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INJ
St Matthew 5:20-26
'Exceeding Righteousness'
Divine Service
The 6th Sunday after Trinity Sunday | June 29, 2008
Dear Saints,
The trick to being a good legalist is this, you want to make the rules so that they are easy enough so that you can keep them, but hard enough so that hardly anyone else can. That way the rules will highlight how good you are, and how bad everyone else is. You want people to see you keeping these rules you've got and say, “Wow, that's impressive. They sure are holy, etc.”
In the catechism we all learned that there are three functions of the law, the curb, mirror and guide, but the legalist only has one use: the measuring stick, the law shows the keepers high level of goodness. We say that the law shows our sin. For the legalist, the law shows their righteousness.
You see the trick here is to convince everyone around that you've got a higher standard, a more rigorous law, a stricter interpretation of God's commandments, but what you've really done is softened the law and made it easier. The law is doable, keepable, manageable.
The Pharisees were expert legalists. They had it down. In fact, they were so good at their game that they have us convinced today. The Pharisees had books full of laws and rules and codes and traditions and regulations about every little detail of daily life: what you can wear and when you can wear it, and what you can eat, and how you eat, and when you eat and when you don't, and with whom, and what to do before and after meal, and what you say. They had rules about where you could go and who you could go with and how you should work and sleep and every thing else.
And we look at all theses laws and we think (and this is how we know that the Pharisees were such good legalists), we think, “Who could do it all? I couldn't. They are much more righteous than I am.” And at that, they've got you. They've done it. They have accomplished the goal of their legalism by exalting themselves and humbled you.
The legalist takes the law and uses it for their own purposes, a measuring stick, it shows how much better they are than you. Or, if you are a legalist, then you are using the law to show how much better you are than all of us.
Jesus is not a legalist. He is, in fact, the anti-legalist.
And listen, now, to the first verse of our Gospel text, with this legalism in mind. Jesus is standing there in the middle of the world's greatest legalists who had everyone convinced of their own abounding righteousness. And Jesus says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” [Matthew 5:20]
Now we can imagine what the people's reaction was, and the Pharisees. The crowds must have thought, “What! More righteous than the Pharisees! I can't even imagine approaching that kind of righteousness. If you have to be that good, who can get into heaven, certainly not me.” And then the Pharisees would have thought, “Who is this guy and what is He talking about? Is He going to out Pharisee us? Is He bring a more legalistic legalism?”
But what Jesus is doing is wrenching the law out of the hands of the Pharisees, of the legalists. Those who would misuse the law will now have it used against them. Jesus is going to take up the law and go all the way with it. He is going to show how, and listen, Jesus is showing how the Pharisees had made the law to easy.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Now that does it. Before Jesus says this we might have asked the Pharisees, “Have you murdered anyone?” And they would have answered, “No, of course not.” If you would have asked the crowd, “Have you kept the Fifth Commandment?” They would have answered, “Yes, I've never murdered.” If fact, if I were to ask you all, “Are you a murderer?” you might answer, “No, of course not.”
But we hear Jesus, when He tells us that if we call our brother a fool, if we insult him, if we are angry with them, then we've broken the fifth commandment, we've murdered them.
Jesus goes on to do the same thing with the sixth commandment, You shall not commit adultery. There you are, having been faithful to your spouse, thinking you've kept the sixth commandment, when Jesus says, “Whoever looks at a woman with lust has committed adultery with her in his heart.”
And this goes all the way through to all of the commandments, if you think that you've kept them, your wrong.
Now our minds say, “Come now, this is going a bit too far. It's one thing to hit a man on the head with a rock, it's another thing to be angry with him.” We think that because we're legalists, because we use the law to measure things up, to see how good we're doing, to justify ourselves and our sin and to make sure we feel good about how we live.
But Jesus won't have it. He brings the law in its full force with it's intended purpose: to accuse us of our sin, of our failure. The law comes and shows us our own desperate wickedness. It tears down the illusion of our own self-righteousness. It brings an end to all legalism. The law lays us low and humbles us and kills us.
The law says, “I don't care what you think of yourself. If you are proud of how good you are or despairing over your sin, I come with a true judgment: You are a poor, miserable sinner. You have murdered and committed adultery and stolen and cursed and blasphemed and coveted and worshiped idols and slandered your neighbor and your God, and for all of this you deserve hell fire.”
So the law is swung like a hammer to demolish us. There is no righteousness to be found in the law. Only curses. Only death.
How, then, do we have righteousness? How do we obtain that exceeding righteousness that Jesus talks about, “Unless you righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”? This is a righteousness that is given apart from the law, independent of your own goodness and your own failures. This exceeding righteousness is the righteousness of Christ, imputed to you through faith.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. [Romans 3:21-25]
You and I, dear saints, who stand condemned by the law in every part, also stand absolved by Jesus, in every way. The law that was aimed at us crushed Jesus instead, and now His perfect keeping of the law is given to us. You are His righteous ones, His saints, His forgiven children. You have that righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees, even the righteousness of Jesus Himself. And by His righteousness, given to you, you shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.
May God keep us in the righteousness of Christ. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO