In
the Name of the Father and of the X Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Grace
and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and may our Lord
and Savior sanctify you in the truth, for His word is truth. Amen
The
Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany (2011)
How
to be Perfect.
Matthew
5:38-48 (ESV)
"You have heard that it was said, 'An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'
[39] But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone
slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. [40] And if anyone would sue you and take
your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
[41] And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two
miles. [42] Give to the one who begs
from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
[43] "You have heard that it was said,
'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' [44] But I say to you, Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you, [45] so that you may be sons of your Father
who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and
sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
[46] For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not
even the tax collectors do the same?
[47] And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than
others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
[48] You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
For
the past two weeks we have seen our Lord uses five examples to illustrate the
nature of the new “exceeding” righteousness. Each time that our Lord says, “But
I say to you” (v. 39), He reveals that He is the end of the Law for
righteousness for everyone who believes (Rom. 10:4); His treatment of the
intention and will of the Law shows that He is the end because He is the
Fulfiller of the Law as He ushers in a new age; the age of salvation by grace
through faith.
Throughout
this discourse of His Sermon on the Mount, our Lord Jesus shows us that the new
righteousness of which He speaks exceeds the purely legal prescription of the old
Law. In His explanation on the Fifth Commandment we see an extension of the law
against murder. He says not only are we not to commit murder, but we are also not
to exhibit anger, or malice, or hatred, or insult toward our neighbor. In His
explanation of the Sixth Commandment our Lord reveals a new righteousness that goes
far beyond physical contact as He applies lust and divorce to this Commandment.
Furthermore, He sweeps away all sophistry regarding oaths by removing them entirely
and replacing them with a man’s simple yes or no. And finally, our Lord
provides us with a stunning revelation of the “new righteousness” as exemplified in the law of retaliation. As it
was, the Law could not remove the desire for vengeance from the heart of men;
it could only regulate that vengeance, setting a limit on its execution; such
as an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. However, our Lord Jesus removes the
impulse for revenge by commanding us to live, as He Himself lived, in a loving
relationship that recklessly exposes ourselves to the lovelessness of the world
and the need of men. Therefore, our Lord Jesus declares to us a “new righteousness” that is to be
exemplified by the law of love.
The
Law always said that we are to love our neighbor; however, legalism, the
attempt to find favor with God and to stand in His judgment by way of works of
the Law, raised the question, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)
and thereby sought to limit the imperative to love by finding avenues for
lovelessness and hatred. However, Jesus dismisses this hair-splitting attempt
to justify hatred by removing every limitation from the law of love, commanding
instead that we love our enemies.
Our
loving Savior always went this way of love for friend and foe alike. He joined
Himself, in love to all mankind who were under the wrath of God when He was
baptized; thereby loving the enemy in order to “fulfill all righteousness”
(Matt. 3:15). Furthermore, He continued this way of love as it took Him
to the Cross, “so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21
ESV). Impaled to that wretched
cross by nails hammered with the hate of His enemies who continued to persecute
and ridicule Him as His life blood ebbed from His body; He forgave them. He
loved everyone so much that He willing took their sins upon Himself so they
might be free from the horrors of hell. Therefore, by our Lord’s example, the
highest “righteousness” is love.
In
His explanation of the law of retaliation, Jesus refers to the penal law;
however, He does not change or abolish that law because it’s too harsh or
lacking in humanitarian warmth. No, He did not come to abolish the law but to
fulfill it.
The
courts, which are compelled to deal severely with the guilty, are not to be an
example for the believer whose heart is filled with the love of God. What the
judge of a court must do to execute the criminal code which demands justice
constitutes only the last and final step to which the governmental authority
are compelled to go to punish criminal behavior. Such laws do not furnish us
with a general pattern of how we are to conduct ourselves toward our
fellow-man. Instead, these final penal measures do just the opposite. The law
is not placed into our hands but instead it is taken out of them. Our heavenly
Father, who placed the very law into the hands of the government, where it
belongs, places another law, and its execution, the law of love, into the
hearts of Christ’s disciples and thus into our hearts. This is our law of
action when we are wronged. Therefore, this law requires of us patience,
forbearance, willingness to forego our rights and to suffer wrong in order to
overcome evil with good, so that the courts may not need to step in. By obeying
this law of love from the heart the “better
righteousness” will be ours in the verdict of the divine Judge.
Our
Lord Jesus is our example for living as He tells us in the Gospel Reading for
today. Therein He gives us a general principle by which to live, He says; “Do
not resist the one who is evil” (v. 39). Now He is not referring to
Satan in this imperative, but to men because of all the citations in this
section of His Sermon He only refers to men and their actions. Thus, “do not
resist the evil man” is set against the understanding of an eye for an eye,
etc. The demand for justice, an eye for an eye, etc., is to be administered
solely by the government after due process; it is not to be applied to the
individual when he is wronged. We never have the right to extract vengeance on
those whom we suppose have wronged us. We need look no further than our Lord
Jesus for a clear example of how we are to respond when we are wronged.
In
responding to a question by the high priest at His fraudulent trial one of the
officers struck our Lord with his hand and asked, “Is that how you answer the high
priest?” Jesus answered him, “If what I
said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong; but if what I said is right, why
do you strike me?” (John 18:22-23 ESV). It was within the power of our Lord
to strike down the one who struck Him, but He refrained from acting in a
vengeful way. Furthermore, St. Peter, concerning Jesus, testified, “When
he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not
threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter
2:23 ESV). Our Lord Jesus provides us with the perfect example showing
us that when we are persecuted we are not to retaliate, but rather to put our
trust in the Lord.
Now
it is common for man to retaliate when wronged or harmed; however, such
retaliation is nothing more than getting even with another through sin.
Moreover, the worst feature of this sin is the anger, resentment, and passion
that fill the heart when one seeks revenge. Our Lord’s words are intended to
keep our hearts clean of all such carnal tendencies. Understanding this in its
proper light can be confusing, because so many read into the words of our Lord
a complete “non-resistance” to the violence inflicted by evil men against
others. However, such an understanding overthrows the righteousness of which
Jesus speaks. The law of love is not intended to throw open the flood gates to
unrestrained cruelty and crime. Rather, the law of love demands that we not
seek individual vengeance; instead we let justice seek its course through
governmental process.
Failure
to live by the law of love always results in living by the law of retaliation!
Jesus reminds us of this truth when He says, “You have heard that it was
said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (v. 43). This
is how the scribes and Pharisees taught the people concerning the summation of
the second table of the Law. They mutilated God’s Word as given us in Leviticus
19:17-18, which says, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart,
but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of
him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own
people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
Regardless of how we read these words it is impossible to find where God is
asking us “Who is our neighbor?” Interpreting this imperative from God by
shifting the emphasis on asking “Who is our neighbor,” these false teachers
limited the Word so those who were considered not to be a neighbor were to be
considered as enemies and therefore hated. This teaching was a flagrant
perversion of the law.
Jesus
corrects this perversion when He says, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you” (v. 44). The Son of God and the Lord
of the law crushes the rabbinical perversion and restates what Moses and the
prophets had commanded. Now you might ask, “Who is my enemy, are we not to love
everyone?” Yes, we are to love everyone, but there are those who delight in personally
trying to destroy another, these are the ones our Lord describes as “those
who persecute you” by hating you and trying to do you injury. On their
part they are flagrantly transgressing the law; however, their doing so is not
to induce you to follow suit; to follow their evil example. Enemies such as our
Lord describes will have a fearful account to render to God on the Last Day and
we pray; God save us from such an account. In spite of all their enmity we are
to go in love. We are to pray that God’s grace may bring our enemies to see
their sins and their wrong, to repent and thus to obtain God’s forgiveness.
Only the love that Jesus puts into our hearts as followers of His is able to
produce such prayer.
How
this love is to come into our hearts and completely control us, our Lord has
already answered in the Beatitudes, for all who are poor in spirit, who mourn,
who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are merciful, who
are pure in heart, who are peacemakers, who are persecuted for righteousness
sake, and who are reviled and persecuted falsely on account of your faith are
blessed beyond measure with the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit
to lead you in all righteousness. You are sons and daughters of our Father in
heaven, reborn by grace through faith in the Son and as such “children of God”
you will, indeed be able to love your enemy even as our heavenly Father loves
them.
Furthermore,
our Lord tells us to love our enemies, “so that you may be sons of your Father who is
in heaven” (v. 45). We pray, “Our Father in heaven” and it brings out
the full connotation of our relationship to Him, we are His children. His grace
alone put us sinners into this wonderful and blessed relationship through His
One and Only Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, who came to make us His Father’s
children. What a motive, then, for us to love as He does and as He bids us to
love through His Son so we might show that we are His children. Moreover, our
Lord bids us to be like His Father who loves all men, making the sun to rise on
both the evil and the good and sending rain on the just and the unjust. Our
heavenly Father exhibits no partiality, He loves all equally; can we do any
less? Jesus reminds us if we love only those who love us are we any better than
the world? On the contrary, you have been called out of the world; you have
been called by the One who loved you before you could love Him. Thus, He says
to you, you must love everybody if you are to be perfect.
As
children of God you must be like the Father. “You therefore must be perfect, as
your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48). We are to make God our model
and follow Him in all His perfections, following Him in spirit and truth; not,
however, that we can obtain equality with the Father, because God’s attributes
are infinite while ours are finite. Compared to God we are mere shadows, but it
is better to be a shadow than to cast no reflection of God at all. When our
Lord tells us that we are to be perfect, He is not requiring that we be
sinless, because this is impossible for man. Each of us hungers and thirsts for
righteousness, which is obtained only through God’s mercy and the truth is we
are blessed everyday by God’s everlasting mercy through faith in His Son, our
Lord, Jesus Christ. However, the fact remains; we are sinners, sinners till the
day we are called from this valley of tears and taken into our Savior’ loving
hands where we will delight for eternity in His perfect righteousness bathed in His presence in His heavenly home.
Then we shall be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. Then we shall
always love because we will be in the presence of true love, a love that seeks to give continuously, never seeking
vengeance. A love that was so great that God sent His only Son into a loveless
world to suffer and die on the Altar of the Cross so that the loveless might
live. Then, out of His abounding mercy and spurned by love for His Son, He sent
His Holy Spirit to call us to faith and He poured out His grace on us through
His beloved Son, saving us from death, hell, and the devil, robbing us in the righteousness of His holy Son so we
might be called, children of God.
Our
Savior knows us and loves us and He wants us to love as He loves. Therefore, I
pray that your prayer everyday is to live your day as our Savior wants you to
live, as one who loves the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, and with all your mind, while also loving your neighbor as yourself
(Matt. 22:37-38), which includes your enemies and those who persecute you. Amen.
May the peace
of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through
Christ Jesus. Amen.