Matthew 7.24-27, Luke 6.47-49.
When people read the New Testament (even though evangelists tell ’em to read John first, which they don’t have to;
As, I would argue, it should be. John is great for talking about our salvation and Jesus’s divine nature. But now that we’re saved, how are we to live? What are the good works God has in mind for us?
A little too challenging for a lot of Christians. For some new believers, it’s like a punch in the face. This is what Jesus expects of us? Righteous behavior? Self-control? Radical forgiveness? Integrity? Total faith in God? No double standards? In fact higher standards than the most religious people we know? Christ Almighty!
Some of us figure, “Okay,” and give it a shot. And grow as Christians really fast.
But historically most Christians have looked at the Sermon on the Mount, balked, and tried to find loopholes.
The result has been the five most common ways Christians choose to interpret the Sermon on the Mount. Four of ’em are obvious attempts to weasel out of it.
1. Take none of it literally.
The most common way Christians nullify the Sermon on the Mount, is treat it as
Including the parts where Jesus clearly states he did so mean it literally.
How do people justify allegorizing the whole thing? Simple: In some bits of the Sermon, Jesus
Fr’instance when Jesus instructs us to not resist an evildoer. Let him slap you around; do for him whatever he wrongly demands.
But why don’t we follow it? Duh; we don’t wanna. People will take advantage, and abuse us, and Jesus can’t want his followers to be doormats. Besides what if the evildoer plans to rape or murder us, or harm our loved ones? Screw that! We’re gonna fight back. In Esther the Jews didn’t stand for that: The goverment permitted ’em to get some weapons and kill ’em back.
Extend this “it’s all hyperbole” interpretation to the rest of the bible, and you’ll magically find you don’t have to follow a word of it. Or believe it, for that matter.
But what about the bit where Jesus says those who dismiss him are like a fool who builds a house on sand? created deduced them, and tweaked them to their satisfaction. And don’t take the parable of the house on sand literally either.
You see the problem. Treating the Sermon as if it’s all hyperbole means we can repurpose it to mean whatever we wish. Jesus’s intentions and purposes? Irrelevant. God’s will? Don’t care. Evildoers? Balls.
2. Push it into another era.
A
And
No, dispensationalism isn’t taught in the bible whatsoever. You gotta really mangle
So why do so many Christians believe in dispensationalism? ’Cause one of the dirty little secrets of dispensationalism is it permits Christians to nullify scriptures.
Don’t wanna obey the Law? No problem: Claim it’s part of a previous plan of salvation. One which God isn’t using anymore. So we can read it as a history lesson. But it doesn’t apply to our lives anymore, and we can ignore it. Skip it. Even break it.
Don’t wanna follow the Sermon on the Mount? Again, no problem! It’s Jesus’s interpretation of the Law, which he taught people before
Yeah, they don’t always put it in those words, but that’s the attitude. And Jesus’s own statement about how the Law totally still counts, doesn’t count:
Matthew 5.17-20 KWL - 17 “Don’t assume I came to dissolve the Law or the Prophets.
- I didn’t come to dissolve but complete:
- 18 Amen! I promise you, the heavens and earth may pass away,
- but one yodh, one penstroke of the Law, will never pass away; not till everything’s done.
- 19 So whoever relaxes one of these commands—the smallest—and thus teaches people,
- they’ll be called smallest in the heavenly kingdom.
- Whoever does and teaches them,
- they’ll be called great in the heavenly kingdom:
- 20 I tell you, unless morality abounds in you, more than in scribes and Pharisees,
- you may never enter the heavenly kingdom.”
Dispensationalism is another loophole. It nullifies the Old Testament, and lots of the New, so we don’t have to obey Jesus at all: All sins are dissolved, we can
Of course it makes no logical sense. Why would Jesus teach this Sermon, only to invalidate it a few years later when he died? Why would the apostles memorize it, write it down after Jesus died, then teach it to Jesus’s future followers as if it’s important? Why even have it in the bible? Doesn’t the idea of Jesus nullifying his own teaching, strike you as the behavior of a flip-flopping politician instead of the infallible Son of Man?
3. Push it into heaven.
The Sermon on the Mount is entirely about
But where’s the kingdom? Ah, that’s the thing.
Many a Christian will point out it’s not of this world.
Meanwhile people on earth are gonna be awful. Life’s gonna suck. ’Cause the Sermon isn’t about earth, but heaven. Doesn’t apply to us in the here and now. Never will. But then we die, go to heaven, and experience God’s kingdom there.
What about those Christians who figure Jesus is returning
Either way, the Sermon doesn’t apply here and now. It applies somewhere else: Heaven, or Jesus’s future earthly kingdom. Here, it’s Jesus’s ideal, and should be our ideal. We look at the Sermon for how things oughta be, and apply it where we can. Well, where practical. But since the kingdom isn’t here, it’s not practical to apply these guidelines across the board.
Let’s use the example of evildoers. In the future kingdom, once Jesus reigns and all us Christians are resurrected and indestructible, we needn’t resist evildoers, because we needn’t worry about evildoers. Their slaps won’t hurt; they’ll tickle. Their demands won’t harm us. We’ll be beyond the worries and indignities of people being awful to us. But in the present day, where we’re still mortal and fragile, where their demands can even ruin or kill us, it makes no sense to capitulate to their demands. Stick to kicking ’em in the balls.
Thus back in the 1950s, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to convince his protesters to not resist evildoers, there were a large number of Christians who thought he was absolutely nuts. Not resist evildoers? You do realize the evildoers are gonna turn the dogs and firehoses and billyclubs on you, right? You can’t practically apply the Sermon on the Mount to the present day; you’ll get killed. The kingdom hasn’t come yet!
Believe it or not, King’s upbringing and education didn’t teach him to apply the Sermon on the Mount this way. Americans didn’t follow the Sermon on the Mount; hence segregation, and treating blacks like scum. King was instead inspired by a Hindu, Mohandas Gandhi, who’d read the Sermon on the Mount, saw similarities between Christ Jesus and Hindu teachings, decided to actually try nonviolence… and won the independence of India from the United Kingdom. Kinda sad when
Theologians call the many interpretations which push the Sermon into the future as
4. Let it drive you to grace.
In the Middle Ages, the popular view of the Sermon on the Mount was it only applied to bishops, priests, deacons, friars, and monastics. In other words, professional Christians.
But Christian commoners couldn’t possibly follow it. The world is too pagan and sinful, so the Sermon is too impractical. The kingdom isn’t of this world, remember? But within the walls of the church, the kingdom was sorta in the world, ’cause the church follows Jesus as our King. So in this shadow kingdom, the Sermon on the Mount works. If you take holy vows, dedicated yourself to full-time ministry, and separate yourself wholly from the secular world, you could follow the Sermon perfectly! Too bad for everyone else.
This was the worldview Martin Luther was introduced to when he became a monk. His leaders expected him to follow the Sermon—plus all the other customs and requirements the church imposed on monks. And if you know Luther’s story, these standards made him nuts. He found himself totally unable to live up to these requirements. He didn’t yet realize God’s grace fills in all the blanks. Once he finally did, it blew his mind.
Problem is, Luther took Paul’s statements about the Law—
Romans 7.7-13 KWL - 7 So what am I saying?—“The Law is sin?” Never gonna happen.
- But I don’t know how to define sin unless it’s through Law.
- I hadn’t known what coveting was till the Law said, “You will not covet.”
Ex 20.17 - 8 Sin, taking advantage of the command, overwhelmed me with all sorts of coveting!
- Sin is dead without the Law, 9 and previously I lived without the Law.
- When the command came, sin lived again! 10 —and I died.
- I found this life-giving command to be death-giving:
- 11 Sin, taking advantage of the command, tricked me and killed me with it.
- 12 So yes, the Law is holy;
- the command is holy, righteous, and good.
- 13 So did the good thing become death to me? Never gonna happen.
- But sin could produce death in me through a good thing.
- Thus it could be revealed as sin;
- thus sin, through the Law, could become especially sinful.
—and applied ’em to the Sermon on the Mount. The Law defines sin: The Law says “Don’t,” and when we do, that’s sin. We know we’re sinners because we break the Law. And the Sermon on the Mount also defines sin, ’cause Jesus closed a few of the Pharisees’ loopholes in the Law. Which also exposes what sinners we are when we adopt Pharisee loopholes. But this made Luther feel especially sinful. He felt he couldn’t live up to the Sermon—but thanks to grace, he didn’t feel he really had to.
No, Luther was no libertine. Let’s not make that mistake. Luther believed God was serious when he issued his commands; believed Jesus was serious when he preached his Sermon. Good Christians oughta make a serious effort to obey what we can. But the greater purpose of the Law and the Sermon on the Mount, is to ultimately show us we can’t obey God to perfection. We’re never gonna earn our way to salvation. Isn’t possible. Don’t be stupid and try.
Luther concluded Jesus made the Sermon on the Mount deliberately too hard. Who’s gonna successfully go through life without ever being angry with their fellow Christian?
The only down side to Luther’s idea: We wind up with a lot of Christians who miss Luther’s intent, and figure since the Sermon is impossible to fully implement, give up. Don’t bother. It doesn’t drive them to grace, so much as it drives ’em to despair about ever being good or obeying God. They’re not entirely sure how to deal with a God who piles such impossible burdens on his children.
Me, I don’t believe Jesus did make his Sermon too impossible to follow. It’s only gonna be impossibly hard for people who expect to fulfill it under their own power, without
5. Do it!
If God tells us to do something, yet never really meant for us to do it, it makes him
And no, God’s no hypocrite. He has infinitely more integrity than that. Same with Christ Jesus. When he taught it in the Sermon on the Mount, he meant it. Not always literally; don’t start plucking your eyes out. But he did mean it seriously. Sin should bother us so much, we’d rather pluck out our eyes than sin. Sin should bother us so much, we’d rather saw off limbs. It doesn’t, and that’s the problem. We’d rather risk the fire.
The purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to teach us something firm. Something Jesus wants us to live our lives by. He doesn’t want us with a Christianity that’s purely academic, imaginary, or hypothetical. ’Cause reality’s gonna come kick us in the arse, and Christians who think our religion is purely philosophical, are always ill-prepared for the pressures and tribulations of life. When problems come, and they always do, these irreligious Christians
To be fair, too many churches wrongly teach us to be irreligious. They don’t teach us to follow the Sermon on the Mount, but to get our theology straight. Don’t read Matthew first; read John. (No, I’m not knocking John; I love John. But you see the problem.) How we build a house on solid rock is not by following Jesus, but by believing
So we get our faith straight… but without the works. Which Jesus’s brother James rightly called dead faith.
So when people quit Christianity, or “lose their faith,” it’s not really because a crisis made ’em waver and leave. It’s because the crisis finally revealed the deadness of their faith. Rather than go to God and ask him to make it real instead of imaginary, make it alive instead of dead, they gave up and went away.
Actions, in comparison, are tangible. They exist in the real world. They’re footprints in the sand which anyone can see. Fruitless Christians object they don’t prove our faith is real; it’s all just Christians being good to salve our consciences. That’s a cop-out, invented by people who don’t love God enough to live like he wants. When we get off our behinds and act in faith, God shows up. Sometimes in little ways; sometimes in huge miracles which nobody, not even skeptics, can explain. But this is why Jesus told us to act. When we follow God, he grants us God-experiences. And that’s solid rock.
Just as Jesus described it.
Matthew 7.24-27 KWL - 24 “So everyone who hears these words of mine and does them
- will be like a sensible man who builds his house on the bedrock.
- 25 The rain descended, rivers came, winds blew, and attacked that house.
- It didn’t fall, for it had been founded on bedrock.
- 26 Everyone hearing these words of mine and doesn’t do them
- will be like a stupid man who builds his house on the sand.
- 27 The rains descended, rivers came, winds blew, and attacked that house.
- It fell, and its disaster was great.”
Luke 6.47-49 KWL - 47 “Everyone coming to me, hearing my words, doing them: I’ll show you what it’s like.
- 48 It’s like a person building a house, who dug down and put a foundation on bedrock.
- When the tide came, the river burst on that house,
- and wasn’t strong enough to shake it, because it was well-built.
- 49 Those who hear, who don’t do:
- It’s like a person building a house on land without a foundation.
- The river burst on it, and next it collapsed.
- The destruction of that house became great.”
Living faith produces fruit. Acts follow it. Obeying Jesus means we do stuff. We actually follow the Sermon on the Mount, instead of applaud it as a nice idealistic treatise. We take Jesus seriously enough to help him construct his kingdom, instead of sitting on the sidelines, watching others work, hoping it’ll all come together, yet doubting—and never really knowing—whether it will. We watch for ourselves as the kingdom happens before our eyes.
Storms come. Always do. But though rain comes down in buckets, the river smashes against us, and a tornado or two tries to rip the roof off, we won’t collapse. We can’t. We’ll have seen too much. We’ll have experienced too much. We won’t be able to explain our lives and achievements any other way than to say, “God was with me.”
You may think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. God is present when his kids obey him. He lets us see his presence for ourselves.
So look over the Sermon on the Mount. How should we apply it? How should we put it into action, instead of standing by and imagining kingdom come? How could we be salt and light to our world? How can we build on solid rock?
