Sermons
June 14, 2026 (Proper 6)
Do Better
Matthew 5:17-37
When non-Christians level criticisms at us, one of the main ones is that we tend to be legalistic. They might say we are much too focused on following rules, and especially on enforcing those rules on others.
Baptist pastor and blogger John Pavlovitz called it “exterior sin management.”[1] He says it’s a practice that is rooted in fear—which he calls idolatry. When your whole belief system is built on fear of going to hell, as some Christian sects seem to be, there’s no room in your life for grace, no time to love God or our neighbors. In fact, you might find yourself, as Martin Luther did before his conversion experience, hating an angry God whose main goal in life is inflicting eternal punishment for every little infraction.
I have to say that I’d be in agreement with critics of our faith if I thought that’s all following Jesus is about.
And then we read today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount, and wonder if those critics are right. Jesus starts out by saying that, contrary to what we find in the letter to the Ephesians, he did not come to abolish the Law.[2] He came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law—and not one stroke of a pen will fall away from the Law “until all is accomplished.” That’s probably a reference to Isaiah 55:10-11, as it seems to me like the whole Fourth Gospel is, beginning with “In the beginning was the word…” and having Jesus’ last words on the cross as “It is accomplished.”
We Christians like to say the Old Testament Law, the Torah, no longer applies to us…except when we find rules in there that we can clobber others over the head with. That’s all I’m going to say about that—except to wonder why, if Jesus abolished the Law, Christians periodically demand the Ten Commandments be posted in various public spaces?
The Bible has a bit of a PR problem because it does contradict itself like this. Jesus says, “I came not to abolish but to fulfill,” and Ephesians says, “[Jesus] has abolished the Law.” What gives?
Well, on the one hand, we can see Jesus’ life as a complete fulfillment of the Law. The rabbis taught that if one person were to be 100% obedient to the whole of Torah, that would bring about the Messianic Age. And nobody ever has, except for Jesus, and we Christians believe he is the Messiah—or in Greek, the Christ—the Son of God, whose total obedience led to his death on a cross,[3] and broke the power of sin and death over the world.
And I think when we read the passage from Ephesians in context, we might see that the author (who may or may not have been Paul) is actually talking not about how we no longer have to follow any of the rules in the Torah, but about how in Christ God is bringing together Torah-observant Jews and Gentiles who, according to the first church council in Acts 15, do not have to become Jews before they can be Christians.
But again, we have the problem that Jesus said he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it, and that no provision in the Law will be repealed before heaven and earth pass away. And then, to make matters worse, in this passage Jesus seems to take the provisions of the Law and make them even more stringent!
“You have heard it said… but I say to you…”
“Thou shalt not kill,” say the Ten Commandments. But Jesus says, if you get mad at someone, or call them a name, that’s as good as killing them?
“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” the Big Ten say. But Jesus says not even to look lustfully at a person of your preferred gender?
The law says people can divorce, although the rabbis didn’t agree on what grounds were acceptable. But Jesus says divorce begets adultery.
And then the bit about swearing an oath. The whole court system is based on putting people under oath as a guarantee that what they say on the stand is the truth.
Starting with Martin Luther—actually starting about 1200 years before Luther with a man called Marcion—there’s been a distinction made between Law and Grace. The argument is that the Old Testament, particularly the Torah—the first five books of both our Bible and the Jewish Tanakh—is full of legalism and devoid of grace; whereas the New Testament, particularly the life and teachings of Jesus, is all about love and grace.
If a person actually opens and reads the Bible, that argument instantly falls apart. Even among the provisions of the Torah, there are elements of grace—if a person breaks one of the rules, there are ways to restore relationships between people and between a lawbreaker and God.
We often hear “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” as an example of the strict legalism of Torah. But did you know that’s actually a limit on how someone might seek retribution after being wronged? It rules out, “If you hit me, I’m going to hit you back, ten times harder.” If you put out somebody’s eye, they don’t get to cut your head off in return. If you knock out someone’s tooth, they don’t get to chop off your punching hand.
Even that can be seen as a grace; we are released from the need to exact great revenge on those who have hurt us, and those who hurt us, whether accidentally or deliberately, pay some penalty for their wrongs, but the penalty is proportional to the wrong that has been done.
And similarly, in the New Testament there are instructions for how we are to behave, and some would argue the penalty for wrongdoing is that much worse. In the Hebrew Bible you might be put to death for some violations; but in the New Testament we start hearing about “the hell of fire” and eternal punishment.
But here we are with Jesus taking the already strict provisions of Torah and taking them a step further. What is he doing to us? Is he simply pronouncing us all guilty, because there’s not a single person here who hasn’t sworn an oath or looked lustfully at another person or become angry?
Actually, I think what he’s doing is shifting our attention. If we focus on keeping every little rule our religion imposes, if we assume that’s all there is to staying on God’s good side, then we are going to base our faith on fear of punishment, and in that fear we are going to turn to “exterior sin management,” where we spend all of our time and energy policing the outward actions of ourselves and those around us. (And let’s face it: the majority of that energy is going to go to policing others’ actions, because no matter what our own sins might be, other people’s sins are a whole lot more interesting to us.)
When Jesus takes what looks like a step further in his instruction on obedience to God’s Law, what he is doing is turning our attention away from exterior sin management to a much deeper, and much more important, issue. That issue is the condition of our hearts. It’s the same reason why he—along with a number of rabbis of his day—taught that “love God” and “love your neighbor” are the most important of the commandments. Keep those, and the rest fall into place. Get your heart right, and you aren’t going to have to spend a lot of time beating yourself up about being angry, or looking wrongly at others’ physiques, or whatever.
In another part of the Gospel Jesus admits the Law provides for divorce because our hearts are not where they ought to be, and we do damage to the most basic of human relationships as a result. But it’s not God’s will. Anger at others isn’t God’s will any more than it’s God’s will for us to kill each other. Lust is, in a way, idolatry: we stop viewing another as a person and start seeing them as an object—and we know what God thinks of idolatry. If we have to guarantee our truthfulness with the swearing of an oath, one wonders whether we’re actually honest people.
Jesus is more concerned with what’s in our hearts—because when our hearts are right, there’s no need for exterior sin management.
[1] This phrase comes from John Pavlovitz’ blog and was published in Relevant magazine in 2016. Read it here: https://relevantmagazine.com/faith/greatest-false-idol-modern-christianity/.
[2] Ephesians 2:15-16
[3] Philippians 2:5-11