Matthew 5


The Beatitudes

¹Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ²and he began to teach them saying:
    ³"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
       for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
    ⁴Blessed are those who mourn,
       for they will be comforted.
    ⁵Blessed are the meek,
       for they will inherit the earth.
    ⁶Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
       for they will be filled.
    ⁷Blessed are the merciful,
       for they will be shown mercy.
    ⁸Blessed are the pure in heart,
       for they will see God.
    ⁹Blessed are the peacemakers,
       for they will be called sons of God.
    ¹⁰Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
       for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
¹¹"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Matthew 5:1-12

Explanation:

THE ETHICS OF GOD'S KINGDOM (5-7)
Jesus summons those who would be his followers to radical devotion and radical dependence on God. His followers must be meek, must not retaliate, must go beyond the letter's law to its spirit, must do what is right when only God is looking, must depend on God for their needs and pursue his interests rather than their own, and must leave spiritual measurements of others' hearts to God. In short, true people of the kingdom live for God, not for themselves. (My overall approach to the Sermon on the Mount combines some approaches, but still remains one among many. For a more complete summary of various views on this sermon's message, see, for example, Guelich 1982:14-22; Cranford 1992; Allen 1992.)
Readers should contemplate the message of this sermon. Having summarized Jesus' message as repentance in view of the coming kingdom (4:17), Matthew now collects Jesus' teachings that explain how a repentant person ready for God's rule should live. Only those submitted to God's reign now are truly prepared for the time when he will judge the world and reign there unchallenged. This sermon provides examples of the self-sacrificial ethics of the kingdom, which its citizens must learn to exemplify even in the present world before the rest of the world recognizes that kingdom (6:10).

To be faithful to the text, we must let Jesus' radical demands confront us with all the unnerving force with which they would have struck their first hearers. At the same time, the rest of the Gospel narrative, where Jesus does not repudiate disciples who miserably fail yet repent (for example, 26:31-32), does season the text with grace. Most Jewish people understood God's commandments in the context of grace (E. Sanders 1977; though compare also Thielman 1994:48-68); given Jesus' demands for greater grace in practice (9:13; 12:7; 18:21-35), we must remember that Jesus embraces those who humble themselves, acknowledging God's right to rule, even if in practice they are not yet perfect (5:48). Jesus preached hard to the religiously and socially arrogant, but his words come as comfort to the meek and brokenhearted.

Of course one also needs to read grace in light of the kingdom demands; grace transforms as well as forgives. Jesus is meek and lowly in heart to the broken and heals and restores the needy who seek him; it is the arrogant, the religiously and socially satisfied, against whom Jesus lays the kingdom demands harshly (compare Mt 23).

Although the sermon's structure does not fit some modern outlines, it reflects a consistent pattern. Matthew gathers a variety of Jesus' teachings on related topics that appear in the source he shares with Luke. Ancient writers exercised the freedom to rearrange sayings, often topically; sometimes they also gathered sayings of their teachers into collections. Evidence within the sermon itself suggesting various audiences (5:1; 7:28) may also support the view that the sermon is composite. Scholars debate its precise structure, but 5:17-48, 6:1-18 and 6:19-34 are its largest complete units.



The Setting of Jesus' Sermon (5:1-2)
Various features of the setting contribute to Matthew's portrait of Jesus.
First, "mountain" settings in Matthew are usually significant (17:1; compare 15:29; 28:16; although Moses is not alluded to in 4:8). Many scholars think that Matthew probably recalls Moses' revelation on Mount Sinai (Ex 19:3) here. If so, Jesus' superior revelation also makes him superior to those who "sit in Moses' seat" (Mt 23:2); the One greater than Moses, first encountered in 2:13-20, has begun his mission.

Second, Matthew's depiction of Jesus' teaching is appropriate. That Jesus sat to teach (5:1; compare 13:1-2; 23:2) fits expected patterns of Jewish instruction (see also Lk 4:20). Thus Jesus takes the role of the scribes, but Matthew also indicates that Jesus is greater than the scribes (Mt 7:29).

Finally, Jesus' audience is also relevant to Matthew's point. Jesus' ethics specifically address disciples, but Jesus also invites those who are not disciples to become disciples and live according to the values of God's kingdom. The crowds following Jesus (4:25-5:1) function as at least potential disciples; disciples in the Gospel provide models for later believers (Guelich 1982:53). Matthew explicitly indicates that Jesus taught his disciples (5:1-2) but also that the crowds were present (5:1; 7:28-8:1), implying that Jesus wanted both to hear, calling both to decision (7:24-27; see Guelich 1982:60).



Kingdom Rewards for the Repentant (5:3-9)
If we truly repent in light of the coming kingdom, we will treat our neighbors rightly. No one who has humbled himself or herself before God can act with wanton self-interest in relationships. Those with the faith to await the vindication of the righteous in God's kingdom can afford to be righteous, to relinquish the pursuit of their own rights (5:38-42; compare 1 Cor 9:3-23), because they know the just judge will vindicate them as they seek his ways of justice.
Jesus employs a standard Jewish literary form to express this point, a beatitude, which runs like this: "It will go well with the one who . . . for that one shall receive . . ." ("Fortunate" or "it will be well with" may convey the point better than blessed or "happy.") In this context Jesus' beatitudes mean that it will ultimately be well with those who seek first God's kingdom (Mt 6:33).

Because various themes pervade all or many of Matthew's beatitudes here, the principles are summarized by topic rather than by verse in this section of the commentary. Matthew intends his audience to hear all the beatitudes together (his Gospel would have been read in church assemblies), not for them to be taken piecemeal. What themes emerge from these brief pronouncements of blessing?

Jesus lists promises that pertain to the coming kingdom. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven frames most of this section (5:3, 10). All the blessings listed are blessings of the kingdom time. In the time of the kingdom God will "comfort all who mourn in Zion" (Is 61:2); he will satisfy the hunger and thirst of his people (Mt 8:11; 22:2; 26:29; Is 25:6) as in the first exodus (Deut 6:11; 8:17). God's ultimate mercy will be revealed on the day of judgment (1 Enoch 5:5; 12:6; 92:4; Ps. Sol. 16:15). At that time he will ultimately declare the righteous to be his children (Rev 21:7; Jub. 1:24), as he had to a lesser degree at the first exodus (Ex 4:22). God is technically invisible (1QS 11.20; Jos. Apion 2.191), but in the future the righteous will fully see God (1 Enoch 90:35; ARN 1A).

The blessings he promises come only by God's intervention. Because the future kingdom is in some sense present in Jesus, who provides bread (Mt 14:19-20) and comforts the brokenhearted (14:14; compare Lk 4:18), we participate in the spiritual down payment of these blessings in Christ in the present (see Gal 3:14; Eph 1:3). But such blessings come only to the meek-those who wait on God to fight God's battles.

The blessings of the beatitudes are for a people ready for the kingdom's coming. This passage shows what kingdom-ready people should be like; hence it shows us prerequisites for the kingdom as well as kingdom promises.


First, kingdom people do not try to force God's whole will on a world unprepared for it. Many first-century Jews had begun to think that revolutionary violence was the only adequate response to the violence of oppression they experienced. Matthew's first audience no doubt could recall the bankruptcy of this approach, which led to crushing defeat in the war of A.D. 66-73. But Jesus promises the kingdom not to those who try to force God's hand in their time but to those who patiently and humbly wait for it-the meek, the poor in spirit, the merciful, the peacemakers.


Of course Jesus' demand does not merely challenge the bloodshed of revolution. Peacemakers means not only living at peace but bringing harmony among others; this role requires us to work for reconciliation with spouses, neighbors and all people-insofar as the matter is up to us (Rom 12:18).

Second, God favors the humble, who trust in him rather than their own strength (5:3-9). For one thing, the humble are not easily provoked to anger. These are the poor in spirit, . . . the meek, those who appear in Jewish texts as the lowly and oppressed. Because the oppressed poor become wholly dependent on God (Jas 2:5), some Jewish people used "poor [in spirit]" as a positive religious as well as economic designation. Thus it refers not merely to the materially poor and oppressed but to those "who have taken that condition to their very heart, by not allowing themselves to be deceived by the attraction of wealth" (Freyne 1988:72).

Jesus promises the kingdom to the powerless, the oppressed who embrace the poverty of their condition by trusting in God rather than favors from the powerful for their deliverance. The inequities of this world will not forever taunt the justice of God: he will ultimately vindicate the oppressed. This promise provides us both hope to work for justice and grace to endure the hard path of love.

There are, of course, exceptions, but as a rule it is more common for the poor to be "poor in spirit"; Matthew's poor in spirit does have something to do with Luke's "poor." Surveys in the United States, for example, show that religious commitment is generally somewhat higher among people with less income (Barna 1991:178-81; Gallup and Jones 1992), and Christians in less affluent countries like Nepal, Guatemala, Kenya or China often are prepared to pay a higher price for their faith than most Western Christians. In Bible studies among students from different kinds of colleges and backgrounds I have found that students from poor homes, struggling to pay their way through college, frequently understand this passage better than those students for whom the road is easier. Feeling impressed by the wealth and status of others, the less privileged students are amazed to learn how special they are to God and embrace this message as good news. Those of us who have attained more income or education would do well to imitate their meekness, lest the self-satisfaction and complacency that often accompany such attainments corrupt our faith in Christ (13:22).

Further, these humble people are also those who yearn for God above all else. Luke emphasizes those who hunger physically (Lk 6:21); Matthew emphasizes yearning for God's righteousness more than for food and drink, perhaps also implying that those who hunger physically are in a better position to begin to value God more than food (Mt 5:6; this may include fasting). In this context hungering for righteousness probably includes yearning for God's justice, for his vindication of the oppressed (see Gundry 1982:70); the context also implies that it includes yearning to do God's will (5:20; 6:33; 21:32; 23:29). This passage reflects biblical images of passion for God, longing for him more than for daily food or drink (Job 23:12; Ps 42:1-2; 63:1, 5; Jer 15:16; compare Mt 4:4). God and his Word should be the ultimate object of our longing (Ps 119:40, 47, 70, 92, 97, 103).


"Mourners" here (5:4) may thus refer especially to the repentant (Joel 1:13; see also Jas 4:9-10; Lev 23:29; 26:41), those who grieve over their people's sin (Tobit 13:14). Given the promise of comfort, however, the term probably also applies more broadly to those who are broken, who suffer or have sustained personal grief and responded humbly (see Fenton 1977:368). God is near the brokenhearted (Ps 51:17) and will comfort those who mourn (Is 61:1-3); the people of the kingdom are the humble, not the arrogant. The pure in heart (Mt 5:8) in Psalm 73 refers to those who recognize that God alone is their hope.

Likewise, this lifestyle of meekness Jesus teaches challenges not only Jewish revolutionaries but all Christians in our daily lives. If we are to walk in love toward our enemies (Mt 5:43), how much more should we walk in love toward those closest us (compare 5:46-47; 22:36-40)? I am always awed by the presence of the truly humble-like three of my friends from Ethiopia, one of whom was imprisoned by the old Marxist regime for a year and two of whom led about two thousand fellow Ethiopians to Christ in their refugee camp. Not only did these brothers regularly offer me their most gracious hospitality when I visited them, but every time I came they would insist on my teaching them the Bible-though I am sure that I had far more to learn from them!



Encouragement for Those Persecuted for the Gospel (5:10-12)
In his final beatitudes Jesus declares not "Happy are those," but "Happy are you." Here Jesus takes his ethic of nonretaliation (5:38-47) to its furthest possible length: not only must we refuse to strike back, but we are to rejoice when persecuted. The persecution itself confirms our trust in God's promise of reward, because the prophets suffered likewise (13:57; 23:37; 26:68; 2 Chron 36:15-16; Jer 26:11, 23). The prophetic role of a disciple is analogous to (Mt 10:41-42; 23:34) and greater than (11:9, 11; 13:17) that of an Old Testament prophet. When we represent Jesus and his message faithfully and suffer rejection accordingly, we may identify with ancient prophetic leaders like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel.
But here Jesus summons us to a greater honor than being prophets; he summons us to bear the name-the honor-of Jesus. The characteristics Jesus lists as belonging to the people of the kingdom are also those Jesus himself exemplifies as the leading servant of the kingdom and Son par excellence of the Father (11:27; 20:28). Jesus is meek and lowly in heart (11:29); he mourns over the unrepentant (11:20-24); he shows mercy (9:13, 27; 12:7; 20:30); he is a peacemaker (5:43-45; 26:52). If he is lowly, how much more must be his disciples, who are to imitate his ways (10:24-25; 23:8-12)-in contrast to worldly paradigms for religious celebrities (23:5-7).

Matthew 5


Salt and Light

¹³"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
¹⁴"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:13-16

Explanation:

Worthless Disciples (5:13-16)
Jesus' audience at least partly includes "disciples" (5:1-2). Having described the appropriate lifestyle of disciples, Jesus now explains that a professed disciple who does not live this lifestyle of the kingdom is worth about as much as tasteless salt or invisible light-nothing.
Until my conversion in 1975 I professed to be an atheist in part because I looked at the roughly 85 percent of my fellow U.S. citizens who claimed to be Christians and could not see that their faith genuinely affected their lives. I reasoned that if even Christians did not believe in Jesus' teachings, why should I? My excuse for unbelief-and the excuse of many other secularists I knew-continued until God's Spirit confronted me with the reality that the truth of Christ does not rise or fall on the claims of his professed followers, but on Jesus himself. The faith of nominal Christians may appeal to non-Christians who can use it to justify their own unbelief, but such "Christians" will have no part in God's kingdom. Instead they will be thrown out and trampled (5:13).

Jesus refers here to more than good deeds; he refers to a good character (compare 7:17-20; 12:33-37). Such character comes only by embracing God's kingship as a gift (as in 10:40; 18:4, 12-14, 27). The images of salt and light evoke consideration less of what we do than of what we are. If only true disciples count before God (5:13-16) and true discipleship means treating both friends and enemies kindly (5:3-12), the salt-and-light paragraph becomes a resounding warning to heed Jesus' teaching on meekness in the preceding paragraph.

A disciple who rejects the beatitudes' values is like tasteless salt: worthless. Salt had a variety of uses (see Davies and Allison 1988:472-73); probably the most evident use was as a flavoring agent (Plut. Isis 5, Mor. 352F; Table-Talk 4.4.3, Mor. 669B). In any case the point is, what is to be done with salt that no longer functions as salt should?

A later Jewish story may illustrate how first-century hearers would have grasped Jesus' point. An inquirer reportedly asked a late first-century rabbi what to salt tasteless salt with; he responded, "The afterbirth of a mule" (b. Bekarot 8b). In that society everyone knew that mules are sterile; the point is, "You ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer. Salt can't stop being salt!" But of course if it were to do so, it would no longer be of any value as salt.

Just as tasteless salt lacks value to the person who uses it, so does a professed disciple without genuine commitment prove valueless for the work of the kingdom.


A disciple whose life reveals none of the Father's works is like invisible light for vision: useless. Jesus reinforces his point with various images. A disciple should be as obvious as a city set on a hill (as most cities were), and a light in a home should be no easier to hide than a torch lit city at night (5:14-15; most homes had only one room). As a popular sage had put it, "What is the value of concealed wisdom, any more than of treasure that is invisible?" (Sirach 41:14).

Jesus depicts his disciples' mission in stark biblical terms for the mission of Israel. God called his people to be lights to the nations (for example, Is 42:6; 49:6)-that is, the whole world (compare Mt 18:7). Christians are light because-contrary to some psychoanalytic theories-their destiny (13:43) more than their past must define them.

But Christians cannot be content to remain the world's light in a merely theoretical sense; they must "be what they are," letting their light shine for their Father's honor (5:16). Ministers of the Word must equip all other Christians for their ministry as lights in their various neighborhoods and occupations (Eph 4:11-13; Tit 2:1, 5, 8, 10). While Jesus is opposed to our doing good works publicly for our own honor (6:1, "to be seen" by people), he exhorts us to do those good works publicly for God's honor (5:16; cf. 6:9). This distinction exhorts us to guard the motives of our hearts and consider the effects our public activities and pronouncements have on the spread of the gospel and the honoring of God among all groups of people.
 

Matthew 5


The Fulfillment of the Law

¹⁷"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹⁹Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:17-20

Explanation:

Jesus Applies Principles in God's Law (5:17-48)
!!As if Jesus' words in 5:3-16 were not strong enough, he presents even more stringent demands of the kingdom in these verses. While various groups of Christians today may differ concerning exactly how Jesus intended his disciples to interpret the law, one point is clear: Jesus was not an antinomian. He expected his followers to understand and apply the moral principles already revealed in Scripture.


Christians Must Obey God's Law (5:17-20)
Matthew uses Jesus' words in 5:17-20 as a thesis statement for the whole of 5:21-48 which follows. Jesus essentially says, "Look, if you thought the law was tough, wait till you see this. If you really want to be my disciples, give me your hearts without reservation" (see 5:17).
This passage seems to suggest that an uncommitted Christian is not a Christian at all (see 5:20). Like other Jewish teachers, Jesus demanded whole obedience to the Scriptures (5:18-19); unlike most of his contemporaries, however, he was not satisfied with the performance of scribes and Pharisees, observing that this law observance fell short even of the demands of salvation (5:20). After grabbing his hearers' attention with such a statement, Jesus goes on to define God's law not simply in terms of how people behave but in terms of who they really are (5:21-48).

Jesus' High View of Scripture (5:17-18)

Jesus' view of Scripture did not simply accommodate his culture, a fact that has implications for the view of Scripture Jesus' followers should hold (J. Wenham 1977:21; D. Wenham 1979). Here Jesus responds to false charges that he and his followers undermine the law. First, when Jesus says that he came not to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them, he uses terms that in his culture would have conveyed his faithfulness to the Scriptures (v. 17).

Second, Jesus illustrates the eternality of God's law with a popular story line from contemporary Jewish teachers (5:18). Jesus' smallest letter (NIV), or "jot" (KJV), undoubtedly refers to the Hebrew letter yod, which Jewish teachers said would not pass from the law. They said that when Sarai's name was changed to Sarah, the yod removed from her name cried out from one generation to another, protesting its removal from Scripture, until finally, when Moses changed Oshea's name to Joshua, the yod was returned to Scripture. "So you see," the teachers would say, "not even this smallest letter can pass from the Bible." Jesus makes the same point from this tradition that later rabbis did: even the smallest details of God's law are essential.


We Will Be Judged by Our Response to God's Word (5:19)

Jesus here provides a graphic example of the law's authority. Jewish teachers typically depicted various persons as "greatest" before God; the emphasis was not on numerical precision but on praising worthy people (for example, m. 'Abot 2:8). When Jesus speaks of the least of these commandments, he also reflects Jewish legal language. Jewish teachers regularly distinguished "light" and "heavy" commandments (as in Sipra VDDeho. parasha 1.34.1.3; compare Mt 23:23) and in fact determined which commandments were the "least" and "greatest." Noting that both the "greatest" commandment about honoring parents (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16) and the "least" commandment about the bird's nest (Deut 22:6-7) included the same promise, "Do this and you will live," later rabbis decided that "live" meant "in the world to come" and concluded that God would reward equally for obedience of any commandment. One who kept the law regulating the bird's nest merited eternal life, whereas one who broke it merited damnation (see, for example, Urbach 1979:1:350; Keener 1991a:116). In the same way, those who merely honored the highest standards of their religion would fall short of entering the kingdom at all (Mt 5:20).

Other sages used such language to grab attention and emphasize the importance of the law. But like Jesus, they did not want anyone to miss the point: God has not given us the right to pick and choose among his commandments. As some teachers put it, one should be as "careful with regard to a light commandment as you would be with a heavy one, since you do not know the allotment of the reward" (m. 'Abot 2:1). The sages were not suggesting that they never broke commandments (see Moore 1971:1:467-68), but rather believed that one who cast off any commandment or principle of the law was discarding the authority of the law as a whole (m. Horayot 1:3; Keener 1991a:115-17).

Jesus concurs: God does not allow us the right to say, "I will obey his teaching about murder but not his teaching about adultery or fornication"; or, "I will obey his teaching about theft but not about divorce." To refuse his right to rule any of our ethics or behavior is to deny his Lordship.


In this passage Jesus also warns that teachers who undermine students' faith in any portion of the Bible are in trouble with God. This text addresses not only obedience to the commandments but also how one teaches others (and teaches others to do the same; compare Jas 3:1). I have occasionally taught alongside colleagues who actively sought to undermine students' faith in the name of "critical thinking"; sometimes they succeeded. Critical thinking is important, but it functions best with the firm foundation of the fear of God (Prov 1:7).

Bible-Believing People Without Transformed Hearts Are Lost (5:20)

Like John the Baptist in 3:7-12, Jesus savages the false security of the religious establishment. To grasp the full impact in today's language we might compare the scribes with ministers or religious educators and the Pharisees with the most pious, Bible-believing laypeople (although there was some overlap between the two groups). Pharisaic ethics emphasized "inwardness" as much as Jesus did, but Jesus challenges not their traditional ethics but the actual condition of their hearts (Odeberg 1964).


It is possible to agree with everything Jesus taught in this sermon yet fail to live accordingly (23:3). That is why Jesus indicates that the best of human piety is inadequate for salvation-whether it be Pharisaic or Christian. Nothing short of a radical transformation, what other early Christian writers called a new birth (Jn 3:3-6; 1 Pet 1:23), can enable one to live as a disciple (compare Mt 18:3).

Matthew 5


Murder

²¹"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' ²²But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
²³"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
²⁵"Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. ²⁶I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

Matthew 5:21-26

Explanation:

Angry Enough to Kill (5:21-26)
This paragraph opens the section that runs from verse 21 through verse 48, which requires some introductory comment. Once Jesus has made it clear that he is not opposing the law itself but interpreting it, he shows how the customary practice of the law in his day is inadequate.
In 5:21-48 Jesus explains six legal texts from the Old Testament, interpreting as a good Jewish scholar of his day would (see Flusser 1988:494; Keener 1991a:113-20). Jesus makes the law more stringent in this passage (building a sort of "fence" around the law, which his contemporaries felt was respectful toward the law).

Other Jewish teachers also offered phrases like You have heard . . . but I tell you when expounding Scripture. Paul, in fact, uses roughly the same formula when applying one of Jesus' sayings in this context to a new situation (1 Cor 7:10-12). When Jewish teachers offered statements like this, they saw themselves not as contradicting the law but as explaining it, so we might read the passage thus: "You understand the Bible to mean only this, but I offer a fuller interpretation" (see Schechter 1900:427; Daube 1973:55-58). At the same time, Jesus does not speak with merely scribal authority (7:28-29); there is no academic debate or citation of other teachers, but solemn pronouncements. Jesus upholds the law (5:17-19) but is the decisive arbiter of its meaning, not one scholar among many (Daube 1973:58-60). Matthew 5:21-48 provides concrete examples of the "greater righteousness" of verse 20. Jesus addresses not just how we act but who we are.

The heavenly court will judge all offenses of intention. Earthly courts could not usually judge such offenses as displays of anger (for exceptions see 1QS 7.5; Gaius Inst. 3.220). But God's heavenly court would judge all such offenses (Mt 5:25-26; see more fully Keener 1991a:14-16). Jesus begins by citing the crime of murder in Exodus 20:13, for which biblical law required a Jewish court to execute the sentence of death (Gen 9:5-6; Deut 21:1-9). But Jesus presses beyond behavior specifically punished by law to the kind of heart that generates such behavior. Anger that would generate murder if unimpeded is the spiritual equivalent of murder (1 Jn 3:15). God has never merely wanted people to obey rules; he wants them to be holy as he is, to value what he values.

Anger, calling someone a fool and calling the person Raca (an "empty head"; Mt 5:22) are roughly equivalent offenses. Likewise Jesus probably reads the judgment of verse 21 as the day of God's judgment, the Sanhedrin (v. 22) as God's heavenly court (compare vv. 25-26; also portrayed as the Sanhedrin in Jewish texts-Keener 1987), and both as equivalent to the sentence to be decreed there: damnation to eternal hell. Because every word is uttered before the heavenly court, slander of another merits for the accuser the eternal punishment that would have been due the accused (cf. 12:35-37; Deut 19:16-19; Susanna 62).

Jesus' prohibition of acting in anger is a general principle. As in each of his six examples, Jesus graphically portrays a general principle, although some of these principles (like anger and divorce) must be qualified in specific circumstances. Most people understood that such general principles expressed in proverbs and similar sayings sometimes needed to be qualified in specific situations (see Du Plessis 1967:17; Keener 1991a:22-28); Jesus elsewhere qualifies principles of the law more than most of his contemporaries did (as in Mt 12:3-8).

Although condemning anger and insults, Jesus himself expressed grieved indignation and called people "fools" under appropriate circumstances (23:17; see also 23:13-33). Yet our own indignation is too easily excused as "righteous" (see Jas 1:20), and even just anger must be expressed productively, never in a manner harmful to another person (Eph 4:26, 29-32; Col 3:8). Thus when debating with those like the religious leaders in Jesus' day, we must speak responsibly for their correction and accept the personal consequences. When dealing with those closest to us, such as a spouse, we must humble ourselves and seek the other person's best interests in love (as in, for example, Eph 5:21-25; Keener 1992b:133-83).

Our relationship with God is partly contingent on how we treat others. God will not accept our gift at the altar until we reconcile with our neighbor (see similarly m. Yoma 8:9). Again Jesus depicts the situation graphically, since his Galilean hearers might have to travel a considerable distance to leave the Jerusalem temple and then return (vv. 23-24). Jesus' following crisis parable shows how urgent the situation is (vv. 25-26). Imprisonment was generally a temporary holding place until punishment; here, however, a longer penalty is envisaged. The last penny (Greek kodrant h s, Roman quadrans) refers to the second-smallest Roman coin, only a few minutes' wages for even a day laborer.

Through a variety of terrible images, Jesus indicates that when we damage our relationships with others, we damage our relationship with God, leading to eternal punishment (compare 18:21-35). A man who beats his wife, a woman who continually ridicules her husband, and a thousand other concrete examples could illustrate the principle. We must profess our faith with our lives as well as with our lips.

God sees what we are each made of. We judge by what we can see of a person's actions; God evaluates the heart's motivation. Some can act more moral by society's standards because it is to their advantage to do so, but this behavior does not necessarily imply that their hearts are purer than those with less social incentive to behave morally. Although their options differ, most drug dealers operate on the same moral principle as the media networks, the junk food industry or, for that matter, some Christian publishers: "We just give people what they want; it's not our fault if what they want isn't what's good for them." This excuse does not absolve them of guilt, but the person with a straight track through college and into the work force has more incentive to choose a different path. Indeed, the intellectual elite in Western universities laid the groundwork for the sexual promiscuity that has destroyed family structures in many ghettos and made drugs popular. God evaluates us not only by our deeds but also by our character-what we are made of when no one else sees us.

Matthew 5


Adultery

²⁷"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' ²⁸But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ³⁰And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Matthew 5:27-30

Explanation:

Do Not Covet Others Sexually (5:27-30)
Jesus' warning against lust would have challenged some ancient hearers' values. Many men in the ancient Mediterranean thought lust healthy and normal (for example, Ach. Tat. 1.4-6; Apul. Metam. 2.8); some magical spells even describe self-stimulation as a way to secure intercourse with the object of one's desire (PGM 36.291-94), even if she was married (PDM 61.197-216). Jewish writers, however, viewed lust far more harshly (for example, Sirach 9:8; 41:21; 1QS 1.6-7; CD 2.16); some, in fact, viewed it as visual fornication or adultery (see Keener 1991a:16-17). Yet Jesus is not challenging his hearers' ethics; the scribes and Pharisees may have agreed with his basic premise, but Jesus challenges their hearts, not just their doctrine. Many Christians today similarly profess to agree with Jesus' doctrine here but do not obey it.
Jesus offers an implicit argument from Scripture, not just a cultural critique. The seventh of the Ten Commandments declares, "You shall not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14), while the tenth commandment declares, "You shall not covet [that is, desire] . . . anything that belongs to your neighbor" (Ex 20:17). In the popular Greek version of Jesus' day the tenth commandment began, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife," and used the same word for "covet" that Jesus uses here for "lust." In other words, Jesus reads the humanly unenforceable tenth commandment as if it matters as much as the other, more humanly enforceable commandments. If you do not break the letter of the other commandments, but you want to do so in your heart, you are guilty. God judges a sinful heart, and hearts that desire what belongs to others are guilty.

Jesus does, however, go beyond his contemporaries' customary views on lust. Jewish men expected married Jewish women to wear head coverings to prevent lust. Jewish writers often warned of women as dangerous because they could invite lust (as in Sirach 25:21; Ps. Sol. 16:7-8), but Jesus placed the responsibility for lust on the person doing the lusting (Mt 5:28; Witherington 1984:28). Lust and anger are sins of the heart, and rapists who protest in earthly courts, "She asked for it!" have no defense before God's court. Jesus says that it is better to suffer corporal punishment in the present-amputating one's lustful eye or other offending appendages-than to spend eternity in hell after the resurrection of the damned (5:29-30; 18:8-9).

Of course gouging out one's eye cannot stop lust; people can lust with their eyes closed. (Thus Tertullian warns that Christians need not blind themselves as Democritus did, but must simply guard their minds; he contends that "the Christian is born masculine for his wife and for no other woman"-Apol. 46.11-12.) Jesus is declaring in a graphic manner that by whatever means necessary, one should cast off this sin (compare Col 3:5). One must repent to be ready for the kingdom of heaven (Mt 4:17).


Herod Antipas, driven by lust, ended up murdering a prophet (14:6, 10; compare 5:11-12), illustrating the principle of both this paragraph and the preceding one (5:21-30), as well as the prohibition of oaths (5:33-37; 14:7). Most of us lack Herod's power to indulge our desires, but God knows what our hearts desire, whether we have power to execute that desire or not. How different the model of Joseph and Mary (1:25) and virtuous single persons like John the Baptist and Jesus, who suffered persecution for righteousness!

From this warning we learn the value that God places on marital and premarital fidelity. Even our thoughts should be only for our spouse; our spouse, rather than a given culture's idealization, should redefine our standard of beauty (compare Song 1:15-16). Of course, since the Bible demands faithfulness in advance to our future spouse (Deut 22:13-21; see also Mt 1:19), the principle Jesus illustrates with "adultery of the heart" could apply to premarital "fornication of the heart" just as well.


Jesus does not, of course, refer here to passing attraction. The Greek tense probably suggests "the deliberate harboring of desire for an illicit relationship" (France 1985:121). In our culture, where young people generally have to arrange their marriages without their parents' help, we might be in trouble if Jesus meant mere attraction! Jesus refers not to noticing a person's beauty but to imbibing it, meditating on it, seeking to possess it.

Lust is antithetical to true love: it dehumanizes another person into an object of passion, leading us to act as if the other were a visual or emotional prostitute for our use. Fueled by selfish passion, adultery violates the sanctity of another person's being and relationships; love, by contrast, seeks what is best for a person, including strengthening their marriage. Adultery usually involves considerable rationalization, justifying one's behavior as necessary or loving; but lust is the mother of adultery, the demonic force that allows human beings to justify exploiting one another sexually, at the same time betraying the most intimate of commitments where trust ought to abide secure even if it can flourish nowhere else. Lust demands possession; love values, respects and seeks to serve other persons with what is genuinely good for them. Lust is always incompatible with acknowledging God as the supreme desire of our hearts, because it is contrary to his will.

Legalism cannot change the heart and destroy lust or any other sin; only transformation of the heart to view reality in a new way can. Matthew frames Jesus' commandments in this section with that warning (compare 5:20, 48). Whereas lust distorts relationships, proper relationships in Christ's family can meet the need that lust pretends to fill. Paul and his contemporaries prescribed marriage as a helpful solution (1 Cor 7:2, 5, 9; Keener 1991a:72-74, 79-82), but many godly people today do not find marriage partners for years-and not all have the gift to easily embrace that state (Mt 19:11). How can they best guard against lust?

Once we begin to appreciate our brothers and sisters in Christ as members of our spiritual family, we are less apt to dehumanize them as temptations-whether temptations to be avoided or indulged. Our video culture has cheated us by reducing the meaning of gender to sexual gratification, as if we could relate to members of the other gender best as sleeping partners. God ideally gave people families in part so we could learn how to relate to other people in a variety of ways (motherly, fatherly, brotherly, sisterly-1 Tim 5:1-2); our Christian family is no different (1 Tim 5:1-2; see also Mt 12:49; 23:8; 25:40).

Thus giving and receiving genuine Christian love within the appropriate boundaries-dealing with people as human beings like ourselves rather than objects of our passion (22:39)-is an important defense against lust. Perhaps an even greater defense remains being so wrapped up in Jesus' presence and work that one can wait either for God to send a spouse or for the ultimate unity that transcends the need for marriage altogether (see 22:30). In the meantime, one can pray for God's blessings on and prepare one's own life for the person God may send, or pour one's whole commitment into the work of the kingdom (6:33). I suggest these insights not as a married man paternalistically advising singles, but as one who remains single at the time of writing. The longer we resist a particular temptation, the less power that temptation can exercise in our lives.

Matthew 5


Divorce

³¹"It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' ³²But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:31-32

Explanation:

Do Not Betray Your Spouse by Divorce (5:31-32)
Adultery is unfaithfulness to one's spouse or accommodating another person's unfaithfulness to that person's spouse. Lust is one form of such unfaithfulness; divorce is another. The person who betrays his or her spouse by divorce is no less unfaithful to his or her marriage than the adulterer or lustful person and presumably warrants the same punishment prescribed by the preceding passage-damnation (5:29-30). Although Matthew does qualify the force of the saying, he wants us to hear its demand: marriage is sacred and must not be betrayed.
In principle, remarriage is adulterous because God rejects the validity of divorce. Employing the same teaching technique of rhetorical overstatement that pervades the context (as in 5:18-19, 29-30; 6:3; Stein 1978:8-12, 1979:119 and 1992:198; Keener 1991a:12-25), Jesus declares that God does not accept divorce; hence a divorced woman remains married in God's sight to her first husband, making her remarriage adulterous (5:32). (The image presumably addresses the woman because the Palestinian Jewish law in Matthew's milieu permitted men to marry more than one wife anyway, whereas the sharing of a woman involved adultery-Keener 1991a:35, 47-48; Easton 1940:82; but compare, somewhat differently, Luck 1987:103-7.) Precisely because the very term for legal "divorce" meant freedom to remarry, everyone understood that a woman without a valid certificate of divorce was not free to remarry (as in m. Gittin 2:1); but Jesus declares that if God does not accept the divorce as valid, remarriage is adulterous (19:6, 9; see similarly France 1985:123).

A few churches today take this passage completely literally and demand that remarried partners break up and return to their original spouses. If this passage did not employ rhetorical overstatement, their interpretation would be right; but their interpretation does not square with the rest of the biblical data (such as Jn 4:18, where the woman had five "husbands"). As common as divorce and remarriage were in antiquity (Carcopino 1940:95-100), Paul's letters would surely have reflected it had he been spending time breaking up new converts' second and third marriages. The Roman authorities, already concerned about subversive religious groups disrupting families (Keener 1992b:139-42), would have also noticed and acted swiftly! In practice, the strict position of churches that break up second marriages actually leads to new divorces-a position God surely disapproves of (Mt 5:19). (Supporters of breaking up second marriages sometimes cite 2 Sam 3:13-16, but because David had never actually divorced Michal, Saul's arrangement of Michal's marriage to Paltiel was illegal and adulterous; compare 1 Sam 19:11-17. Had that marriage been legally valid, Israelite law would have prohibited David from taking Michal back; see Deut 24:1-4.)


"Adultery" meant unfaithfulness to one's spouse, and remarriage is adulterous here precisely because in God's sight the original couple remains married. The moral issue of the image, however, is not remarriage but the validity of the divorce; although most people accepted most divorces as valid, everyone recognized that one could not remarry without a valid divorce. Jesus is prohibiting divorce in an incomparably graphic fashion (Keener 1991a:34-40, 43-44; Stein 1979).

In practice, this text demands that we love and serve our spouse. If integrity forbids us to violate vows in general (Mt 5:33-37), this principle applies most plainly to marriage vows (see also Mal 2:14). But most marriage vows promise more than "I won't commit adultery, lust after someone else or divorce you." Most people marry with the explicit or implicit expectation of enduring, mutual love; only in a secure relationship like marriage can people trust enough to intimately expose the depths of their hearts. Yet in all divorces, one or both parties is unfaithful to this implicit promise of marriage.

While Jesus gives divorce as an explicit example of marital infidelity, his principle of challenging all unfaithfulness to one's marriage as adulterous forces his followers to examine their own marriages more clearly. A man may never divorce his wife yet also fail to show her love; a woman may avoid affairs yet despise her husband. These too are acts of unfaithfulness to marriage (though they are not biblical grounds for divorce). If I am to love my neighbor as myself, how much more should I love my wife as my own body, to sacrifice myself for her willingly as Christ offered himself for the church (Eph 5:25)! Provided that my love for my spouse expresses rather than competes with my love for God (Mt 10:37; Lk 14:26; 18:29; Eph 5:1-2, 18-21), any gift of love I offer this daughter of God is too small a gift for the treasure of her sharing her life with me.

In warning against the sin of abandoning one's marriage, Jesus is defending rather than oppressing those divorced against their will. Yet instead of examining our own hearts and marriages as Jesus wills, some Christians today resort to the very kind of Bible interpretation Jesus was opposing. Jesus' words protected married people from the schism of divorce, but we sometimes turn them into a weapon against wounded Christians. Assuming that anger (Mt 5:21-22) and lust (5:27-28) are forgivable offenses because we have committed them, some nevertheless look askance at those who divorced in the past, as if that sin were unforgivable. Not content with that, some condescendingly claim to "forgive" innocent parties in divorces (such as a young mother who is single because she was abandoned by a drug-abusing husband). Perhaps none of us is a perfect spouse, and many of us live in a culture that confuses right and wrong, but the Bible does take sides on some issues. For instance, it plainly assigns guilt to the adulterer without assuming guilt on the part of the adulterer's spouse (Lev 20:10); nor may one automatically assume any more guilt for the abandoned spouse than for a spouse who is not abandoned (see Stephen 1993:14). Punishing one divorced against his or her will to show that we are against divorce makes as much sense as punishing a mugging victim to express our disdain for mugging.

Although many marriages do end by default, I have witnessed countless Christians who fought to preserve their marriages while spouses left them against their will; David Seamands tells me he has seen hundreds of such cases. Some in the church compassionlessly explain devastating illnesses as evidence of lack of faith, perhaps to assure themselves that they could never suffer them (compare Job 6:21; 12:5; Ps 38:11). Many other Christians do the same with divorce.

Matthew specifically states an exception. When Jesus offered a proverb stating a general principle (Mk 10:11; Lk 16:18), ancient hearers understood that such sayings often needed to be qualified for specific situations (Keener 1991a:22-25). Two similar divorce sayings in different contexts actually conflict if pressed literally: Mark 10:9 assumes that divorce should not but can occur, while the Q saying in Matthew 5:32 par. Luke 16:18 assumes that marriage is indissoluble and a genuine divorce cannot occur. But the conflict arises when we ignore Jesus' teaching style (Catchpole 1993:238): such a disharmony simply means that each saying must be read as a demand rather than a law, and the overarching social function of both must be recognized. That function is a call for absolute faithfulness in and to marriage.

To put the matter differently, Jesus' "purpose was not to lay down the law but to reassert an ideal and make divorce a sin, thereby disturbing then current complacency" (Davies and Allison 1988:532; compare Down 1984). In practice, the early Christians immediately began to qualify Jesus' divorce saying; other principles of Jesus, like not condemning the innocent (12:7) and the principle of mercy (23:23), would have forced them to do so in some circumstances.

For instance, when confronted by Christians wanting to divorce unbelieving spouses, Paul used Jesus' saying to forbid such an intention, but noted that if instead the spouse left, the believer was "not bound" (1 Cor 7:15). (Some others also view Paul's exception as implying that Jesus' prohibition is "not comprehensive"; see Blomberg 1992:111-12; Vermes 1993:34 n. 34.) Paul's words recall the exact language for freedom to remarry in ancient divorce contracts, and his ancient readers, unable to be confused by modern writers' debates on the subject, would surely have understood his words thus (see, for example, m. Gittin 9:3; CPJ 2:10-12, 144; Carmon 1973:90-91, 200-201, 189; Keener 1991a:61-62). Subsequent history has nevertheless saddled Christians with prejudices; thus, for example, after the NIV rightly notes that one who is married should "not seek a divorce," it translates the same Greek word for divorce as "unmarried" in the next line, where remarriage is permitted (1 Cor 7:27-28). One could presume that both uses of the Greek term "loosed" mean "widowed," of course-provided one consistently translates "seeking to be widowed" in this passage, which rather improbably suggests some lethal activity such as adding arsenic or cyanide to a spouse's tea. But most likely Paul addresses especially divorce and remarriage in this passage.

Paul's and Matthew's exceptions (Mt 5:32; 19:9; 1 Cor 7:15, 27-28) constitute two-thirds of the New Testament references to divorce, and both point to the same kind of exception: the person whose marriage is ended against his or her will. As Craig Blomberg reasons, other exceptions probably exist, but they must be governed by the principles that unite the two biblical exceptions: (1) both infidelity and abandonment destroy one of the basic components of marriage; (2) "both leave one party without any other options if attempts at reconciliation are spurned"; (3) both use divorce "as a last resort." That some will abuse this freedom (as Blomberg also warns) cannot make us insensitive to the innocent party who genuinely needs that freedom (Blomberg 1992:293). In other words, Jesus' exceptions do not constitute an excuse to escape a difficult marriage (compare 1 Cor 7:10-14); they exonerate those who genuinely wished to save their marriage but were unable to do so because their spouse's unrepentant adultery, abandonment or abuse de facto destroyed the marriage bonds.

Admitting the exceptional cases does not excuse us from taking Jesus' actual point seriously. Palestinian Jewish husbands could divorce for virtually any reason (Jos. Ant. 4.253), explicitly including their wives' disobedience (ARN 1A; Jos. Life 426), even burning the toast (m. Gittin 9:10; Sipre Deut. 269.1.1). In broader Greco-Roman culture (which Paul addresses in 1 Cor 7:10-16) either husband or wife could unilaterally divorce the other spouse without obtaining consent (Cary and Haarhoff 1946:144; O'Rourke 1971:181). By removing the right of divorce, Jesus is protecting a person from being betrayed by her or his spouse and demanding that we respect one another enough to do our own utmost to make our marriage work rather than abandoning the partner with whom we entered into covenant for life.

Although the thrust of this passage is faithfulness to one's marriage, Matthew's exception clause does not allow his readers to apply his rhetorical overstatement legalistically. Indeed, to read the Sermon on the Mount "legalistically as a set of rules is to miss the point; it represents a demand more radical than any legislator could conceive" (France 1985:106), still less enforce. Jesus' real point, which the hyperbolic image is meant to evoke, is the sanctity of marriage (see also 19:4-6; Efird 1985:57-59). Addressing the hardness of legal interpreters' hearts (19:8), Jesus opposed divorce to protect marriage and family, thereby seeking to prevent the betrayal of innocent spouses.

I believe that churches who punish innocent parties in divorces today interpret Jesus legalistically with hearts as hard as those of Jesus' opponents. They understand neither the point of Jesus' teaching nor the heart of God that motivated him (compare 9:11-13; 12:2-14; 23:23-24). But we do the same when we condone inappropriate divorce or the hardness of heart in marriage (19:8) that can lead to divorce or in other ways ruin the intimacy of one flesh that God commanded.

Matthew 5


Oaths

³³"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' ³⁴But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; ³⁵or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. ³⁶And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. ³⁷Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

An Eye for an Eye

³⁸"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' ³⁹But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. ⁴⁰And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. ⁴¹If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. ⁴²Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Matthew 5:33-42

Explanation:

Oaths Are a Poor Substitute for Integrity (5:33-37)
When Jesus quotes his Bible as prohibiting false vows and other oaths (Deut 23:23), he probably also has in view the Ten Commandments, as in Matthew 5:21, 27. In this case he alludes to the third commandment: a false oath "misuses" or takes in vain God's name, since oaths by definition called on a deity to witness them (Ex 20:7). Breaking an oath was dangerous, for in all societies oaths contained curses that deities would avenge if the person who swore by them broke the oath. The Bible's point in prohibiting false oaths, however, was that one should tell the truth and keep one's promises. The Hebrew Bible approved of some oaths and vows (as in Num 5:19-22; 6:2), but Jesus again summons us beyond the law's letter to its intention. His own point is not so much that oaths are evil as that the motivation for engaging in them is; one should simply tell the truth (Mt 5:37).

Although Jesus' position on oaths is not wholly unique, it was rare enough to be distinctive. Although some Jewish teachers warned against customary oath-taking, nearly all accepted oath-taking as valid; in daily life, it was surely common in the marketplace. Some groups of Essenes may have avoided oaths altogether (Jos. War 2.135), except for their initiatory oath for joining the sect (Jos. War 2.139-42; see also 1QS 5.8). Josephus declares that one could trust an Essene's word more than an oath, however (War 2.135); Philo indicates that their abstention from oaths declared their commitment to truth (Every Good Man Free 84; also Vermes 1993:35). Jesus and the Essenes probably intended the same as Pythagoras: let your word carry such conviction that you need not call deities to witness (Diog. Laert. 8.1.22; compare Philo Spec. Leg. 2.2; Isoc. Nic. 22, Or. 2).

The point of this passage is integrity. Jesus observes that since God witnesses every word we say anyway, we should be able to tell the truth without having to call God to witness by a formal oath. Jesus is addressing a popular abuse of oaths in his day. To protect the sanctity of the divine name against inadvertent oath-breaking, common Jewish practice introduced surrogate objects by which to swear (Vermes 1993:34-35). Some people apparently thought it harmless to deceive if they swore oaths by something like their right hand (t. Nedarim 1:1; cf. Jos. War 2.451). The further removed the oath was from the actual name of God, the less danger they faced for violating it (Schiffman 1983:137-38; E. Sanders 1990:53-54). Jewish teachers had to arbitrate which oaths were actually binding as allusions to God's name (m. Sebi`it 4.13; see also CD 15.1-5). Jesus teaches that all oaths invoke God's witness equally. Just as heaven, earth (Is 66:1-2) and Jerusalem (Ps 48:2; Mt 4:5; 27:53) belong to God (Mt 5:34-35), so do the hairs on our heads (5:36); although we can dye our hair, we have no genuine control over its aging (compare 6:27). All oaths implicitly call God to witness, because everything that exists was made by him. For Jesus, no aspect of life except sin is purely secular.

Avoiding oaths is thus inadequate; the issue is telling the truth, because God witnesses every word we speak. Although many passages in the Bible allow some degree of deception to preserve life (Keener 1991a:22), such exceptions are rare in our daily lives. When we lie to cover our own wrong motives from those we think would disdain us, we forget that one day God will expose all the secrets of our hearts anyway (Mt 10:26). When we lightly commit ourselves to meet people at particular times and then unnecessarily delay them (as if their time were a commodity less precious than our own), we treat them unjustly and deceitfully, even if in a relatively minor way. How much more when we make promises in business deals or make still more lasting vows (such as the marriage covenant-5:31-32).


Making vows (promises) to God lightly is a severe offense (compare Acts 5:1-11). Although Jesus' first followers continued to call on God to witness the truth of some of their statements, apparently taking Jesus' words as rhetorical overstatement (examples appear in Rom 1:9; 9:1; Gal 1:20), they seem to have refrained from more overt oaths (2 Cor 1:17; Jas 5:12). Oaths that invite penalties on oneself for violating them ("cross my heart and hope to die") are unnecessary for people of truth.



Avoid Retribution and Resistance (5:38-42)
Jesus here warns against legal retribution (vv. 38-39) and goes so far as to undercut legal resistance altogether with a verse that, if followed literally, would leave most Christians stark naked (v. 40). He also advocates not only compliance but actual cooperation with a member of an occupying army who might be keeping you from your livelihood (v. 41), as well as with the beggar or others who seek our help (v. 42). (Taking the last verse literally would also break most of us financially. Consider how many requests for money come in the mail each week!) If Jesus is not genuinely advocating nudity and living on the street-that is, if he is speaking the language of rhetorical overstatement (5:18-19, 29-32; 6:3)-this still does not absolve us from taking his demand seriously. Jesus utilized hyperbole precisely to challenge his hearers, to force us to consider what we value.

Jesus' words strike at the very core of human selfishness, summoning us to value others above ourselves in concrete and consistent ways. Some misread this text as if it says not to oppose injustice; what it really says, however, is that we should be so unselfish and trust God so much that we leave our vindication with him. We have no honor or property worth defending compared with the opportunity to show how much we love God and everyone else. By not retaliating, by not coming down to the oppressors' level, we necessarily will appear unrealistic to the world. Jesus' way scorns the world's honor and appears realistic only to those with the eyes of faith. It is the lifestyle of those who anticipate his coming kingdom (4:17).

Jesus Challenges Our Desire for Personal Vindication (5:38) Eye for eye never meant that a person could exact vengeance directly for his or her own eye; it meant that one should take the offender to court, where the sentence could be executed legally. People sometimes cite this example as a case of Jesus' disagreeing with the Old Testament. But a society could recognize the legal justice of eye for eye while its sages warned against descending to oppressors' moral level by fighting evil with evil (Akkadian wisdom in Pritchard 1955:426). Jesus is not so much revoking a standard for justice as calling his followers not to make use of it; we qualify justice with mercy because we do not need to avenge our honor. Jesus calls for this humble response of faith in God; God alone is the final arbiter of justice, and we must trust him to fulfill it.

Turning the Other Cheek, Letting God Vindicate Us (5:39)

As in much of Jesus' teaching, pressing his illustration the wrong way may obscure his point. In fact, this would read Scripture the very way he was warning against: if someone hits us in the nose, or has already struck us on both cheeks, are we finally free to hit back? Jesus gives us a radical example so we will avoid retaliation, not so we will explore the limits of his example (see Tannehill 1975:73). A backhanded blow to the right cheek did not imply shattered teeth (tooth for tooth was a separate statement); it was an insult, the severest public affront to a person's dignity (Lam 3:30; Jeremias 1963:28 and 1971:239). God's prophets sometimes suffered such ill-treatment (1 Kings 22:24; Is 50:6). Yet though this was more an affront to honor, a challenge, than a physical injury, ancient societies typically provided legal recourse for this offense within the lex talionis regulations (Pritchard 1955:163, 175; see also Gaius Inst. 3.220).


In the case of an offense to our personal dignity, Jesus not only warns us not to avenge our honor by retaliating but suggests that we indulge the offender further. By freely offering our other cheek, we show that those who are secure in their status before God do not value human honor. Indeed, in some sense we practice resistance by showing our contempt for the value of our insulter's (and perhaps the onlookers') opinions! Because we value God's honor rather than our own (Mt 5:16; 6:1-18), because our very lives become forfeit to us when we begin to follow Jesus Christ (16:24-27), we have no honor of our own to lose. In this way we testify to those who insult us of a higher allegiance of which they should take notice.

Legal Nonresistance (5:40)

Rather than trying to get an inner garment back by legal recourse, one should relinquish the outer one too! If taken literally, this practice would quickly lead to nudity (see also Stein 1978:10), an intolerable dishonor in Palestinian Jewish society (for example, Jub. 7:8-10, 20; 1QS 7.12). Many peasants (at least in poorer areas like Egypt) had only one outer cloak and pursued whatever legal recourse necessary to get it back if it was seized (CPJ 1:239-40, 129.5). Because the outer cloak doubled as a poor man's bedding, biblical law permitted no one to take it, even as a pledge overnight (Ex 22:26-27; Deut 24:12-13). Thus Jesus demands that we surrender the very possession the law explicitly protects from legal seizure (Guelich 1982:222). To force his hearers to think, then, Jesus provides a shockingly graphic, almost humorous illustration of what he means by nonresistance. His hearers value honor and things more than they value the kingdom.

This passage is a graphic image, but if we read it literally, believers should never take anyone to court. How far do we press Jesus' image here, or Paul's in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8?

A driver had slammed into (and demolished) the car of one of my students, a new Christian, and the student feared that reporting him to her insurance company would violate the spirit of this passage. In such cases I suspect that insurance is our society's way of providing for the parties involved with a minimum of pain to both. But our very questions regarding how far to press Jesus' words force us to grapple with his principle here. Nothing a person can take from us matters in the end anyway; we must love our enemies and seek to turn them into friends.

Love Even Your Oppressors (5:41)

Here Matthew probably means submission to a Roman soldier's demands. Because tax revenues did not cover all the Roman army's needs, soldiers could requisition what they required (N. Lewis 1983:172-73; Rapske 1994:14). Romans could legally demand local inhabitants to provide forced labor if they wanted (as in Mt 27:32) and were known to abuse this privilege (for example, Apul. Metam. 9.39). Yet "going the extra mile" represents not only submitting to unjust demands but actually exceeding them-showing our oppressors that we love them and take no offense, although our associates may wrongly view this love as collaboration with an enemy occupation. The truth of this passage is a life-and-death matter for many believers. Members of both sides in wars have often killed Christians for refusing to take sides; gangs in inner cities can present similar pressures.

Such courageous love is not easy to come by and is easily stifled by patriotism. To take but one example that challenges my own culture, many white U.S. citizens may wish to rethink the patriotic lens through which they view the American colonies' revolt against Britain in the 1770s-did they really have grounds for secession of which Jesus would have approved if they had been his disciples? Past oppression is also easily recalled. British Christians might consider their feelings for Germans; Korean and Chinese Christians, for the Japanese. In some form the principle can apply to most national, racial and cultural groups. While early Christians responded to their persecutors with defiant love (a humility the persecutors often viewed as arrogance), many politically zealous Christians in the United States guard their rights so fiercely that they are easily given to anger (which opponents also view as arrogance).

Jesus and Paul responded firmly to unjust blows in the face (Jn 18:22-23; Acts 23:2-5) and in other circumstances (Jn 8:40-44; Acts 16:37; 22:25; 25:11; 26:25) without retaliating in their own interests. Thus the text need not rule out all forms of resistance (see Clavier 1957; France 1985:126; Vermes 1993:36). But whether persecuted as Christians or for other reasons, we must respond with love and kindness (like the workers at a pregnancy-support clinic who brought food out to abortion-rights picketers). We must resist injustice and refuse to comply with demands that compromise justice; but we must do so in kindness and love, not with violence or retribution.

Jesus' words are designed to shock us into considering our values, but how far do we press Jesus' meaning? Is he calling for personal or societal nonviolence? Within a week after my conversion, my first reading of Matthew 5 led me to abandon my peace-through-strength militarism for a thoroughgoing, martyrdom-anticipating pacifism, at least on the personal level. Yet I have come to wonder whether on a corporate level just military interventions might not sometimes be a lesser evil than tolerating unjust military actions tantamount to genocide (such as those of Hitler). Can meek and weaponless police officers enforce laws designed to restrain drug dealers? Possessions may not matter, but human life clearly does (Mt 6:25).

Still, it is easy for nations to abuse the rhetoric of justice for self-serving violence, and unlike C. S. Lewis and some other Christian thinkers I respect, I continue to struggle with the idea of "loving your enemy" while you are trying to kill him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist Christian who opposed Hitler's regime, ultimately decided to participate in an assassination attempt against Hitler. He preferred to "do evil rather than to be evil," arguing that tolerating such evil as Hitler was tantamount to supporting that evil. The plot failed, and Bonhoeffer was executed with his coconspirators. What would we have done had we been in Bonhoeffer's place? For some of us, at least, this seems to be a hard question demanding charity toward those whose conclusions differ from our own.

At least on a personal level, however, Jesus' point is both uncomfortable and difficult to evade. The life of Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us that the meek rarely advance their cause without paying a high personal price, even martyrdom. Do we have the courage to stand for justice yet do so without this world's weapons of violence and hatred (see Thurman 1981:88)? While Jesus' teaching cannot be conformed to the agendas of those who advocate violent revolution, no matter how just their cause, neither does it mean total passivity in the face of evil. It does not mean that an abused wife must remain in the home in the face of abuse; it does not mean that God expects people being massacred to remain instead of fleeing (compare Mt 2:13-20; 10:23). James, an advocate of peace (Jas 2:11; 3:13-18; 4:1-2), was unrestrained in his denunciation of those who oppressed the poor (Jas 5:1-6; see Keener 1991c).

Rather, Jesus' teaching does mean that we depend on God rather than on human weapons, although God may sovereignly raise up human weapons to fight the oppressors. If we value justice and compassion for persons rather than merely utopian idealism, we must also calculate the human cost of opposing various degrees of injustice. In first-century Palestine, few "safe" vehicles existed for nonviolent social protest against the Romans; Romans viewed most public protest as linked with revolution, and punished it accordingly. In a society like ours where Christian egalitarianism has helped shape conceptions of justice, nonviolent protest stands a much better chance of working. Neither violent revolutionaries (whose cause may be more just than their methods) nor the well-fed who complacently ignore the rest of the world's pain (and whose cause is merely personal advancement) may embrace Jesus without either distorting him or transforming themselves in the process.

Yet Jesus' own life explains the meekness he prescribes. When the time appointed by his Father arrived, Jesus allowed people to crucify him, trusting his Father's coming vindication to raise him from the dead (Mt 17:11; 20:18-19). He was too meek to cry out or bruise a reed until the time would come to bring "justice to victory" (12:19-20). Yet he proclaimed justice (12:18), openly denounced the unjust (23:13-36) and actively, even somewhat "violently," protested unrighteousness although he knew what it would cost him (21:12-13). Jesus was meek (11:29), but he was not a wimp. He called his disciples to be both harmless as doves and wise as serpents (10:16)-in short, to be ruled by the law of love (22:39). Love of neighbor not only does no harm to a neighbor but bids us place ourselves in harm's way to protect our neighbor.

Surrender Your Possessions to Whoever Requests Them (5:42)

Judaism recognized giving to beggars as a moral obligation. Judaism stressed both charity and a high work ethic; most beggars genuinely had no alternative means of income. Unlike some of Jesus' contemporaries (Hengel 1974:20; see also Jeremias 1969:127), he places no cap on giving. While Jesus lived simply, he did have a home (4:13), like most other Galileans (albeit probably a modest one, like most of his townspeople). Yet if Jesus merely counseled "Live simply" without confronting us with concrete, graphic illustrations, many of us would define simplicity in terms of our desires rather than in terms of the world's great needs. Jesus forces us to decide how much we love others-and him.

Again Jesus invites us to grapple with his point, to which he will return with far greater force in 6:19-34. If nonresistance means disdaining our right to personal honor (5:38-39), our most basic possessions (v. 40) and our labor and time (v. 41) when others seek them by force, we must also disdain these things in view of the needs of the poor (v. 42). When the kingdom comes, our deeds rather than our wealth will matter (6:19-21; compare 25:34-46). In the meantime those who disdain everything else for the kingdom (13:44-45) must do with these other possessions what Jesus wills: give them to those who need them more (19:21). Our "vested interests" must be in heaven, not on earth (6:19-21). If we cannot value the kingdom that much, Jesus says, it will not belong to us (19:29-30).

Matthew 5


Love for Enemies

⁴³"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:43-48

Explanation:

Love Your Enemies (5:43-48)
Jesus demands not only that we not resist evil people assaulting our honor or possessions (vv. 38-42) but that we go so far as to actively love our enemies.
Jesus Demands Love Even for Enemies (5:43-44)

When Jesus explains his final quotation from the Bible, Love your neighbor, he adds to the quote an implication some of his contemporaries found there: hate your enemy. He is probably speaking of all kinds of enemies. Personal enemies were common enough in the setting of Galilean villages (Horsley 1986; Freyne 1988:154), but Jesus' contemporaries may have also thought of corporate threats to Israel or the moral fabric of the community (see Borg 1987:139). Whereas the biblical command to love neighbors (Lev 19:18) extends to foreigners in the land (Lev 19:33-34; compare Lk 10:27-37), other texts hold up a passionate devotion to God's cause that bred hatred of those who opposed it (Ps 139:21-22; see also 137:7-9). Popular piety, exemplified in the Qumran community's oath to "hate the children of darkness," may have extended such biblical ideology in Jesus' day (see Sutcliffe 1960). Jesus may well mean both personal and corporate enemies (Moulder 1978).

Jesus builds a fence around the law of love (Mt 22:39), amplifying it to its ultimate conclusion (compare Ex 23:4-5). In so doing, he makes demands more stringent than the law. He also makes a demand that can require more than merely human resources for forgiveness. Corrie ten Boom, who had lost most of her family in a Nazi concentration camp, often lectured on grace. But one day a man who came to shake her hand after such a talk turned out to be a former prison guard. Only by asking God to love through her did she find the grace to take his hand and offer him Christian forgiveness.


Since Jesus does not say exactly what to pray for our persecutors, some of us have been tempted to pray, "God, kill that person!" Needless to say, the context makes clear that Jesus means to pray good things for our enemies. Old Testament prayers for vindication (such as 2 Chron 24:22; Jer 15:15) still have their place (2 Tim 4:14; Rev 6:10), but our attitude toward individuals who hurt us personally or corporately must be love (Lk 23:34; Acts 7:60). Again, Jesus' words are graphic pictures that force us to probe our hearts; they do not cancel the Old Testament belief in divine vindication (Mt 23:33, 38; Rev 6:10-11), but summon us to leave our vindication with God and seek others' best interests in love.

Jesus Appeals to a Positive and Negative Example (5:45-47)

First he provides the ultimate moral example: God (vv. 45, 48). Jewish teachers generally recognized, as Jesus did, that God was gracious to all humanity, including the morally undeserving (for example, Sipre Deut. 43.3.6); they also saw rain as one of God's universal signs of beneficence. But after adducing the ultimate moral example, Jesus adduces an example from the opposite end of his hearers' moral spectrum (vv. 46-47): he provokes his hearers to shame by comparing their ability to obey the love commandment with that of tax-gatherers and Gentile idolaters, the epitome of moral reprobates (Mt 6:7; 20:25; 18:17; compare, for example, Sipre Deut. 43.16.1). One whose righteousness would surpass that of scribes and Pharisees (5:20) must exemplify a higher standard of righteousness than loving those friendly to their interests.


Jesus Demands That We Be Perfect like God (5:48)

What Jesus illustrated with graphic, concrete examples earlier in the sermon (vv. 21-47) he now epitomizes in a summary statement that forces us to go beyond mere examples. We can appeal to no law to tell us that we are righteous enough-that would be legalism. Instead, we must desire God's will so much that we seek to please him in every area of our lives-that is holiness. Jesus says that God's law was never about mere rules; instead, God desires a complete righteousness of the heart, a total devotion to God's purposes in this world.

That God becomes the standard of comparison suggests that Jesus' instruction here is exhortation, setting a goal, not assuming a state to which the hearers have already come. (The issue of whether any Christian is perfect is irrelevant here. All of us can learn to better reflect God's character; at the same time, God promises us power to overcome any given temptation; and if we can overcome any temptation, we should choose to say no to every temptation.) And as long as God represents the moral standard, none of us has room to boast; all of us must unite as brothers and sisters in need and seek God's kingdom and righteousness with all our hearts.