If your experience was anything like mine as a young Christian, your enthusiasm for the life of the disciple quickly waned when you read or heard lessons such as the one before us today.
We launched out on the adventure of following Jesus. In him we discovered a faith that took us beyond ourselves, our lack of purpose, our foolishness, and our destructive acts. In him we found a life worth living, something beyond the superficial, the self-centeredness, a constructive alternative to wasting our time in pointless entertainment and empty pleasure-seeking.
Then we hit the wall when we discovered the demands that he makes of his followers.
These demands our couched in the language of Old Testament law, otherwise known as the Law of Moses, which confronts us today.
And that makes sense, because Matthew wants us to see Jesus as the new Moses. This connection between Moses and Jesus is reflected in how Matthew’s Gospel is organized. The story line follows very closely that of Mark with one major exception: Inserted in Matthew’s narrative are five discrete sections containing Jesus’ teaching.
Bible students see the number “5” as significant here. Just as there five books of the Law or Torah, of which Moses is the author, so there are five units of teaching, of which Jesus is the teacher.
In this regard, they also see the fact that Jesus begins his teaching on a mountainside as significant. Just as Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive from God the two tablets of the Law, the revelation of God’s will for the covenant people, so Jesus goes up a mountain to impart an authoritative interpretation of the Law of Moses to his disciples.
So then, it is clear that Matthew wanted to stress the continuity between Moses and Jesus. His first readers were Jewish. I’m sure what was going on in their minds is: “If I believe in Jesus, am I breaking with the God of my fathers?” Matthew’s Gospel consists in one long emphatic “no!” Jesus does not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17). Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is fulfilled (Matt. 5:18), as we heard last time.
When we hear the term “law” or “Law of Moses” we think of the Ten Commandments. Indeed, law is often used as shorthand for the Ten Commandments.
Two of them make an appearance in our lesson: “Thou shalt not murder” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
Jesus makes two more references to law. Neither of them are found in the Ten Commandments, but a part of the Mosaic code. ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce’ and ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’
It occurs to me that our attitude towards law changes as we age, is it not the case? When we are young, we chafe against law. We find it binding and restrictive, even suffocating. It is a yoke that we want to throw off.
That no doubt explains, at least in part, why so many young people leave the church after they move out on their own. Growing up, they may have experienced or witnessed religion as an oppressive moral code. They may have received the impression that religion is no more than an elaborate system of “do’s” and “don’ts.” As such, it stifles freedom, inhibits personal growth, and frustrates the drives. At least that is how they see it.
For that reason, it is exhilarating to be out from under the demands of the law, to live on our own terms, to be our own law. The tragic irony, of course, is that total moral autonomy often leads to unanticipated new bondages that are just as oppressive.
But then we grow older, and hopefully wiser. We find in ourselves a new appreciation for law. We look around us and are distressed to see moral anarchy. We want less chaos, and more order. We have lived long enough to see the destructive effects of lawlessness in our communities, if not in our own families or even in ourselves.
That is why it is usually people of a certain age who demand that the Ten Commandments be conspicuously displayed in public places, in courts of law and school classrooms.
That is why some parents have an interest in sending their kids to Sunday school, or at least Vacation Bible School. They are drawn to Jesus because he teaches moral precepts and commandments that provide good healthy boundaries for their children. Childhood and adolescence are the time for learning about morals. At least that is how they see it.
There was an interesting sociological study done in France several years ago. According to this study, there is an inverse relationship, at least at the extremes, between one’s lifestyle in youth and one’s political stance later in life. Those who lived a debauched life of sexual promiscuity when young tended to be hardline conservatives when old.
When we are older, we want the reassurance that there is justice in the world, because we have seen times when it seemed totally absent. We want to know that there is standard of right and wrong, that there is one who serves to guarantee that standard, if not in this life, then in the next one.
Indeed, if you have studied philosophy, then you know that that was the basis for Immanuel Kant’s argument for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. For this great eighteenth-century German philosopher, the moral law must be vindicated. The demands of justice must be satisfied. It is clear that this happens only imperfectly if at all in this world. Therefore, there must be a world after this one where the good are rewarded and the evil are punished by a just God, the guarantor of the law.
But these are general observations. And the gospel is concerned about us who believe. What role does law play for people of faith, for the disciples of Jesus? What is the relationship of Christians to the law?
At first glance, it may appear straightforward. Do not murder? Do not commit adultery? No problem. These are commandments that I have kept from my youth. I have never, in the flesh, at a particular time and place, taken the life of another human being. And I have never, in the flesh, at a particular time, and place, slept with another man’s wife (or another woman’s husband).
But wait. The fact that I have never committed murder does not mean that I have thereby kept this commandment. If by my actions, I belittle or insult or hate another person, I am indeed breaking the commandment. We can say that in God’s eyes, I am guilty of murder.
And the fact that I have never committed adultery does not mean that I have thereby kept this commandment. If I have looked lustfully at another woman, I am indeed breaking the commandment. We can say that in God’s eyes, I am guilty of adultery.
This is the teaching of Jesus. “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”
Bible students tell us that in this series of moves Jesus is radicalizing the commandments. By this they mean that he’s going to the very root from which the act originates. That is to say, he is going from the outer world where the evil deed is committed into the inner world where all evil begins: the heart. In his interpretation of the Law of Moses, Jesus teaches that God sees not only how we act, but also why we act; not only what we actually do, but also what we desire to do in our hearts.
According to Jesus, when God forbids murder, he teaches us that he hates the root of murder: anger, hatred and vengefulness. In God’s sight, all such are disguised forms of murder. Likewise, when God forbids adultery, he teaches that he hates the root of adultery: lust and passion. In God’s sight, these are disguised forms of adultery.
Now this sets a very high bar. In this perspective, it appears impossible for us to avoid breaking the commandment. Who among us has not expressed anger, or felt envy or hatred toward another, and even continues to do so? Who among us has not let our look at an attractive man or woman linger a little too long, which led to fantasizing about him or her later?
Someone may answer: “we may be down, but not for the count. We just pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try harder.” God will see that we are sincerely trying, and will give us an “A” for effort.
But the law comes to us as sheer demand, rigorous, unrelenting and uncompromising. We soon realize that no one can meet this demand perfectly, no matter how hard we try, and that there is really no gospel here. We hit the wall.
What are we to make of all this? We can expand the scope of our consideration by appealing to the Reformers. The Reformers taught that the law has one function prior to our conversion to faith in Christ. They called this function the pedagogical use of the law. By this they indicated that the law shows sinners, like us, our inability to keep the law’s demands.
Indeed, I would not have known sin except through the law, according to the Apostle Paul (Rom. 7:7). The Heidelberg Catechism has this use in view in when it asks in (3): “How do you come to know your misery? The law of God tells me.”
Only when emptied of the confidence in our own ability to meet the demands of the law are we in a position to accept God’s free offer of grace in Jesus Christ. John Calvin notes: “the function of the law is to uncover the disease, but it gives no hope of its cure.” But for this reason, it drives us to Christ.
This is consistent with what the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians: the law is a tutor that leads us to Christ (Gal. 3:24).
This is why Martin Luther always insisted that law is necessary to gospel. How can I see a need for a savior, unless I see also the sins that the law shows me? Indeed, Luther sees these two things together, “law” and “gospel” as the interpretive key that unlocks the meaning of the entire Bible. For “law” is found in both Old and New Testaments, as is “Gospel.” The skillful interpreter is the one who is able to discern which is which, and properly relate the one to the other, according to Luther.
But if law is necessary to gospel, so gospel is necessary to law. Here we arrive at what the Reformers called the third use of the law, the use privileged by John Calvin and the Presbyterians. I suggest that we can grasp its meaning if we use a prophecy in Jeremiah as our starting point. Jeremiah foretold a time when God would make a new covenant with the people of Israel. “This is the covenant I will make the with the house of Israel in those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people…For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:33-34).
The New Testament sees this prophecy as being fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The good news is that if you believe in Jesus Christ, then your sins are forgiven, and the Spirit of Christ lives in you. He transforms and renews you from within, so that your inside and your outside begin to converge more and more.
The Psalmist declares: “Oh, how I love your law. On it I meditate it day and night” (Ps. 119:97). But apart from the Spirit of Christ, no one can ever say this. Presented with a choice between life and death, blessings and curses, the sinful, rebellious heart opts for death and curses. Indeed, the entire history of Israel recounted for us in the Old Testament illustrates and confirms for us this truth.
But if the Spirit of Christ lives in us, the law no longer serves to judge and condemn us, but to instruct and guide us. This then is how the Reformers understood the third use of the law. For the disciples of Jesus, the law serves as a guide to God’s will, which we increasingly desire to obey, thanks to presence and power of the Holy Spirit within us. This is not to say that this desire is constant. We struggle with mistrust and rebellion and sin until the day of our deaths. But that desire is nevertheless there, and it enables us to understand and affirm what Jesus is teaching us about the sixth and seventh commandments in our gospel lesson.
To conclude, let us return to the example of the parents and their children in light of what the Reformers have taught us. The parents are not mistaken in their assumption that Jesus imparts profound moral teaching. No one can fail to be impressed by the content of the verses we have considered this evening. But they are mistaken if they assume that this can mean anything else but judgment and condemnation in the absence of the rest of the message of the gospel. For Jesus does not want only to teach us. He wants to remake us. Amen.