Matthew 5:17-20
. . . unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees . . . you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus began this section by saying that He had come to fulfill "the Law and the prophets." This is a phrase that describes the Old Testament scriptures.
According to the common interpretation of Jesus' time (and ours?), the way to know God was to obey the law. But in Jesus' time (and ours?), adherence to God's law is not the same thing as adhering to human traditions built up around that law. Jesus was often accused of being a lawbreaker. He did not believe the human interpretation of keeping the Sabbath was in line with God's law of love and compassion. He did not make His disciples keep the hand-washing tradition that was simply a ceremony. And He allowed His disciples to eat on the Sabbath, even though it meant violating a human definition of "harvesting" and "threshing."
Essentially, the religious leaders encouraged people to DO the law out of obligation. Jesus made the law a heart issue, emphasizing the meaning of the law and not its human interpretations. And in a very obvious sense, the atonement that the law provided for (covering human sin by regular blood sacrifice) was truly fulfilled by His death on the cross.
The Pharisees were among the most prominent religious leaders who opposed Jesus. Their movement had an honorable beginning. During the time when Jerusalem was overrun by enemies and the Jewish leaders were deported, some of those leaders agreed to honor God no matter the pressures from the conquerors. The stories of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (not eating unclean food, refusing to bow to an idol, refusing to pray to a human emperor) could serve as illustrations for how the Pharisees intended to live godly lives.
However, by focusing so much on their own good actions, they kept defining and re-defining what actions would be considered good, and what exceptions might be appropriate. (It was suggested that America's legal system may have some similarities today, as legal regulations change and loopholes are found.) By that focus on their interpretations of the law, they tended to lose the emphasis on being "like God." Instead, they were seen as self-righteous, mean-spirited, showy, and prideful, and could be described as religious bullies.
People who emphasize rules over relationships soon find themselves in a trap of their own design, which is not attractive to others. And when the "trap" is described as "God's will," then God Himself seems unattractive, too. Some of the consequences of living only by the rules were described in class:
- Conscientious people feel like they're walking on eggshells, too timid to act for fear of accidentally becoming impure.
- People fail to emphasize relationships and instead stress trivial rules.
- People live in a labyrinth of restrictions and avoidances.
- Separatists are tempted to act as judges and juries to those around them.
- Such lives do not attract others to God.
- People under tight rules start looking for loopholes.
- Eventually, people are led either to despair ("I am not good enough to live by all these rules") or pride ("I must be pretty good to be able to follow all these rules").
When a person first learns of Jesus and is drawn to Him, the person has a great interest in becoming more like God. But "let's find some ways to become more like Jesus" is vastly preferable to "now follow these rules" as a discipleship method.
We did list some of the advantages to scriptural law (as opposed to human traditions):
- The law itself was intended to give us a guide to fulfill our inner draw towards joy.
- The law outlines consequences, helping to protect us.
- The law shows us what sin is.
- As we mature, rules are replaced by a relationship with God.
Jesus liberates us from the law to a new life in the Spirit.
When we enter the kingdom, the Spirit comes to live within us. The rule-keeping religion of the Pharisees lacked relationship. When Paul became a Christian, he used the example of Moses meeting God personally to describe how all Christians now have direct access to God through the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:16-18).
Our motivation now is to please Christ, not to keep laws. Jesus sent His Spirit to guide us from within, revealing Himself to us. Discussion stressed that hearing the Spirit's voice is not the same as listening to our conscience. David mentioned some new Christians he'd worked with whose lives changed as they recognized God's internal leadings. Joy mentioned their daughter who, as an elementary-age child, sensed the Spirit's voice within.
When Jesus said that our righteousness had to exceed that of the Pharisees, this is what He meant. Not that we could follow rules better, but that we would respond to the Spirit within us. Even in this passage, when Jesus warned against misleading others, He was not trying to give us yet another rule to worry about, but to guide us into a direct relationship with God through the Spirit.
David concluded by drawing a circle on the board. In the center, he put a dot to represent closeness to God. His experiences as a pastor led him to believe that when people were asking for "rules for living," they often meant, "How far can I get from God and still be in that circle?" Instead, we should be asking, "How close can I get to God?" Then we don't care about the rules at all. We just want to be like Jesus.
David did suggest one good response for those who legitimately want "rules" to guide them closer to God. He cited a definition that I found on-line under Susanna Wesley (mother of John the preacher and Charles the songwriter):
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment