Beyond the Rules

Text: Matthew 5:13-20

Focus: Righteousness

Function: To help people live by the law of love

¹³“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

¹⁴“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

¹⁷“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks 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. ²⁰For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I guess today is more of a teaching than a preaching of the passage.

For some reason we keep hitting on texts that have been “Journey passages” to me as they have changed my perspective on religion in light of the teachings of Jesus.

This passage discusses who is the least and who is the greatest in the kingdom of God.

I have to tell you that this is another one of those passages that I got wrong for a few years at the beginning of my ministry.

I believed for a while that perhaps the most Christian celebrations we could experience would be recreations of the Ancient Jewish festivals since they were the only ones proscribed in the scriptures.

Now, we, as Brethren, take as our only creed the entire New Testament. And we distinctly leave out the Old Testament since it actually refers to the Old Covenant and we are now living in the New Testament, or the New Covenant that Jesus came to establish.

And I got it wrong from this perspective, I was trying to apply biblical literalism to something that Jesus was speaking about metaphorically.

One of the first things the Holy does is tell Peter that the OT law about clean and unclean foods is no longer valid and therefore, he should interpret that to mean that union with Gentiles, eliminating our evolutionary tendency toward the fear that has lead to racism, was a major part of the reconciliation that Jesus brought when He fulfilled the law, and finished it, on the cross.

On the cross, Jesus destroyed the law and the passage, not one jot or tittle until all is fulfilled was accomplished on the cross of Christ.

And here I was, in my zeal for God, trying to rebuild what Jesus destroyed on the cross.

So, She, the Holy Spirit delivered me from fundamentalism and legalism into the freedom that Jesus wants us to live in.

And it is defined in the last verse of our text.

Jesus said, Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and Sadducees, then you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

That sounds like a full and tall bill to fill. How do we reconcile that statement with the promise from Jesus that His yoke is easy and His burden is light?

Well we have to because the same author of this verse is the same author who quoted Jesus saying that the yoke is easy.

Well, first off. Theologically, as I mentioned, the law was fulfilled on the cross. For us believers who follow Jesus by the way we live our lives, the law no longer applies to us. At least, that is what Brother Paul says in the first letter to Timothy.

And here the Holy Spirit was, faithful to me to give up the pride of trying to be self righteous, so that I could truly follow Christ.

Secondly, is the way we translate righteous. It shows up in verse 20. And sadly, Brian McLaren points out that this is a phenomena in English Translations only, the Greek word Diakonos, the word for justice, is translated almost exclusively as righteous in English translations.

If you look up the verse in Bible Hub, you find a very interesting, and most accurate according to the translations in other languages, where from the Original Arabic, which is what Matthew was written in, the word is translated as justice.

And that is what Jesus meant. Unless your justice exceeds that of the Pharisees and Sadducees… He is telling them that they need to rise above a salvation that merely justifies itself by law or creed and is done by the works involved.

Many times Jesus points out the hypocrisy of the wealthy religious folks who justify taking away the houses of widows and orphans because on the outside they have followed what they interpret to be the letter of the law.

And the difference between translating it Justice as opposed to righteous is that one is a state of being. A righteous person is a person who believes. A just person is one who performs.

The way we use righteous to mean “a believer” has been used to excuse a failure to love our neighbor as ourselves. Believing does not ensure just actions. And Jesus is saying that unless you are truly just in your actions, you cannot be saved.

I remember a Cable New Analyst decrying the Pope’s message when he visited. The Pope preached Matthew 25 and that the righteous are the just people who clothe the poor, feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, as opposed to those who refuse the least of these. The Pope prophetically proclaimed the message and told them that those who denied the least of these were denied the kingdom of God.

And against credibility, using anger as a prop so that people wouldn’t actually hear the message the news caster was proclaiming said something like, “He should not preach justice, he should tell us how to be saved.”

It was incredulous because the Pope was quoting Jesus on how to be saved when Jesus said, I was hungry and your fed me, I was naked and your clothed me, I was sick and in prison and you visited me, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, as much as you have done this for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me.”

Jesus Himself told us how to be saved, DO THE WORKS OF JUSTICE.

The Greek Word Diakonos, justice, has its roots in the name of the Greek God of Justice, Dike. And the preponderance of literature from those early years translated the word as justice and as I mentioned, nearly every other language in current translations use justice.

The missed translation, I believe, comes from the King James Version, I love the poetry of it, but the version uses the term to mean “professors of Jesus” rather than followers of the Christ who died because He denied the very political systems that divide us today.

And it is a sin to say that all we have to do is merely believe. Jesus expects our righteousness to go beyond the rule that all we have to do is say the right thing and we are considered righteous in spite of our actions.

Our actions prove that we are just people and we embrace as the gospel of Christ the term Justice.

Like the Prophet Amos said, God isn’t so concerned about singing songs to Him as much as us ensuring that Justice flows down like a river, especially Social Justice.

There is a difference between Justice and Social Justice. It was the worldly “Justice” of the State of Rome over Israel that executed the Lord of Glory. And they killed Him for His message of social justice.

Don’t confuse Social Justice with Socialism. There is only a similarity in the way they sound.

Social justice is continuing the mission that Jesus set out on in the power of the Holy Spirit so that the world can be transformed into a place where the least of these can have a chance to survive.

And if our righteousness is to qualify, then it needs to be exemplified by the just acts that we do.

And we do them here at Painter Creek. For those that don’t know, we support the prisoners in a very real way through your support of me in Kairos.

So let us finish with the thought that the Holy Spirit is with us in order to make us thrive. Maybe we can spend the next hour discussing ways to impact our own community with the needs that they have.