Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must be more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus seems to set the bar for entering the kingdom of heaven pretty high. The scribes and Pharisees were good, upstanding folk. They lived by the Ten Commandments. They didn’t murder. They didn’t commit adultery. They didn’t steal. Many of them voluntarily fasted twice a week and gave tithes of all their possessions, down to the spices in their cabinets. They were aggressive about resting on the Sabbath. This is the righteousness that you have to exceed if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven. And if Jesus’ hearers heard that and thought that was difficult to attain, Jesus raises the bar even higher.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’” The law forbids murdering one’s neighbor and oneself and strictly punishes the one who would take the life of another. The Lord said in Leviticus 24:17, “Whoever kills any man shall surely be put to death.” Most people manage enough outward discipline so that they don’t murder others. But for those who are tempted to murder, the death penalty hunger over their head as a deterrent, coercing compliance with the law. The scribes and Pharisees thought they had fulfilled this commandment as long as they refrained from killing anyone, either because they didn’t want to in the first place or because they wanted to and didn’t. But Jesus takes this understanding of the commandment and shows how shallow it is. “But I say to you,” says Jesus, “that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” There’s more to murder than killing someone. “You shall not murder” is for the whole person, not just their hands. It applies to the lips. Calling someone ‘Raca’ and “You fool”—insulting and reviling them, is to murder with the tongue and deserves the same punishment as if you had killed them in their body. Not only is the hand and tongue to not murder, but the entire person, so that even the malicious anger that leads reviling thoughts, words, and gestures, that holds a grudge, or that burns for revenge, is condemned by this commandment and deserves the same punishment as murder with the hands: death.
After showing us what the commandment forbids, Jesus gives shows us what the commandment requires of us from the heart. “Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” It’s not enough to refrain from murder with the hand, the tongue, and the heart. The heart must be favorably disposed toward one’s brother. If your brother has something against you, the law tells you to go be reconciled to him. It doesn’t say, “Wait until they make the first move because its their problem.” The law commands the disposition of the heart that wants to be reconciled with one’s brother if they have something against us. That’s why if we bring our gift to the altar and realize this, we hit the pause button on our sacrifice, because we understand that the God who wants our worship also wants us to, as much as depends on us, to live peaceable with all men. He also says, “Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny.” When someone has something against you and it isn’t dealt with properly it can only fester and rot until they deliver you the judge. The truly righteous man does not want his brother to have anything against him and goes to his brother to be reconciled. What this commandment requires, in a word, is love, the same thing all the commandments—and the entire law—requires. St. Paul writes in Romans 13:9-10 , “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
This is the righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, because their righteousness isn’t a righteousness of the heart. It’s an external righteousness that is about checking the box—“I didn’t kill anyone today”—rather than heartfelt love for the neighbor. Jesus says as much in Luke 11[:39], “Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness.” Externally appear good but their hearts are full of sinful desires and wicked thoughts. It’s sinful human nature to judge our outward actions and leave the heart as it is. We may not murder anyone, but how often do we hold a grudge. We may not end someone’s life, but how often do we speak belligerently towards others, mock them, and insult them. How often do we say to someone we’re “fine” but inwardly our heart is full of anger and resentment toward them. How often do we know our brother has something against us yet we do not leave our gift at the altar, go to them, and seek to be reconciled to them? As often as we do these things the law prohibits and fail to do those things the law requires, we are in danger of being thrown into the prison of hell fire, where we will by no means get out of there till we have paid the last penny of what we owe to the Righteous Judge.
The righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees isn’t without our reach. We can’t be that righteous because of our sinful nature. But the Lord Jesus is that righteous. He was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin (Heb 4:15). Not just external sins like the Pharisees imagined they were. Jesus is sinless outwardly and inwardly. He lived perfectly righteous outwardly in His words and actions. He lived perfectly righteous, loving God and His neighbor from the heart. He was never angry maliciously, without cause, but when He was angry it was at sin, which He rebuked out of love for the sinner. He never spoke maliciously to others. His harsh rebukes were for the self-righteous and for the repentance. Jesus knew no sin, internally or externally, but thought, spoke, and acted out of true, heartfelt love for His neighbor. St. Peter says He “’committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth’; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2:22-23). He “bore our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24), dying in our place, under the judgment of the Righteous Judge, He paid for all our sins, down to the last penny of the debt that we, by our sins, have incurred. Jesus’ righteousness is the only righteousness by which anyone may enter the kingdom of heaven, for it is the only righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes, pharisees, and any of us of by ourselves.
And He offers that righteousness to you in the gospel and holy baptism. The gospel promises the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake and His perfect righteousness to all who repent and believe. By faith—believing that promise—each day we receive the forgiveness of all our sins and Christ’s perfect righteousness. God the Father sees us as righteous because we believe in His Son, who has paid the full debt of our transgressions. Not only are we declared righteous in God’s sight by faith, but in baptism “we were buried with Him into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” In baptism you were connected to Christ’s death. You were also raised to new life because baptism connects you to Christ’s resurrection! Having died to sin you now live to righteousness. Each day you are to count yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We fight sin in our bodies so we don’t consent to it and let it reign over us. When the flesh wants to be maliciously angry, when it wants to bite back with words, when it wants to murder in the heart, the Holy Spirit reminds us that we died to those things. By daily remembering that we are baptized—forgiven and perfectly righteous in God’s sight—we begin to love our neighbor more and more. We begin to fulfill the commandment, not just not murdering with the hands, the tongue, and the heart, but by loving our brother with our words and deeds because we truly love our brother from the heart. Jesus daily gives us the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees by faith. Let us so live as ones whom have been declared righteous outwardly and inwardly. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
