Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
Law and grace
Sunday, 18 June 2006
Last week, we started looking at the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew's gospel. We saw in the Beatitudes the definition of those who belong to God's Kingdom and we looked at what it means for us as Christians to be salt and light in the world.
This morning we're looking at the relationship between the Christian and the law of God. We saw last week that we are called upon by Jesus to “let our lights so shine before men that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father who is in heaven.” In the bible Righteousness means obeying God's law. Good deeds are deeds done in accordance with God's law. We're called upon to be righteous, to do good deeds, to obey God's law, and this passage reinforces what the rest of the bible is saying. If you love me, says God, you will obey my commandments.
The mistake made by many people is the one of putting the cart before the horse. Most people, if you ask them what is a Christian, will tell you something to do with being good, loving your neighbor, going to church, reading the bible , helping old ladies across the street, all that sort of stuff. But that's the cart, not the horse. That's how Christians are called upon to behave, but it's not what makes them Christians in the first place. What makes you a Christian, a member of God's family, is having faith in Jesus Christ, trusting in him alone for the forgiveness of your sins and your hope of eternal life.
A Christian is not primarily a good person. He or she is first and foremost a forgiven person. Only after he has received that forgiveness and become one of God's people does he start pursuing righteousness. Forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ is the horse, righteousness is the cart that follows. Being good doesn't get you to heaven. Faith does. Forgiveness does. But being good is what those who are going to heaven are called to do and we are good by obeying God's law. As the Apostle Paul put it in Ephesians 2:8-10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
This being good, this righteousness does not come from writing down every last law, commandment, instruction, precept, rule or regulation given by God in the bible, and then trying with all your might to live by them so that you become good by your own efforts. It's an obedience that, rather than being wider in scope than this is deeper in meaning. When Jesus came on the scene, there were a couple of groups of very religious people called the scribes and the Pharisees. They'd worked out that the law of God contained 248 commandments, things you must do, and 365 prohibitions, things you mustn’t do. They actually tried to make themselves OK with God by trying to keep every last one of these laws. Of course they never really succeeded, but instead of asking God to forgive them when they blew it, they went around telling people how marvelous they were for keeping much more of the than anyone else.
And Jesus came on the scene and in their view trampled all over the law of God. He didn't keep all their 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions, and they accused him of being a sinner, a law breaker, deserving of death. But Jesus said, 'I haven't come to do away with the Law. I've come to fulfill the law.' I haven't come to help people do a better job of obeying all the rules and regulations. I've come to give people freedom from the penalty of the law and to give them the power to really live the way God wants them to live. Not by doing away with the Law, but by dying for them to pay the penalty they deserve for breaking the laws and giving them the power of my Spirit, not just to obey the letter of the law , which is what the Pharisees tried to do, but to actually be the embodiment of the law, to live it, deep down, to have not just a superficial righteousness, but a true righteousness that comes from the heart.
Being a Christian is not an external formal obedience or conformity to the Christian code of conduct. Being a Christian is living as one of God's children through faith in Jesus Christ. Everything else is an expression of this new life. A Christian’s righteousness is a righteousness from the heart.
Through the prophet Jeremiah God said 'I will put my law within them, I will write it upon their hearts'.
Jesus then gives 6 examples of how this internalizing of the law of God works. Six times he starts off "you have heard that it was said" and then quotes one of the commandments or laws from the Old Testament that the scribes and Pharisees loved so much, but six times he continues saying "but I tell you" and then applies the law even more rigorously than the scribes and the Pharisees, thus deepening the Law.
In the first example he extends the command not to murder, to include not to be angry. Now there are 2 common misconceptions here. Firstly the bible does not anywhere give the command "you shall not kill". It is always "you shall not murder". And in fact the laws given in the book of Deuteronomy describe the circumstances in which it is proper to kill the person who has broken certain of God's laws and to kill the enemies of God's people. You cannot support the abolition of the death penalty nor unconditional pacifism by appealing to the commandment mistranslated as "thou shalt not kill".
The second misconception is that all anger is as bad as murder. So many people kid themselves that as good Christians they should never get angry and so deny their emotions to themselves and end up on Valium, or on the psychologists couch or in some sort of neurotic or psychotic behaviour. But just as murder is terrible and the murderer must be dealt with, so is malicious anger and insult. Jesus is saying don't wait. If you're angry deal with it straight away. Admit it to yourself and make amends with your brother or sister against whom your anger is directed. Ask their forgiveness for your sin against them for be assured that only rarely will your anger be righteous, but usually your anger comes from within yourself rather than from what has been done to you.
Incidentally the Aramaic word "raca" was a nasty swearword and none of us here need to know its meaning. After all we have enough trouble with the swear words in our own language without learning others.
The second example refers to adultery, which is extended by Jesus to include lust. It's not just actual illicit sex that is forbidden by God it is every form of sexual immorality. And righteousness in this area requires the control of the eyes and the mind and the body. Jesus uses the rather dramatic hyperbolic injunction to pluck out the eye that offends, or cut off the hand or the foot. What he means is if you eyes cause you to sin, then don't look! If your hand causes you to sin, don't touch! If you feet lead you into temptation, don't go to those places!
Behave in these situations as though you have no eyes, no hands or no feet. Bring your body under control. How can we expect to be righteous if our feet take us to the pornographic films, our hands handle the literature and our eyes feast on the pictures. If we deliberately put ourselves in the path of temptation, then tempted we will be. If we deliberately minimize the opportunities for temptation we help ourselves to resist it.
The next example given by Jesus concerns divorce. Now I don't want to open up the whole can of worms on the subject of divorce and remarriage this morning. If you have particular concerns in this area I’m happy to speak to you privately about it. Boy, talk about passing the Buck. Let's sum it up by saying the law allows divorce under certain circumstances, the law being here either the biblical Law or even the Family Law act of Australia. Jesus is saying that God's standard is absolute marital fidelity. The realities of the hardness of our hearts may lead to divorce but the standard remains.
The next example concerns the trustworthiness of our word, if your word is not trustworthy no amount of oath taking will make it more reliable and if your word is trustworthy no amount of oath taking will make it more reliable.
The next example of passive non-retaliation is one of the hardest for us to keep. Retribution is an important aspect of judicial law and God promises that the sinner will be punished. But this law belongs in the courts. In our personal relationships, the law that matters is the law of love. We should be responding to people on the basis of love not revenge. We tend to say to ourselves "He struck me therefore I have the right to strike him back" Jesus says "He struck me; how should I respond so that God's love is shown to him."
Now we may well decide that to strike the offender is the best way to show God's love, striking him so that he will learn that he can't go around striking other people and so saving him from a life of violence and perhaps the legal retribution of society. But our motive must be love, not personal revenge.
This leads into the final example which is love for our enemies. As Christians, having received the full benefits of the love of God, there is no-one that we are not required to love. We are stand out from the non-Christians around us in that our love extends not just to our families & our friends but also to our enemies.
The second great commandment is to love our neighbour as ourselves. Our neighbour is not just the guy who lives next door. Our neighbour is anyone who isn't ourselves.
Jesus concludes these examples by restating the call to righteousness. “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.” Not perfection by rigorously following a set of rules but perfection by having a pure heart. Forgiven by God, cleansed by the death of Christ, and motivated by God's love.
Let us pray.