Last week, as we continued our summer teaching series, A Kingdom Vision, we started working through the second half of Matthew 5. We often look at these verses as a series of only loosely connected blocks of teaching from Jesus. What we came to discover, though, is that in this section Jesus is doing something really important. He is helping us see and understand the self-righteousness is not the way into God’s kingdom. That’s not how God’s kingdom works. His kingdom is a kingdom of grace. After establishing this fact, Jesus gives us six examples to prove His point. Let’s work through those today as we finish up the rest of Matthew 5 together.

The Good News About High Standards

We have been watching a series on the Angel Studios streaming service called Guarded lately. It’s a basic romantic-drama. One of the main characters is the billionaire owner of a tech company, and one of the prominent plotlines so far revolves around his relationship with his father. No matter what he does, no matter how successful he becomes, his father is only ever critical. He seems to almost delight in pointing out every flaw he has or mistake he makes. His character hasn’t said it out loud, but you can tell that he feels like no matter how hard he tries, he’s never going to be good enough for his dad. 

Maybe you have a relationship with one of your parents that feels a bit like that. What I’m curious about this morning, though, is if you have ever felt that way with God? Like no matter how hard you try, you just can’t ever seem to be good enough for Him? Perhaps a pastor or a whole church environment in your past fed into that by constantly dumping heaping loads of guilt on you about what a terrible sinner you were being every chance they got. If you stepped even a little bit out of line, someone was there to serve you up a fresh load of condemnation. Eventually you came to feel about God the same way the character in the show feels about his dad. Maybe you still feel that way. If so, last week probably didn’t help you very much. 

This morning finds us in the third part of our summer teaching series, A Kingdom Vision. All this summer we are working through Jesus’ most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, in order to soak in the wonder of what He had to say here. We are striving to understand as much as 30 minute blocks over the course of about eight weeks will allow us, but at least as importantly as that is learning together to see the whole thing as one comprehensive vision of what life in God’s kingdom is like. The goal for this whole series is for you to come away with a better grasp of the whos, whats, whys, and hows of God’s kingdom so that you can enjoy the fullness of the blessings Jesus assures us will be a part of dwelling in it. 

Last time, we started in on the second part of the first third of the Sermon. And because it’s not fun to do math in the summer, that means we started looking at the second part of Matthew 5. I told you out of the gate that it was going to be a bit of a bruising week, and it was. We saw Jesus emphasize just how much the Law mattered to Him and should matter to us in terms of getting into a right relationship with God, only to have Him elevate the standard for keeping the Law far beyond what anyone was or is capable of reaching on their own. “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees [the guys everybody then knew had achieved a level of righteousness before God that nobody else was going to get close to meeting, let alone surpassing], you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. That is, unless you do better than the best person you know, getting right with God is not something you will ever experience. Or, as we put it then, your efforts to make yourself right with God aren’t enough. 

Well, I told you then that our conversation was the first of a two-part miniseries, and that the picture Jesus was forming for us wasn’t going to be complete until this week. Well…here we are. I mentioned then the fact that Jesus was going to give us six different pictures of how the standards of God’s kingdom were and are higher than we can imagine. And He was going to do this by walking us through some areas that we often feel like we are doing pretty okay in our efforts to be good enough for God. Today, we are going to take a look at those. If you have your copy of the Scriptures handy, join me once again in Matthew 5, and let’s see how Jesus takes us through this. 

When we think about or have conversations about sin, one of the ways many people approach it is to deflect from our own issues with a bit of whatboutism. That is, we attempt to diminish the weight of our sin by comparing our small sins with big and ugly ones that we’ve never done. We say, “Sure I’ve done this, but what about that,” always making sure that whatever “that” happens to be is way worse than our insignificant “this.” And the most common “that” we use in these situations is what? Murder. “Sure, I may have told a lie here and there, but at least I’ve never killed someone.” Look at v. 21 with me. 

“You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, ‘Do not murder.’ and whoever murders will be subject to judgment.” Do you know why Jesus phrased it like this? Because they had all heard this. “Thou shalt not murder” is the sixth of the Ten Commandments. The prohibition of the unjust taking of an innocent life—that is, murder—has been a universal human moral law. Every culture across every religion in every age has understood that murder is wrong. Here’s the thing, though: If avoiding murder was enough to make us right with God, that seems like a pretty low bar to clear. I mean, shouldn’t God have His standards set a little bit higher than that. Sure, that makes self-righteousness that much easier to attain, but again, that one seems kind of obvious. 

Well, Jesus agrees. If you thought not murdering another person was enough to put you in good standing with God, you need to think again. “But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Whoever insults his brother or sister, will be subject to the court. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire.” Anyone starting to feel a bit more uncomfortable than you did when the standard was simply not murdering someone? Jesus’ point is that avoiding murder does not by itself keep us in line with God’s standards. We fall short of His righteousness long before we reach that awful end when we allow hatred or a general devaluing of human life to take root in our heart, leading us to fall short of practicing God’s radical love toward the people around us. Murder is merely the fruit of this much deeper, more subtle root. 

The standard Jesus calls us to here, though, is even higher than this. It’s not simply that we should avoid hating other people. We should pursue a radical commitment to reconciliation with those with whom we are relationally separated for one reason or another. “So if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Reach a settlement quickly with your adversary while you’re on the way with him to the court, or your adversary will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out of there until you have paid the last penny.”  

The same thing is true with adultery. The act of having sex with someone to whom you are not married is wrong. There are, in fact, not any circumstances other than marriage in which any kind of sexual interactions with another person are morally appropriate. And, “we really love each other” or “we’re engaged and going to be married soon” don’t count. But the separation from God, the falling short of God’s righteousness that resulted in your taking that awful step happened way before you actually consummated your illicit desire. 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lutsfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” God’s love is radically for other people. Using their bodies—whether that happens in person or online or on social media or on some other form of media—for your own, selfish enjoyment is a violation of God’s love and thus a violation of His character. No matter what Hollywood says, outside of the marriage covenant sex is always primarily selfish in nature. Well, if you are willing to violate His character, then you are falling short of the standard of His righteousness. So, while someone might pat themself on the back for not sleeping with someone else’s spouse, the odds that they have never used another person to illegitimately satisfy an illicit desire are vanishingly small. And if that rather broad net happens to catch you in it, that means you have fallen short of God’s righteousness and, according to Jesus, will never get into the kingdom of God. 

Again, though, if we thought Jesus was going to stop there, we were wrong. He doesn’t ratchet the standard up any further on us—that would be pretty hard to do—but He does add an additional note about just how serious getting this right is. He reminds us of how high the stakes are. “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” 

I suspect you don’t often think of sin as that serious of an issue. And, honestly, hearing about that through the lens of the kind of hellfire and brimstone Baptist preachers have a hard-earned, bad reputation for doesn’t really help because our brains weren’t built to process eternity. So, when you tell someone that their eternal destiny is at stake if they don’t get right with God, their eyes just kind of glaze over, and they tune you out. What Jesus is trying to help us understand here is that while, yes, being separated from God eternally is a really big deal, being separated from God here and now is pretty awful too. You don’t want to be separated from the only source of life and goodness in the universe for any time more than you already have. It’s a really, really big deal. 

The next topic Jesus addresses is divorce. The truth is that our culture is a great deal more lackadaisical about divorce than is good for us. Divorce rates are down some, but that’s just because marriage rates are down a lot. Nothing about this is good for us. If you are a follower of Jesus, one of the very best things you can do for yourself and the world—unless God has given you the high and noble calling to celibate singleness (and just so we’re clear, the Scriptures don’t envision any other kind of singleness)—is to get married young, have lots of kids, and raise your family in the church. 

The Scriptures make clear that God is not a fan of divorce, and that His thoughts about it are a fair bit more radical than ours tend to be. “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a written notice of divorce.’” That was indeed written for them in Deuteronomy 24:1 because otherwise women were getting abused and mistreated by the broader culture…kind of like we too often see today. But God’s intentions for marriage were higher than that. If we want to walk in righteousness before Him, His standard and expectation for marriage is covenantal faithfulness over a lifetime. Anything less than that falls short of His righteousness. “But I tell you, everyone who divorces his wife, except in a case of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” The hits just keep on coming. 

Next, Jesus addresses honesty. Our culture does not consider telling the truth all that big of a deal. Politicians lie to us all the time. They make promises they know they have no ability to keep. We constantly hear about “my truth” and “your truth” as if those are real things which render the need to tell the truth entirely unnecessary. The God we serve is the God of truth, though. Our living in line with what’s true is a function of our willingness to submit to His authority as the foundation of all that is true. But, if you were tempted to think that merely not lying is good enough to meet with the standards of God’s righteousness, think again. We are to be as radically committed to the truth as God is, always remembering that we live in His world and need to adjust ourselves to reality if we want to get along well. 

“Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, ‘You must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord.’ But I tell you, don’t take an oath at all: either by heaven, because it is God’s throne; or by the earth, because it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black. But let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one.” 

How about the principle of justice? “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth.’” Being committed to justice is a good and important thing. But if you are going to measure up to the standards of God’s justice and righteousness, you need to be prepared for the fact that God’s justice doesn’t settle merely for what’s fair. He goes above and beyond to show extravagant love. He wants us to trust Him for ultimate justice. “But I tell you, don’t resist an evildoer. On the contrary, if anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. As for the one who wants to sue you and take away your shirt, let him have your coat as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one who asks you, and don’t turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” 

Now, there’s a lot to unpack there as there has been with all the rest of these statements from Jesus, but as has been the case all along this journey, don’t miss the bigger point. God’s love for us is radical beyond comprehension. He never stops merely with what’s fair. If that was all He sought, we would have long ago all been punished for our sins. The God revealed in the pages of Scripture consistently goes beyond mere fairness to grace and mercy and abundant love and compassion. He does this with everyone…including His enemies. 

And, wouldn’t you know it, look where Jesus lands in the sixth and final statement here. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.” Now, pay attention to where the quotes are there or where the bold text ends depending on the translation you are using. Nowhere in the Law is it written that we should hate our enemies. God never told us that. But He didn’t need to. We knew that just fine on our own. He may have forgotten to include that part, but fear you not, we added it. Because, of course, our enemies must be God’s enemies too since we are doing so well in all of these other categories of righteousness. 

Yet once again Jesus hits us with the fact that the standard is so much higher than we could imagine. “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun [note that’s not the sun, but his sun] to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” God’s common grace is made available to those who love Him and those who hate Him. If we are going to reflect the standards of His righteousness, so must ours also be. 

“For if you love those who love you,” you will be just like everybody else. Of course, if you are just like everybody else, “what reward will you have?” Golfers who shoot just par don’t win trophies. “Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?” Don’t the worst people in the world love their own families? The Nazi officers who spent their days overseeing the murder of innocent Jews by the thousands in the gas chambers went home in the evenings, kissed their wives, ate dinner with their families, and lovingly put their children to bed. Being “as good as Nazi death camp superintendents” isn’t really a standard we want to aim for, right? The standard of God’s righteousness must be higher than that. Indeed it is. 

Okay, before we look at the last verse here, can we take stock of where we are for a second. In spite of the fact that we ended last week with Jesus’ admonition that “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven,” it’s pretty typical to find people who have never darkened the door of the church in their life confidently declare that surely God is going to let them into heaven because they are good people. It is even more typical to find people in the church but who have never really started following Jesus insist they are bound for an eternity in paradise because they go to church regularly and because they do a pretty good job keeping the Ten Commandments. Let’s ask the uncomfortable question here: Is doing something like keeping the Ten Commandments going to get anybody into heaven? Well, Jesus cited two of them here right out of the gate only to go on to explain how simply keeping those two commands didn’t really help us at all in terms of making us sufficiently righteous to meet with God’s standards. The answer to the question is, no, it won’t. 

Now, this doesn’t mean they are totally irrelevant, but if we are looking at the Ten Commandments like they possess any power at all to make us right with God if we would just keep them, we are looking for something we aren’t ever going to find. It’s not that they simply weren’t up to the task God set them to, it’s that they were never meant to be an exhaustive list of what to do to be right with God. They were to be pointers toward God’s incredible ways, and invitations to meditate and reflect on the glorious goodness of God and how our lives can reflect that goodness in everything we do. 

But in order to actually be right with God, we’ve got to meet with His standards. And if last week left you with the impression that His standards are just really high, you didn’t fully grasp what Jesus was saying. Verse 48 here makes the point a little more emphatically. Look at this: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” 

That’s the standard. Anything less than perfect isn’t good enough for God. That’s why your best efforts to make yourself right with God aren’t enough. You’re not perfect. Neither am I. Nobody save Jesus is or ever was. The Law was perfectly capable of making us right with God if we kept it, but because of sin we never kept it. And so, according to Jesus, we were never going to be able to gain access to God’s kingdom by our own effort. So then, what’s left? How is it that we can gain access to the relationship with God He made us for in the beginning? When our effort fails so profoundly given God’s incredibly high standards, what else is there? There is only grace. God’s high standards mean grace is our only option. 

Yet far from this meaning that we are going to have to settle for something less than we could have otherwise experienced if God just hadn’t set the standards so high, this is the best news we could possibly imagine. God’s high standards mean grace is our only option. And because it is, we don’t have to struggle under the burden of earning His approval. Did you ever feel like you had to earn a parent’s approval growing up? If you bore that burden, regardless of the reason, you likely struggled long and hard under a heavy load of guilt and insecurity. Perhaps you still do. The bitterness that causes can eat away at our very souls, making us into something far less than we could be. When God is the parent whose approval we have to earn, all of this gets concentrated down into a thick, bitter, poisonous sludge. Yet God’s high standards mean grace is our only option. 

Have you tried really hard before to be good enough for God for more than just a day or two? After hardly any time at all, that gets exhausting. Ignoring how you would normally respond to that idiot on the road or that stupid person in line behind you or that inconsiderate jerk who has now totally ruined your day in order to respond with gentleness and compassion and mercy and kindness takes an enormous amount of effort. And if you stop giving that effort even for a moment, you start to slide. I know you do because I do too. If effort were the way, most of us wouldn’t ever make it. But effort isn’t the way. Grace is. God’s high standards mean grace is our only option. 

If effort were the way to get ourselves right with God, then at the end of the day, God wouldn’t let us into His kingdom because He’s such a nice guy. He would let us into His kingdom as payment for the services we had rendered Him. But if He owes us entrance into His kingdom, then it’s not really His kingdom at all. It’s ours. Have you seen how we tend to handle our kingdoms in this world? We very consistently make a mess of everything we touch. Plus, a God who owes us something isn’t really a God who is very great. He’s certainly not greater than we are. He’s not worthy of our worship. That kind of a God is little more than a friend who owes us a favor. When things get really bad in this life, that’s not a God we can count on. Fortunately, though, that’s not the God we serve. The God we serve is a God of grace. God’s high standards mean grace is our only option. 

Because there is grace, it doesn’t matter how much you may have blown it in your past. It doesn’t matter how much you feel like you are blowing things in your present. Jesus—God in human flesh—has already paid the price for those things. All of them. No matter what they are. The Jesus who set the standards of God’s righteousness so very high is the same Jesus who would later let Himself be nailed to a Roman cross, allowing Himself to become the ultimate sacrifice to God on our behalf to meet those standards. He sacrificed His life so we don’t have to but He didn’t stay dead. On the third day He rose from the grave and now extends the grace of a right standing before God to all those who are willing to accept Him for who He is. He earned the standard by keeping the Law, He simply shares with us the fruits of His labor. That’s grace. And God’s high standards mean grace is our only option. 

If you want to experience this incredible gift, all you have to do is to embrace what Jesus has already made available through His death and resurrection. When you do, all the things that are separating you from God will be covered by His sacrifice on your behalf. Not only that, when you stumble along the way as you follow Him toward His kingdom, He will be there with that same grace to pick you back up, dust you off, and help you get back on track. More than even that, He will help you start walking with more wisdom and humble confidence over time so that you don’t stumble as often and can even help the people around you start to do the same. All of that because of grace. God’s high standards mean grace is our only option. That really is the best news ever. May you embrace this grace and receive the life that is truly life.