Exodus 20:1-17; Romans 6:1-11; St Matthew 5:17-26
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Unless your righteousness abounds more greatly that the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Lord Jesus here tells us the standard by which we will be judged: not what your neighbors think about you, not what your family thinks about you, not what your country things about you, not even what your church thinks about you or what you think about yourself. Did you keep the commandments? Then you will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Did you break one commandment, even the littlest, the least of the commandments? Then, when the kingdom of heaven is ushered in, you will be called the least.
This righteousness is very different from what we call civil righteousness. Not in quantity, but in quality. You don’t have to be a Christian to be a good person in the world. Pay your taxes, drive courteously, give money to charity, serve your country, be helpful, don’t tell lies. Some people are nicer than others. They do more for society than others. Quite shamefully, many such people aren’t Christians while the Christians sit quietly on the sidelines. But this is the stuff of creation, of the First Article of the Creed, and what the Small Catechism calls the first use of the Law, the curb.
But that’s not what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel lesson when He talks about your righteousness. He’s not talking about how well behaved you are in the world; something the scribes and Pharisees had in spades. Your righteousness needs to abound even more greatly than theirs.
Jesus is talking about something much deeper than charity and community service. He’s concerned about the condition of your heart before God. This is the righteousness that not only does not murder, but never even gets angry. Have you ever been critical of what other people are doing, saying? Do you see somebody on the news, on Twitter or Facebook, and say, “What a fool!”? The righteousness that God requires is the perfect righteousness of the heart. And the standard declares: Whoever says, “You fool!” will be liable to the hell of fire.
Is your memory filled with such incidents? The times when you’ve called someone a fool and the times when they’ve said it to you? These memories burn through our soul worse than the acid burns in your belly. Memories of sin haunt us. In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks about the spiritual power of memories to accuse us. If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift.
The initial context here are the sacrifices of the Jerusalem Temple under the old covenant. Now a great mistake often made is looking at these sacrifices as human work to appease God. As divine imperatives kept to earn His favor. This is not entirely accurate. God does require the shedding of blood for the payment of sins, as the Epistle to the Hebrews acknowledges: Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb 9:22). But a comprehensive look at God’s Word reveals that God Himself rescued His people from slavery. God Himself brought them into the land of Israel. God Himself gave them the animals for sacrifice. Only consider the Old Testament reading from today. The Decalogue does not actually begin with the First Commandment, You shall have no other gods, as an imperative command. Rather, it begins: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You will have no other gods before Me. Its hard to hear in the nuance of the English, but this is not only an imperative, a command, but is also an indicative, a declaration.
The ten plagues, the Passover, the Exodus, the drowning of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, these are all prologue to the Decalogue, the Ten Words or Commandments of God. He rescued them. He saved them. He is their God. They are His people. And as His people, this is how they ought to live. They bring animals to the Temple for sacrifice, along with other offerings at particular occasions, such as thanksgiving for recovery from sickness or at the birth of a child. These sacrifices of prayer and praise and thanksgiving we in response to the loving kindness and salvific action of the Lord their God. See the difference?
Now here’s the amazing thing: instead of consuming the offering on the altar, God turns around and gives it back to the people to eat, along with a portion for the priest. In this sacred meal, often of grilled meat, bread, and wine, God declared His peace, that He was reconciled with His people.
This is the initial context. You’ve probably already guessed at the secondary application. Already in the Church at the time of Matthew’s writing this text was understood in relation to the Eucharist. Consider this passage from an Early Church catechism called the Didache: And on the Lord’s own day, gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, confess your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may be not be defiled” (14:2).
Here’s the important application: you cannot be at peace with God while in a state of hostility with your neighbor. That’s why Jesus says, If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift. If you aren’t reconciled to your neighbor, there is no reconciliation between you and God. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all (Rm 12:18).
Yet such has not been the case. Sins hang in the memory. Sins that we’ve committed and sins that others have committed against us.
There’s only one way to deal with them, you heard it in the Didache: confession. If possible, confess to the person you’ve wronged. Ask for peace. Be reconciled. And if you’re the one who has been wronged, offer peace, sincerely. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:17-18). As long as those sins hang in the memory, they work like a cancer, making you more bitter and less holy. So do it quickly. Jesus says, without delay. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
It’s better to settle out of court than go to trial. That’s good practical advice. But like the greater righteousness, something more is at work here. God is the Judge and you don’t want your case turned over to Him on the basis of merits. There is no good news here in the instruction of Jesus. Antinomians beware. We stand at the foot of the mount, like Israel before Sinai, and tremble in fear. Our righteousness is never good enough before God. That’s why it’s important to little to the Sermon on the Mount - the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of Matthew - with these introductory words in your ears: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. The righteousness that the Father demands, the Son fulfills. The indicatives of the Law describes the perfect righteousness of Jesus.
We can even break this down into two forms of righteousness. Jesus has an active righteousness, where He does everything the Law requires: Jesus alone, among all men, loves God with all of His heart, soul, mind and strength; and Jesus alone among men loves His neighbor as Himself. That’s His active righteousness. Jesus keeps the commandments. He is the One called great in the kingdom of heaven.
But in addition to this active righteousness of Jesus He has a passive righteousness, where He suffers and endures every punishment of the Law that you and I deserve. So the demand of the Law is settled and the adversary will not deliver you to the Judge, for Jesus has already been delivered to the Judge for you. It is written, In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses again them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. For our sake He made Him to be Sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:19, 21).
Now we, who have come here to the Divine Service are indeed divinely served; that is, God in Christ serves us. Our righteousness before God is passive righteousness. We receive His mercy freely, without any merit or worthiness in us. You share passively in the death defying death of Jesus Christ your righteousness through Holy Baptism. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death.
But it doesn’t stop there. The righteousness we passively receive from the Father by faith in His Son is lived out by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, as we, are raised with Him to walk in newness of life, with a new kind of righteousness. This new righteousness of the disciples of Jesus is a busy inductive thing, rejoicing to be a loving husband, a submissive wife, a dutiful citizen, an obedient children, a caring parent, and on and on according to your vocations.
The Christian doesn’t do good things under the threat of the Law, but precisely because the threat of the Law has been removed. The first Psalm leads the way: in Christ you are fruitful trees planted by the streams of Baptism and delight in the Law of the Lord and mediate on it day and night. The new desire rising up in the Christian says, “I will no longer call my neighbor a fool. I will no more look at my neighbor’s wife with longing. I will no more bicker about my spouse. I want to be merciful as my Father in heaven is merciful.”
Because we always have the Old Adam in us there will be great struggle. Daily drown him anew in baptismal repentance and forgiveness. Return again and again to the Altar of our Lord’s Reconciliation to receive the gift of His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins in order that you may return again and again to your neighbor for reconciliation. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Unless your righteousness abounds more greatly that the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Lord Jesus here tells us the standard by which we will be judged: not what your neighbors think about you, not what your family thinks about you, not what your country things about you, not even what your church thinks about you or what you think about yourself. Did you keep the commandments? Then you will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Did you break one commandment, even the littlest, the least of the commandments? Then, when the kingdom of heaven is ushered in, you will be called the least.
This righteousness is very different from what we call civil righteousness. Not in quantity, but in quality. You don’t have to be a Christian to be a good person in the world. Pay your taxes, drive courteously, give money to charity, serve your country, be helpful, don’t tell lies. Some people are nicer than others. They do more for society than others. Quite shamefully, many such people aren’t Christians while the Christians sit quietly on the sidelines. But this is the stuff of creation, of the First Article of the Creed, and what the Small Catechism calls the first use of the Law, the curb.
But that’s not what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel lesson when He talks about your righteousness. He’s not talking about how well behaved you are in the world; something the scribes and Pharisees had in spades. Your righteousness needs to abound even more greatly than theirs.
Jesus is talking about something much deeper than charity and community service. He’s concerned about the condition of your heart before God. This is the righteousness that not only does not murder, but never even gets angry. Have you ever been critical of what other people are doing, saying? Do you see somebody on the news, on Twitter or Facebook, and say, “What a fool!”? The righteousness that God requires is the perfect righteousness of the heart. And the standard declares: Whoever says, “You fool!” will be liable to the hell of fire.
Is your memory filled with such incidents? The times when you’ve called someone a fool and the times when they’ve said it to you? These memories burn through our soul worse than the acid burns in your belly. Memories of sin haunt us. In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks about the spiritual power of memories to accuse us. If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift.
The initial context here are the sacrifices of the Jerusalem Temple under the old covenant. Now a great mistake often made is looking at these sacrifices as human work to appease God. As divine imperatives kept to earn His favor. This is not entirely accurate. God does require the shedding of blood for the payment of sins, as the Epistle to the Hebrews acknowledges: Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb 9:22). But a comprehensive look at God’s Word reveals that God Himself rescued His people from slavery. God Himself brought them into the land of Israel. God Himself gave them the animals for sacrifice. Only consider the Old Testament reading from today. The Decalogue does not actually begin with the First Commandment, You shall have no other gods, as an imperative command. Rather, it begins: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You will have no other gods before Me. Its hard to hear in the nuance of the English, but this is not only an imperative, a command, but is also an indicative, a declaration.
The ten plagues, the Passover, the Exodus, the drowning of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, these are all prologue to the Decalogue, the Ten Words or Commandments of God. He rescued them. He saved them. He is their God. They are His people. And as His people, this is how they ought to live. They bring animals to the Temple for sacrifice, along with other offerings at particular occasions, such as thanksgiving for recovery from sickness or at the birth of a child. These sacrifices of prayer and praise and thanksgiving we in response to the loving kindness and salvific action of the Lord their God. See the difference?
Now here’s the amazing thing: instead of consuming the offering on the altar, God turns around and gives it back to the people to eat, along with a portion for the priest. In this sacred meal, often of grilled meat, bread, and wine, God declared His peace, that He was reconciled with His people.
This is the initial context. You’ve probably already guessed at the secondary application. Already in the Church at the time of Matthew’s writing this text was understood in relation to the Eucharist. Consider this passage from an Early Church catechism called the Didache: And on the Lord’s own day, gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, confess your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may be not be defiled” (14:2).
Here’s the important application: you cannot be at peace with God while in a state of hostility with your neighbor. That’s why Jesus says, If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift. If you aren’t reconciled to your neighbor, there is no reconciliation between you and God. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all (Rm 12:18).
Yet such has not been the case. Sins hang in the memory. Sins that we’ve committed and sins that others have committed against us.
There’s only one way to deal with them, you heard it in the Didache: confession. If possible, confess to the person you’ve wronged. Ask for peace. Be reconciled. And if you’re the one who has been wronged, offer peace, sincerely. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:17-18). As long as those sins hang in the memory, they work like a cancer, making you more bitter and less holy. So do it quickly. Jesus says, without delay. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
It’s better to settle out of court than go to trial. That’s good practical advice. But like the greater righteousness, something more is at work here. God is the Judge and you don’t want your case turned over to Him on the basis of merits. There is no good news here in the instruction of Jesus. Antinomians beware. We stand at the foot of the mount, like Israel before Sinai, and tremble in fear. Our righteousness is never good enough before God. That’s why it’s important to little to the Sermon on the Mount - the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of Matthew - with these introductory words in your ears: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. The righteousness that the Father demands, the Son fulfills. The indicatives of the Law describes the perfect righteousness of Jesus.
We can even break this down into two forms of righteousness. Jesus has an active righteousness, where He does everything the Law requires: Jesus alone, among all men, loves God with all of His heart, soul, mind and strength; and Jesus alone among men loves His neighbor as Himself. That’s His active righteousness. Jesus keeps the commandments. He is the One called great in the kingdom of heaven.
But in addition to this active righteousness of Jesus He has a passive righteousness, where He suffers and endures every punishment of the Law that you and I deserve. So the demand of the Law is settled and the adversary will not deliver you to the Judge, for Jesus has already been delivered to the Judge for you. It is written, In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses again them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. For our sake He made Him to be Sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:19, 21).
Now we, who have come here to the Divine Service are indeed divinely served; that is, God in Christ serves us. Our righteousness before God is passive righteousness. We receive His mercy freely, without any merit or worthiness in us. You share passively in the death defying death of Jesus Christ your righteousness through Holy Baptism. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death.
But it doesn’t stop there. The righteousness we passively receive from the Father by faith in His Son is lived out by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, as we, are raised with Him to walk in newness of life, with a new kind of righteousness. This new righteousness of the disciples of Jesus is a busy inductive thing, rejoicing to be a loving husband, a submissive wife, a dutiful citizen, an obedient children, a caring parent, and on and on according to your vocations.
The Christian doesn’t do good things under the threat of the Law, but precisely because the threat of the Law has been removed. The first Psalm leads the way: in Christ you are fruitful trees planted by the streams of Baptism and delight in the Law of the Lord and mediate on it day and night. The new desire rising up in the Christian says, “I will no longer call my neighbor a fool. I will no more look at my neighbor’s wife with longing. I will no more bicker about my spouse. I want to be merciful as my Father in heaven is merciful.”
Because we always have the Old Adam in us there will be great struggle. Daily drown him anew in baptismal repentance and forgiveness. Return again and again to the Altar of our Lord’s Reconciliation to receive the gift of His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins in order that you may return again and again to your neighbor for reconciliation. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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