fulfill or accomplish the Law and prophets. This is massive question. As you start to answer it, you find in this man Jesus an identity and purpose greater and more wonderful than anyone can imagine.
Group Question: What do you think Jesus means by saying he came to fulfill the Law?
I agree with Matthew scholar Noland that there is a tie in this language to Jesus’s words at his baptism, that he must be baptized to “fulfill all righteousness”. This statement provides a clue for us into what Jesus means by fulfilling the Law. As John the Baptist understood, baptism for repentance of sin wasn’t fitting for him. He didn’t need it because he never sinned. That means that Jesus’s idea of “fulfilling all righteousness” very much had us, humanity, in mind. It was for our righteousness. It was to make a way for his followers to receive his righteousness and to walk in his righteousness according to God’s Law. This is in order to enable us to walk faithfully in obedience to God from the heart.
Jesus alone has the capacity to fulfill the Law. No one else on earth can say that. We all have fallen short of God’s standards. The Law puts every human’s sin on display. But Jesus came as one born under the Law, yet not born as a slave to sin like us. He didn’t have a sin nature, but as the Second Adam, the forerunner of a new humanity, he alone had the potential, a second chance as it were, to live the Law perfectly.
Even more, this statement of having capacity to fulfill the Law describes his final authority over every matter of the Law. He alone can say with the authority of heaven when the Law has or hasn’t been properly obeyed or fulfilled. As the God man, sent from heaven, he alone can tell us what the Sabbath is for. He is the Lord of the Sabbath. He alone can tell us what marriage is and for. He alone can tell us why and how government should exist. He gets to say when it has been perfectly accomplished and fulfilled by humans.
But even more than that, this fulfillment language describes the purpose of his life. It describes the Good News that he is in fact the One the Scriptures pointed to and longed for with desperation. He is the Messiah, the Savior, the Promised King and Offspring who would crush the head of the Serpent, overcoming our slavery to sin under the impossible Law of God, and our fear of just punishment by death and the wrath of God. Accomplishment and fulfillment is Jesus’s perfect righteous life under the Law in our skin on our behalf all the way to the cross where he declared “it is finished.” There is no more condemnation for those who believe. Through Christ, we are set free from sin and enabled by the Spirit of God he caused to dwell in us to live out the law of God from the heart with increasing perfection. Jesus’s death, resurrection, ascension, and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on his people paved the way for not only justification but also our sanctification.
Even though it’s a little bit outside of the scope of this particular teaching of Jesus, it’s important to mention that fulfillment and accomplishment also includes the end of particular Laws and practices as they knew them. For example, through his death and resurrection, symbolized in his baptism, Jesus fulfilled the Sacrificial system on our behalf. He was the final sacrificial Lamb offered before God on behalf of our sins. There is no longer any need for sacrifice of Lambs or other animals to wash away sins because all of that was in anticipation of the shedding of the perfect God man’s blood in mediation between God and man.
Likewise, Jesus is God with us, the very presence of God among man. At his death, the temple curtain was torn in two. As he prophesied, he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, referring to his death and resurrection. In other words, the temple is no longer needed because the true temple is with us. The temple pointed to Jesus so those laws are fulfilled and accomplished in him. Everything in the Law, therefore, must be interpreted through the lens of Christ’s accomplishment on earth. This also includes ceremonial cleanliness, food laws, festivals, and certain civil laws. The details of what has been thoroughly accomplished through Christ with regards to Old Testament Laws has been the topic of much conversation and writing, which I can’t properly cover now. But what I need you to see now is that Jesus was bringing the final word, the final stamp of approval, the completion, the explanation, the finality and accomplishment of God’s Law.
Please get this: This is not a divorce of the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New, but a clear unification and explanation of God’s heart on display in the person of Jesus.
Jesus is not coming to teach a new way, to cast off old shackles as some have thought. Jesus isn’t saving you from an angry God. No, he’s showing us how he brings completion and accomplishment and clarity to God’s heart in it all.
The Warning - eternity is on the line.
This is why Jesus offers the warning he does in verse 19. Let’s look there.
English Standard Version Chapter 5
19 Therefore whoever relaxes 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 does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
In light of all Jesus has said, he lays out what’s on the line here. This is an eternally significant matter.
I do believe that there are degrees of reward for the life we live here on earth, based on our obedience to God. But I don’t believe what Jesus means by “least in the kingdom” opens the door for an attitude of “I got my ticket into heaven so it doesn’t really matter what I do”. No, Jesus soberly warns us in verse 20:
English Standard Version Chapter 5
20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Those who relax God’s commandments, who don’t take righteous living seriously, “will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
This is a grave warning. The scribes and Pharisees took great pains to obey the Law of God. They devoted their lives to understanding and striving to obey. Jesus says, unless you are living a more righteous life than they are, God and heaven are not yours. There is no place for you.
Christianity Is Not About An Easier Path To Wealth and Health and Heaven
For those who want to find in Christianity an easier path, think again. For those who want to relax and take it easy, think again. Those who want heaven without fear of God, without careful obedience to God, think again. No, Jesus says that there are consequences for how we obey or disobey God’s commands.
Even the “least of the commands”. Commentators highlight that Jews in that day held some Laws as weightier than others. For example, one of the ten commandments, not committing adultery, is certainly a weightier matter than proper observance of a holy festival. We see this reality even in the severity of consequences given by God for breaking of former over the latter.
But Jesus drives his point home here by calling for full obedience to every law with the same strictness. Even greater strictness and righteousness than the scribes and Pharisees.
Now, this statement in verse 20 would have sealed the deal so to speak for his listeners. It would have brought about a shock factor and a sense of impossibility of the requirement, which is exactly what I think Jesus wants to do. Jesus wants every human to recognize that heaven is not possible without him. Heaven is not possible without rescue, without rebirth, without a baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire in Christ.
The righteousness that exceeds the scribes and Pharisees can only be a righteousness that is accomplished in us through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And yet, Jesus doesn’t unpack the fulness of that reality here. Instead, he’s going to go on to show you God’s desire for humanity’s holiness in the every day stuff of life. He’s going to set the bar so high that everyone would be feeling it’s impossibility while boldly asserting that he’s going to live this, he’s fulfilling this and accomplishing it perfectly. It’s just incredible.
Gospel Tension
Clearly, if you know the Scriptures and the promise of the Gospel to save sinners, then you’ll find these statements alarming. Without the fuller teaching of Scripture, it sounds almost like Jesus is presenting a fully works based salvation, like every other religion of the world.
But it’s not that. At the end of the chapter in his command to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors, he adds: 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
What is Jesus saying? Are we able to be perfect in this life? Does God expect perfection for our salvation?
If that were true in a literal sense, nobody is saved. Absolutely no one. This can be a confusing word, because we usually think of it in terms of flawless behavior, sinless behavior. But what Jesus is truly calling for is wholeness. Living out our purpose with completeness.
God is not interested in playing whack-a-mole with you when you mess up or like an uptight dad who disciplines kids for spilled milk. No, he sent his Son in order to make it possible for us to be holy like him, to forgive us of our sins through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection and to empower us to live out his commands from the heart.
So, we’re not talking about a works based salvation where you have to do enough good for God to accept you into heaven.
Rather, as I’ve already mentioned, the Law exposes everyone as sinners, imperfect according to God’s holy moral standard and thus justly condemned and separate from God forever. But Jesus came not to condemn, but that the world would be saved through him. Perfect righteous can be ours in terms of our justification through faith in Jesus, where his perfect record of Law abiding can belong to us when we are joined to him.
Romans 10:4 “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
But even more, because of that finished work, all who follow Jesus are reborn. They are called a new creation. Given hearts that can be formed again after Christ’s likeness and image. We are given a renewed capacity to be perfected in obedience to God through what we call the process of sanctification.
Romans 8, better than perhaps any other text, captures this reality. Because of the sin nature, we needed a Savior who could redeem us from the just curse of the Law and condemnation under the Law. Because our Savior Jesus accomplished the Law and poured his Spirit into our hearts, we are given his mind and given his power to practically live a holy life from the heart, to walk by his Spirit and not by the flesh.
In Christ, all righteousness has been fulfilled for us, in that we have been perfected (justified) and are being perfected (sanctified) in him.
In summary, the Gospel is better than we could imagine because it’s bigger than external obedience to the Law. It’s about empowering a heart level obedience to God in all things like Christ. This is what the Pharisees and Scribes missed. They cleaned the outside of the cup while leaving the inside filthy. They whitewashed the tomb of their truly sinful heart. This is why Jesus says that our righteousness must exceed theirs. It must be heart level righteousness. And as we follow Jesus, we learn that he has accomplished for us the ability to live out God’s law from the heart. Praise God!
That’s how all of this fits together. The New Testament or New Covenant is the Good News that Jesus fulfills and accomplished for us all that God requires of us. Now we get to walk in that reality daily.
Application: God requires your righteousness, your full obedience from the heart.
English Standard Version Chapter 5
20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Christian, listen up. No matter what you’ve heard about your relationship to the Old Testament (Old Covenant Law), we need to make sure it is aligned with these words from Jesus. God still wants his holy Law upheld, and Jesus shows us more clearly what that looks like. It isn’t just external, but heart level obedience.
Christian, whatever you’ve heard about your relationship to sin in light of the Gospel of Jesus, in no way does Jesus give you a pass for disobedience. The cross of Christ is not to be trifled with and trampled on, which is exactly what we do when we take it easy on our sin. I think we are all going to be startled by the consequences that Jesus lays out in the rest of this sermon for relaxing and making peace with sin. For example, Jesus warns of hell for the person who curses or insults his brother or who is unwilling to cut off his right hand or gouge out his eye that leads him to sin (5:22, 30). He warns us that we will not be forgiven unless we forgive others (6:14-15). He warns us that “every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (7:20). He calls the one who does not obey Jesus’s words a foolish man, like one whose house is built on the sand, leading to great destruction (7:26-27). Brothers and sisters, Jesus warns that not everyone who comes to him saying “Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (7:21).
Too many Christians live their lives foolishly believe the false teaching that you can have God and heaven and your sin too, that because Jesus died for our sin; that it doesn’t really matter how we live; that once we’re saved, we’re always saved no matter what we do. We often believe falsely that because we aren’t perfect, and we can never be perfect in this life, that God’s grace will just gloss over what I do. As long as we’re sorry for it, it doesn’t really matter if we stay stuck forever in the same sin. It doesn’t matter if we get divorced if we’re sorry for it, if we commit adultery so long as we are sorry for it.
God can and does rescue divorcee’s and adulterers, he rescues murderers and thieves, the sexually immoral, and proud, but he doesn’t want us to stay there. Entrance into the kingdom through Jesus requires repentance, a turning from sin, and getting onto the narrow path of following in Jesus’s footsteps and righteousness in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus didn’t come to relax God’s holiness summarized in his Law, but to fulfill completely for us, and in us. He wants to perfect you. He’s powerfully at work in you by his Spirit doing that work. So, repent of any idea that keeps you believing that you will always be stuck in the same sin and that’s ok. You will never stop being convicted of areas of sin in this life and you will never fully arrive, but you will, you must grow increasingly in righteousness from the inside out.
A final word about influence on others.
Notice the twofold warning of Jesus - those who “relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same”. Those who don’t obey and teach others to not obey.
Jesus speaks of our teaching capacity here wisely because he knows how influential humans really are. Whether you know it or not, you have great capacity to influence others. We were created by God to multiply both physically and spiritually. We disciple others, we influence others, both in what we do and in what we teach. In fact, we teach largely by what we do. Yes, by what we say, but very much by what we do as well.
That’s part of what makes you an image bearer. You are meant to reflect God and his righteousness to others. That’s your salt and light in this world. So remember church, that how you live in your day to day life is not just between you and God, it actually deeply shapes others; it forms culture. It either helps others towards heaven or can lead to their damnation.
Church, we must obey from the heart. Jesus empowered it for us. We no longer stand condemned but are free in him to live out the commands of God from the heart by the Spirit. Thanks be to God. Let’s commit again to that this morning. Let’s repent from the heart and obey from the heart.
Discussion
What is Jesus saying to you? What is he asking you to do?