The Sermon on the Mount, Gospel Ethics, and the Beautiful Face of God
Matthew 5-7
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Biblical ethics can be a nightmare to sort through, and maybe that’s a topic for another essay. Reconciling the ethics of the Old Testament with those of the New Testament can be complicated. Even the ethics of the New Testament epistles differ from those of the gospels, not essentially, but in the underlying logic given to the reader for why a Christian aught to live one way and not another.
I'll only be describing the approach that Jesus himself seems to take, specifically within the Gospel of Matthew. Luke and Mark are somewhat less concerned with “ethics” than Matthew, who is writing for Jewish Christians who are very eager for a Law to follow. And who knows what John is doing… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When thinking about "Christian ethics," it's natural for the mind to default to the mode of the 10 Commandments: thou shalt x, thou shalt not y, with an implied or else. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, except that it can give the impression that Biblical commands and counsels are possibly arbitrary, and that God is basically capricious in what he tells us to do or not do. Also that he’s a little vindictive. Just do what you're told, there's no reason to ask questions. If pressed to say more, one might be able to say that Christian ethics means imitating Jesus, and probably having something to do with love. Again, this is certainly true as far as it goes, but why imitate Jesus? Why love? Why not simple justice? Why not some other criteria altogether? Let’s get into it.
Matthew's gospel is structured around five major "discourses" or speeches of Jesus that break the gospel up into its principal themes. The first of these discourses, the "Sermon on the Mount", describes the essential contours of what the messianic kingdom looks like regarding the life and conduct of its “citizens.” In other words, it concerns the "ethics" of the Kingdom of God which Jesus is inaugurating on earth.
Matthew 5 opens with Jesus ascending a "mountain", from where he proceeds to deliver a lengthy monologue about how his disciples are to live. The reader can't help but be reminded of Moses' ascending Mount Sinai and delivering the Law of Yahweh for Israel. Matthew's point is clear enough: Jesus is a new Moses, delivering a new Law to a new Israel.
First come the beatitudes, which could be called a "table of contents" for the rest of the sermon. What follows these will be essentially a commentary on one or another of those basic headings.
Next, Jesus tells his disciples that they are the salt and light of the earth, a city set on a hill, and a lamp giving light to those within a house. "Let your light shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven," he says. The mind turns to passages like Isaiah 49:6: "I will make you a light to the nations, that all the world may be saved." Or Deuteronomy 4:5-6: "See, I have taught you statutes and judgements...Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations..."
The first take away is that the ethics of Jesus aren't given simply for the sake of Christians "getting to heaven" when they die, but that they are given to advance the knowledge and reign of God in the world right now as it is. "The Kingdom of God" therefore isn't a euphemism for a cramped, temporally distant extra-dimensional receptacle of the individual souls of the just who were lucky enough to avoid the indignant glance of a wrathful and thin-skinned deity, but it is imminent; it is flesh and blood, it concerns this life, this world, and other people. Fundamentally it gives a hint that the heart of God is one ultimately of friendship and compassion toward the world that he has made. He is winning back a good -if broken and hurting- world, not snatching believers out of it. He is not merely a god, but a Father.
Jesus then moves on to explain how his ensuing speech, delivering an ostensibly new law, can be reconciled with the old Law of Moses. The reader naturally approaches the question as a simple dichotomy: if Jesus is giving a new law, then the old law must then be in the process of getting scrapped. It is here that Jesus first subtly shows his hand in his interpretation of that phrase, "the Law," and his answer is no, and yes. Following his words does require a bit of mental dexterity, but by no means is it opaque.
He says, "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." (5:17)
The movement described is not one of supplanting, so much as transmutation: in other words, what constitutes the essential substance of the Mosaic covenant is being preserved, and is being drawn up to full flourishing. What is only ancillary or "unessential" is being pruned away. "The Law" therefore, as Jesus will speak of it, is left untouched in its essence. No, the Law is not getting scrapped, but yes, it will look like something different than the Law of Moses understood simply.
But he continues: "until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not one dot will pass from the Law until all is accomplished."
This seems to contradict what has just been said, but there are two equally valid ways of understanding what he means in a way which would cohere with what we've seen thus far.
For the first possibility, we could take "the Law" here as referring to the Law of Moses. In which case, it should be remembered that Jesus, as he speaks, is in the process of inaugurating the Messianic Kingdom of God- the old, first heaven and earth are already beginning to pass away, and the new is dawning, and his listeners are conscious of this fact. Therefore, all is beginning to be "accomplished," and these beginnings will snowball through the cross, resurrection, ascension, and even through our own time until the reign of God on earth is consummated with the return of Christ (confer with 1 Corinthians 15:24). Thus, with one comment he preserves the basic value of the Mosaic covenant while simultaneously underscoring that the the new messianic age is dawning, and therefore the "jots and tittles" can now be expected to fall away.
The second possibility is that he is employing metonymy, (which means using one word to refer to a concept closely related to it, like "the pen is mightier than the sword," where "pen" suggests the business of rational discourse and "sword" suggests brute violence), such that when he refers to "the Law" in this sentence, he refers to that essential substance, that element of overlap between the Laws of Moses and his own.
For this interpretation to be plausible, the "until all is accomplished" would need to be dealt with, which is easily done by knowing that in Jewish rhetoric, "until" does not imply a change of status as it usually does in English. It can simply mean "up to this point" and saying nothing about what happens after (this would be the subject for another essay). If this is what's going on, then the "iotas and dots" that will not be erased would also be metonymy, referring again to that point of overlap between the Laws of Moses and Jesus, and not simply to the Law of Moses. He would then mean that this primal "law", whatever exactly it is (we haven't seen quite yet), will endure from the time it was first given and will never fall away.
I personally favor this second interpretation but, like I said, I think both have merit. But we've descended quite deeply into the weeds and would do well to raise our heads again...
He continues: "therefore, whoever relaxes 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 does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (5:19)
The "these commandments" refers to the new law that he is promulgating, not to the Mosaic Law. The "therefore" introducing the statement serves to underline the point: he is saying that the commands that Jesus is about to give not only "satisfy" the objective of the old Law, but in fact they surpass it, as he continues:
"For...unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
He is not exhorting his listeners to outdo the Jewish religious elite in a more scrupulous observance of the Mosaic Law and traditions of their elders, but saying that by observing this new Law that he is promulgating, their righteousness will by that simple fact surpass theirs, insofar as the righteousness of the "new Law" exceeds that of the old.
So if this new Law is pruning and surpassing the old by amplifying and developing its essential substance, the question is: what is its essential substance? Jesus answers this question directly in the conclusion to his sermon:
"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Mt. 7:12).
In a word, it is charity. Jesus is saying that the Law of Moses was pointing toward, and foggily grasping charity, but that his "new Law" is going to bear this out more clearly and more perfectly than the old. I put "new Law" in quotation marks now because, following Jesus' logic as presented here, in fact this isn't something "new" at all, but something more ancient and more primal than can even be conceived.
Thus, we find that the law and charter of the Messianic Kingdom of God which Jesus is inaugurating on earth couldn't possibly be further from another obscurely pedantic legal/moral code, but simply and refreshingly: charity. Anticipating ourselves a bit, we can say that it is by charity that he intends to reign in hearts, homes, and communities; spilling over from believers into the world like "streams in the desert" (Isaiah 41:18, 43:19), bringing new life as the first fruits of the eventual "new heavens and new earth" (Rev. 21:1). The plan of God for the world, and each of us in it, is renewal, recreation, and resurrection by charity.
Once again as we read the gospels, we discover that we're quite far from the notion of a divine lawyer-despot endlessly and unhappily scrutinizing his peasant tenants in a painful effort to effect the labored rehabilitation of creation by exacting mere compliance. The God revealed by Jesus gives us a law of charity toward one another, but why charity? Jesus goes on to show why.
The sermon can be broken up into three sections: an introduction, the body, and the conclusion.
Now, after introducing the "new Law" of charity and explaining its relation to the Law of Moses (explained above), the first teaching of the body of the sermon concerns the restraint of anger (chapter 5:21 and following). Charity.
Before he concludes the sermon with teachings on praying for the coming of the kingdom, which he has just outlined, and encouragement to build a solid foundation and enter that kingdom through the "narrow gate" (charity), his last teaching in the body concerns the restraint of judgement (chapter 7:1 and following). Charity.
Right in the middle of the body of his sermon, Jesus gives a teaching on the love of enemies -the supreme expression of this law of charity, at the end of which teaching he gives us the key to the whole sermon: "you are to be perfect, as your father is perfect".
The logic given by Jesus for this law of charity is that charity is constitutive of God's "perfection", and as children of our Father, we like natural children share the features of our heavenly Father, reflecting his light in a dark world (see chapter 5:14 and following). Growth in the perfection of God therefore doesn't direct us toward the drudgery of the narrow and cramped merely legal and moralistic "perfection" of the scribes and pharisees, but the wide open ranges of charity, because that is the heart of God. He is the very definition of largesse and generosity itself, and of every other virtue that is implied by the word "love."
When the sermon is re-read through this prism: that the "commands" of Jesus are a reflection, or a painting of the face of the Father, it becomes wildly vivid and takes on new life. Why ought we not to be bitter, unkind, or harsh with our neighbor? Because if we don't we'll be punished by an ironically wrathful God? No. Because, Jesus is saying, God is never that way with us. He never calls us "idiot," and he never curses us, because those things bring death (or in the words of Jesus, "murder"), and he is the "God of the living" (Lk. 20:38).
Why ought we not to judge our neighbor as if their faults existed in a vacuum, giving no thought to the whole person with a beating heart and a beautifully complicated story, but reducing them to the "speck" in their eye? Because God is not that way with us. He never sees our faults in isolation but through the lens of compassion- a "suffering-with" that feels sorrow for the brokenness and hurt that manifests itself as sin.
Why ought we to love our enemies? Because the heart of the Father is, from bottom to top, one of friendship for us, both individually and corporately. "He makes his sun to shine on the good and the bad alike" (chapter 5:45) because he is Love, and as Paul says poetically in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:
Love is patient and kind...it is not self seeking or easily angered, and keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love protects, trusts, hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.
When the "ethics" of the Gospel are read with the understanding that, before they are directive of our own behavior, they are painting a picture of the Father's face toward us, they become the revelation of what is truly "good news": that God is for us, because "God is love" (1 John 4:8), and the face of love of beautiful.