Matt 5.13-20

a deeper obedience

(matthew 5.13-20)

Jason Procopio

I heard someone (actually it was a sign on a barbecue restaurant in Texas) say, “If you’re feeling good about yourself, have a kid draw a picture of you.” 

When my son Jack was about four years old, he drew a picture of me. It is by far one of my favorite pictures of myself. We have it in our dining room, along with the picture he drew of Loanne on the same occasion. We love looking at it.

But it’s hardly flattering. 

It’s occurred to me more than once that this picture of me is actually a pretty good picture of reality. We all have an idea of the kind of person we are. I, like everyone else, like to think of myself as being of a certain quality. But in reality, spiritually speaking, I’m more like a picture drawn by a child. Spiritually speaking, I’m not much better than that. And neither are you. We’re off-center, unbalanced; things are not where they should be; no matter how together and happy we want to think we are, the reality is a good deal more frightening.

Jack’s picture is cute to look at. But when I go outside, when I have to deal with other people, I don’t want the world to see that. I don’t want them to see me at all, messed up as I am.

I want the world to see him.

But that’s a tall order—getting them to see God when they look at me. To get there will require nothing less than a full-scale transformation, from who I am to a version of me who reflects who God is.

That’s the situation today’s text is presenting to us. God has given us a mission—something to show to the world. But if we are to show what we need to show, something radical needs to take place.

If you remember, last week we saw the Beatitudes, in which Jesus laid out a succinct description of Christian character. Citizens of the kingdom of heaven, he says, will purposefully be different from the rest of the world. They will not be characterized by power or might or anything that will draw people to themselves. They will be humble and meek; they will desire righteousness above all else; and they will respond to persecution with joy, because they know their reward will be great, and the prophets who came before them rejoiced for the same reason.

This was introductory: Jesus starts us off by saying that citizens of his kingdom will be radically different.

The question is, how and why will it manifest itself? What will the world see when they look at us—the spiritual equivalent of a portrait drawn by a four-year-old, or men and women displaying the kingdom of God?

Jesus starts by giving us two images which will be familiar to you if you’ve been a Christian for a while, and then he shows us how we will live if these images apply to us. This message is going to be a kind of introduction to what we’ll be seeing over the next several weeks; in other words, this week is the theory, and starting next week, we see application. 

Salt and Light (v. 13-16) 

In this first portion (v. 13-16), Jesus gives us two truths concerning the kingdom of God, through two different images. The first truth is that the citizens of the kingdom preserve the message and character of the kingdom in the world.

The image he uses to express this truth is that of salt.

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. 

Your upbringing and personal habits regarding salt may vary, but everyone knows that at least some salt is essential to give flavor. 

But that’s not all. At the time of Christ, salt was not mainly used for flavor, but as a preservative. That’s actually the first thing his disciples would have thought of when they thought of salt.

We talked about this a few months ago when we were in Peter’s letters. The salty “taste” Jesus mentions here isn’t just about improving food, but also about preserving it. It’s not surprising, then, that he would use this image to talk about his people. Christians receive the message of the gospel. We receive the character of the kingdom of God (that’s what we saw last week in the Beatitudes). We receive the gospel, we share it, we live it—we grow in gospel character—and in so doing, we keep the gospel moving forward. God’s people preserve the gospel in their own hearts, and for those who will come after; we have received the gospel today because faithful men and women who came before us lived as the salt of the earth.

And if a Christian doesn’t live this way, Jesus says, they’re essentially useless for the kingdom of God. What do you do with salt that is no longer salty? You throw it out. 

How then does one “lose one’s taste”? We stop living it, and we stop sharing it. A disciple of Christ who doesn’t live the gospel isn’t a disciple of Christ in any real sense. He’s a tagalong, of no real use to the kingdom. (And for you Calvinists who are starting to panic: by talking about “salt which has lost its taste”, he’s not saying we can lose our salvation. But he’s definitely calling us to examine our salvation. Receiving the gospel with faith, sharing it, living it, are all indispensable signs that we our saved; so if we’re not living like this, not only are we useless for the kingdom, but perhaps some questions should be asked about the state of our souls.)

So that’s the first truth: as citizens of the kingdom of God, we preserve the message and character of the kingdom in the world.

Secondly, as citizens of the kingdom of God, we display the message and character of the kingdom to the world. 

14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. 

This image is a little easier for us, because the obvious truth about light is that it’s visible. You can hide it—you can build a city in a cave rather than on a hill, you can put a lamp under a basket—and many Christians choose to do so. They hide the message and character of the kingdom rather than display it.

This is understandable. Jesus has just finished telling us we’d be persecuted if we followed him (v. 11-12); not much is more frightening than the idea of being persecuted, ridiculed or cast out, from society, from our friends, even from our family. 

However, since we are light in this world, rather than hide the message and character of the kingdom, we are to display it. Hiding light is possible, but stupid. A city is meant to draw people to it; a lamp is meant to illuminate the house. So we, as God’s people, as light in this world, are meant to shine: to show God’s glory and grace to those around us by living the gospel, and displaying the character of the gospel. We shine through the things that we do (the “good works” the world will see), and through the type of people we are, as we saw last week.

Now, the point isn’t merely to be seen. We’re not putting on a show. The goal, Jesus says, is that the world might a) see our good works; and b) give glory to the Father.

In the year 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, an epidemic (possibly smallpox) swept through the Roman Empire. People were dying all over the place; those with symptoms were often thrown into the street where they couldn’t infect the rest of the house. People fled the cities.

Christians who were infected were cared for by their brothers and sisters in the church. This isn’t surprising if we’ve read Acts 2; the church took good care of the church. But not only that, the Christians living in cities stayed in the cities to care for others who didn’t belong to the church—in other words, they stuck around to take care of pagans. For many, simple care like food and water and rest was enough to nurse them back to health. As a result, it didn’t go unnoticed that the Christians, and those they cared for, were surviving in much greater numbers than everyone else.

This gained them a reputation. Their generosity toward one another, and even toward those who weren’t Christians, continued. In the fourth century, when the emperor Julian wanted to restore paganism, he exhorted the pagan priesthood to compete with Christian charities. 

Historian Rodney Stark writes: 

“In a letter to the high priest of Galatia, Julian urged the distribution of grain and wine to the poor, noting that ‘the impious Galileans [Christians], in addition to their own, support ours, [and] it is shameful that our poor should be wanting our aid.’ But there was little or no response to Julian’s proposals because there were no doctrines and no traditional practices for the pagan priest to build upon…. Christians believed in life everlasting. At most, pagans believed in an unattractive existence in the underworld. Thus, for Galen to have remained in Rome to treat the afflicted during the first great plague would have required far greater bravery than was needed by Christian deacons and presbyters to do so. Faith mattered.” (Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion, New York: HarperOne, 2011, 114-119)

By their lives, Christians showed why Christ was good. They proclaimed the Christian message, and they lived Christian character, for the right reasons. And this is just one example—it’s far bigger than just caring for the sick. Our call to be salt and light touches every area of our lives. We are called to preserve the message and character of the kingdom in the world; and we are called to display the message and character of the kingdom to the world. And if we do this, the world will see how the kingdom of God is lived, and recognize the faith of the kingdom as substantive.

So the massive question becomes: what does that look like? What is this message, and how does this character manifest itself?

a deeper obedience (v. 17-20) 

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. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

The Law of Moses (found in the first five books of the Bible) was the law which governed the life and worship of the Jewish people up to this point. After its arrival, the prophets came and began the work of interpreting and applying this law for the people in specific circumstances (the prophets wrote the other books of the Old Testament). So together, the Law and the Prophets were all of Scripture up to that point—everything we find in the Old Testament in our Bibles.

Jesus doesn’t present himself as an insurrectionist (as some would later claim), but as a completionist: that he hadn’t come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them. It’s a bold statement: how does one “fulfill” the Bible? Often we answer that question by saying that Jesus fulfilled the law by perfectly obeying it—something which no one else had ever been able to do.

And that’s true, Jesus did do that; he lived without sin, as Hebrews 4.15 says. But it’s a lot bigger than that. He doesn’t just say he came to fulfill the Law, but the Law and the Prophets. In other words, Jesus is saying that he came to be and to do everything to which the entire Old Testament was pointing. All of the predictions of the Messiah whom God would send to save his people; the entire sacrificial system which looked forward to the great sacrifice Jesus would offer; the pattern of behavior set out for us in the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament; and all the promises of what God would do at the end of the age—the establishment of the New Heavens and the New Earth.

By saying he had come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, Jesus is saying that everything that God had ever told his people about anything was actually pointing to him.

And indeed, this is what we see in the rest of the gospel. Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Messiah in his life and miracles. He lived the life God had commanded the people of Israel to live. He gave a visible example of what living according to true wisdom looks like. He took the sins of his people on himself, and died in their place, and applied his sacrifice to them, so that they might be free: just as the prophet Isaiah predicted he would: upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53.5).

But we need to remember that when Jesus is saying these things, most of that hasn’t happened yet. He hasn’t yet been rejected or despised or put to death. That will happen soon—that’s why he came, to fulfill the Law and the Prophets—but it’s still in the future.

And that’s why, for those who might be tempted to see the Old Testament as outdated and unimportant because Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, he insists that until everything predicted in the Old Testament has come to pass (v. 18: until heaven and earth pass away—until ALL is accomplished), the Old Testament’s authority as Scripture remains. The Law and the Prophets—everything we see in the first section of the Bible—is still God’s Word. It is still, as Paul told Timothy, breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3.16-17).

Now I know what some of you may be thinking: Good grief, if I have to start sacrificing goats every time I touch a certain kind of animal, I’m in big trouble. 

Of course that’s not the case; even though not everything we see in the Old Testament has been fulfilled, a lot of it has. Jesus has come! He has offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for his people, of which the sacrifices of the Old Testament are a mere shadow. Christ has established a new covenant with his people, not sealed through religious rites but through the Spirit’s work in his people. God gave these rituals and sacrifices to his people so that they could present themselves before him without fear of damnation; in Jesus Christ, that’s exactly what we have now—perfect access to God, no condemnation in Christ Jesus (Romans 8.1). The chastisement which fell on Christ has brought us peace. So we are no longer bound by the rituals and sacrifices of the Old Testament, or rules which governed Hebrew society at the time. Thank the Lord, no longer have to offer lambs on an altar or burn down our homes if we find mold in the basement.

But there’s a lot we see in the Old Testament which hasn’t changed. The Old Testament lays out for us God’s plan for the world he created. It lays out the moral character of God, which we are called to imitate (and which the New Testament describes in even more detail).

In addition, there’s a lot we find foreshadowed in the Old Testament which hasn’t happened yet. Christ hasn’t yet returned. He still hasn’t finished his work of making us perfect as our Father is perfect. He still hasn’t presented his church to himself, spotless for all eternity. 

And so until that day comes, until ALL is accomplished, the rituals of the Old Testament may have been brought to an end, but the Old Testament itself still carries the same authority. (This is why we keep insisting that you read the Old Testament: the book of Leviticus is every bit as much the Word of God as the book of Romans.)

Now we’ve just spoken a lot about the Old Testament; we had to, because that’s what Jesus means when he talks about the Law and the Prophets. 

But it can be really easy to get lost in the weeds here; so rather than getting stuck on all this talk about the Old Testament, we need to ask, why does he bring it up?

Jesus doesn’t talk about the Old Testament only to show his disciples they’re still bound to obey it. He talks about it to show them that their obedience to the Old Testament has to be even deeper than they had previously thought.

V. 19: 

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. 

Now at this point, his disciples may be thinking, “Okay—I can do that. It’ll be difficult, but I can obey the commandments. I can offer the sacrifices when I need to. I can adhere to God’s moral commands.” And at least theoretically, they’d be right. The scribes and Pharisees managed to do it, for the most part. These two religious groups knew the law by heart, and they obeyed the law scrupulously—better than anyone. 

The problem is that if all they’re aiming for is to check off the right boxes and say, “Okay, I’ve done that, I’ve done that, I’ve done that,” then they’ve completely missed the point of the law. The Law and the Prophets aren’t an end in themselves; they actually point to something greater. 

Which is why Jesus concludes in v. 20: 

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 

In other words, he’s not telling the people to stop obeying the Law of Moses. He’s telling them that if obeying the Law of Moses is all they do, it’s not enough. He’s saying, “Do these things, but do them better. Don’t just look for the how of the commandments, but the why. If you obey the why of the commandment, the how will take care of itself.” And as we’ll see, when he talks about our righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees, he’s not talking about going bigger, but going deeper. He doesn’t call us to more spectacular acts of obedience, but acts of obedience that don’t stop at the surface.

And that’s exactly what he’s going to do starting at v. 21—he going to take laws the people thought they understood, and show them that the practical result of righteousness (the good thing you do) isn’t the important thing, but the righteousness itself which produces it. Not murdering is good; being able to calm the anger in your heart is even better. Not cheating on your wife is good; loving her so much that you don’t want to cheat on her is even better.

Working hard to obey the law is good; obeying the law because you see there what God is like, and because you want to be like him, is even better.

Why do you think the Psalms are so filled with love letters to the Law? Because David understood these commandments weren’t an end in themselves; they were pointing to a deeper righteousness, which makes us desire what is truly desirable. And when we are the sort of people who desire what is right, then actually doing what is right becomes as natural as breathing. You don’t need to force yourself to do something you really love doing. You do it, because you love it.

Conclusion

I hope you can see now what Christ is getting at here. We are called to preserve and display the message and character of the kingdom of God in this world—we are called to be “salt and light” to the world, and to teach others to do the same. And that will not happen if all we do is check a bunch of boxes which say, “I obeyed this rule, I obeyed that rule.” The rules are important, and we must obey them…but we will never be salt and light in this world if we stop at mere, surface-level obedience. If we are to be salt and light, if we are to preserve and display the message and character of the kingdom, our obedience must go far deeper than that. Our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.

If we are to be salt and light, the world can’t just see us do the right thing; it has to see us be the right kind of people. People who aren’t just not murderers, but who are forgiving. People who aren’t just not adulterers, but who are faithful. People who aren’t just not liars, but who are truthful.

People who aren’t just obedient to God, but who are happy in God.

Remember? [Happy] are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 

Over the next few weeks Jesus is going to give us several different applications of this, several examples of what this looks like. So rather than try to apply all this now, just two words to leave us with: read and pray.

Read the Bible. The whole Bible—Old and New Testaments. Learn to know what God loves, to know what he desires; learn to look to see him before you look to do anything.

Read, and pray. Pray that God would help you grow in what you see as you read: that his Spirit would help you love what he loves. Pray that God would help you obey, not out of compulsion, but from the heart. Pray that God would help us to be salt and light in this world. 

And as he answers your prayers, do it. Be salt and light to this world. Preserve and display the message and the character of the kingdom of God. Show them what our God is like, not just by doing the right thing, but by doing it for the right reason. Love your God, and serve your God, and be happy in him—let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.