"For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 5:20
June 2024
Last month we looked at Jesus’ description of his disciples near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount - “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world” (Matthew 13-14). Notice, he doesn’t tell the disciples to be the salt and to be the light. He says you are the salt. You are the light. It is a declaration. It is our identity. If we are followers - learners - of Jesus, then we will impact the world around us. In last month’s newsletter I stole a line from Leif Enger’s novel, I Cheerfully Refuse, to summarize what Jesus is saying: we are to “better the world by being in it.”
In the next section of the Sermon, Jesus explains how we go about bettering the world. He says our righteousness is to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Those are three words we don’t normally use in everyday conversation. Righteousness. Scribes. And Pharisees. So, let’s get some definitions so we can better understand what Jesus is talking about.
Righteousness - is living in right relationships with others; first with God and also with other people. In Matthew 5:20, Jesus is using the word “righteousness” in the sense of living out God’s vision for life - doing right by God and others.
Scribes - The scribes were the Bible teachers. They were educated in Scripture and would have been seen as teachers and experts.
Pharisees - Pharisees were the people who took the Bible very seriously, their desire was to follow God’s laws as closely as they possibly could and they believed everyone else needed to as well. By Jesus’ day this often became overly obsessive about the minor details and missed the larger picture.
Now, if you put these three words together, Jesus is calling his disciples to be better living out God’s vision for life than the teachers and the super-religious would have been. At first glance, this would have sounded impossible. How would people just learning the ways of Jesus live better lives than the experts?
The answer is that the experts did not have as much expertise as they thought. When Jesus says “our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees,” he isn’t saying that we simply have to try harder. The Pharisees tried really hard. The issue wasn’t effort or desire or dedication or even sincerity. The problem was they had missed the heart of the story. So, for example, another time Jesus talks about the Scribes and Pharisees he says:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! (Matthew 23:23-24)
Jesus is declaring that the religious leaders were so committed to following the rules that they even gave 10% of their herbs and spices - your mint and dill and cumin. But the problem is, they had neglected the “weightier matters” like justice and mercy and faith.
He makes a joke to help illustrate the point - it is as if they focus so much on making sure there are no gnats or fruit flies in their drinks and get strainers and make sure there are no small bugs in the tea, but then go on and swallow an entire camel in the process. They obsess about the minute details and miss the big picture.
Now note, Jesus does say you should have followed the former rules (tithing) without neglecting the other rules (working towards justice and mercy). In other words, all the Old Testament laws still matter. Jesus never tells people to stop following the law. In the Sermon on the Mount, he even says, “those who break even the [least] of [the] commandments and teach others to do the same will be considered least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19). Which is why teachers - both back then, and pastors like me today - need to take this so seriously. Jesus’ point is that the laws in the Old Testament pointed to something bigger about God and the world and how to live faithfully.
Living life in the kingdom of God here on earth does require commitment, faithfulness, hardwork and sincerity. But Jesus is saying we need to be committed and faithful to the right things. This requires wisdom. Rules alone can't guide us. The next section of the Sermon on the Mount looks at how we can learn wisdom from the Old Testament laws in ways that even the experts missed. How can we take the wisdom of God’s laws and apply it to the variety of situations we face every day and over the course of our lifetime? That is what we will look at over the next several months.
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