Outliving the Pharisees

Matthew 5:17-20, The Message – “Don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures—either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God’s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God’s Law will be alive and working.

“Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.

          “Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.”  This would have been a gasp-producing statement to those gathered to hear Jesus’s words on that mountainside so long ago.  The Pharisees were those who had studied the law all their lives since they could read.  They knew the not only the law, but the thousands of pages of commentary on the law written by the wisest rabbis Israel ever had over the centuries.  It would have seemed ridiculous to Jesus’s hearers that day that anyone could exceed the Pharisees in matters of right living – they were the ones who defined right living for the people.  But right there is the problem Jesus is pointing out.  The law Jesus is referring to is not defined by the Pharisees; it is defined by God. 

          The key statement in this passage is when Jesus says, “I’m not here to demolish [the law] but to complete.”  Other translations use the word “fulfill” instead of “complete.”  Jesus suggests that if you want to see what the law lived out perfectly looks like, look at him.  You don’t need an expert in the law to tell you what it means.  Jesus lives out what it means.  The way Jesus lived is the best “commentary” on the law you could ever “read.”  But the law isn’t given to be read, but lived out.  This is an important foundation Jesus is laying here, because he is about to unleash a flurry of teachings that upend what the Pharisees have been teaching for hundreds of years.  And he will back those teachings up with the way He lives until the day He is nailed to a cross.

          It is still a relevant point to be made, for the influence of the Pharisees persist.  There are still people who care more about knowing all about “the rules” than they do about living out the original intention for those rules.  “We have to do better than that” is what Jesus is still saying to us.  We do that by seeing how Jesus lived and imitating that.  In the coming weeks, as we work our way though the rest of the Sermon on the Mount and continue through the rest of the Gospel, let’s listen to his teachings, but let’s also watch how what he does shows how those teachings are lived out.  Then, let’s live the same way.  That’s how we will do better than the Pharisees.

Question:   What is the difference between knowing what is right and living right? 

Prayer:  Jesus, thank you for becoming one of us and showing us how to live God’s way.  May we really see your life and imitate it with ours as we are empowered by your Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Prayer Focus:  Pray for God to remove your Pharisaical tendencies.

Song: First Love – Petra