'Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am
not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18. For verily I say unto you,
Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise
pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19. Whosoever therefore
shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men
so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but
whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great
in the kingdom of heaven. 20. For I say unto you, That except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
21. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt
not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the
judgment: 22. But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his
brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and
whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the
council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of
hell-fire. 23. Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and
there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; 24.
Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be
reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. 25.
Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with
him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and
the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into
prison. 26. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out
thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.'--MATT. v.
17-26.
This passage falls naturally into two parts--the former extending from
verse 17 to 20 inclusive; the latter, from verse 21 to the end. In the
former, the King of the true kingdom lays down the general principles of
the relation between its laws and the earlier revelation of the divine
will; in the latter, He exemplifies this relation in one case, which is
followed, in the remainder of the chapter, by three other illustrative
examples.
I. The King laying down the law of His kingdom in its relation to the
older law of God.
The four verses included in this section give a regular sequence of
thought: verse 17 declaring our Lord's personal relation to the former
revelation as fulfilling it; verse 18 basing that statement of the
purpose of His coming on the essential permanence of the old law; verses
19 and 20 deducing thence the relation of His disciples to that law, and
that in such a way that verse 19 corresponds to verse 18, and affirms
that this permanent law is binding in its minutest details on His
subjects, while verse 20 corresponds to verse 17, and requires their
deepened righteousness as answering to His fulfilment of the law.
The first thing that strikes one in looking at these verses is their
authoritative tone. There may, even thus early in Christ's career, have
been some murmurs that He was taking up a position of antagonism to
Mosaism, which may account for the 'think not' which introduces the
section. But however that may be, the swift transition from the
Beatitudes to speak of Himself and of the meaning of His work is all of
a piece with His whole manner; for certainly never did religious teacher
open his mouth, who spoke so perpetually about Himself as did the meek
Jesus. 'I came' declares that He is 'the coming One,' and is really a
claim to have voluntarily appeared among men, as well as to be the
long-expected Messiah. With absolute decisiveness He states the purpose
of His coming. He knows the meaning of His own work, which so few of us
do, and it is safe to take His own account of what He intends, as it so
seldom is. His opening declaration is singularly composed of blended
humility and majesty. Its humility lies in His placing Himself, as it
were, in line with previous messengers, and representing Himself as
carrying on the sequence of divine revelation. It would not have been
humble for anybody but Him to say that, but it was so for Him. Its
majesty lies in His claim to 'fulfil' all former utterances from God.
His fulfilment of the law properly so called is twofold: first, in His
own proper person and life, He completes obedience to it, realises its
ideal; second, in His exposition of it, both by lip and life, He deepens
and intensifies its meaning, changing it from a letter which regulates
the actions, to a spirit which moves the inward man.
So these first words point to the peculiarity of His coming as being His
own act, and make two daring assertions, as to His character, which He
claims to be sinless, and as to His teaching, which he claims to be an
advance upon all the former divine revelation. As to the former, He
speaks here as He did to John, 'thus it becometh us to fulfil all
righteousness.' No trace of consciousness of sin or defect appears in
any words or acts of His. The calmest conviction that He was perfectly
righteous is always manifest. How comes it that we are not repelled by
such a tone? We do not usually admire self-complacent religious
teachers. Why has nobody ever given Christ the lie, or pointed to His
unconsciousness of faults as itself the gravest fault? Strange inaugural
discourse for a humble sage and saint to assert his own immaculate
perfection, stranger still that a listening world has said, 'Amen!'
Note, too, the royal style here. In this part of the 'Sermon' our Lord
twice uses the phrase, 'I say unto you,' which He once introduces with
His characteristic 'verily.' Once He employs it to give solemnity to the
asseveration which stretches forward to the end of this solid-seeming
world, and once He introduces by it the stringent demand for His
followers' loftier righteousness. His unsupported word is given us as
our surest light in the dark future, His bare command as the most
imperative authority. This style goes kingly; it calls for absolute
credence and unhesitating submission. When He speaks, even if we have
nothing but His word, it is ours neither 'to make reply' nor 'to reason
why,' but simply to believe, and swiftly to do. Rabbis might split hairs
and quote other rabbis by the hour; philosophers may argue and base
their teachings on elaborate demonstrations; moralists may seek to sway
the conscience through reason; legislators to appeal to fear and hope.
He speaks, and it is done; He commands, and it stands fast. There is
nothing else in the world the least like the superb and mysterious
authority with which He fronts the world, and, as Fountain of knowledge
and Source of obligation, summons us all to submit and believe, by that
'Verily, I say unto you.'
Verse 18. Next we have to notice the exuberant testimony to the
permanence of the law. Not the smallest of its letters, not even the
little marks which distinguished some of them, or the flourishes at the
top of some of them, should pass,--as we might say, not even the stroke
across a written 't,' which shows that it is not 'l.' The law shall last
as long as the world. It shall last till it be accomplished. And what
then? The righteousness which it requires can never be so realised that
we shall not need to realise it any more, and in the new heavens
righteousness dwelleth. But in a very real sense law shall cease when
fulfilled. There is no law to him who can say, 'Thy law is within my
heart.' When law has become both 'law and impulse,' it has ceased to be
law, in so far as it no longer stands over against the doer as an
external constraint.
Verse 19. On this permanence of the law Christ builds its imperative
authority in His kingdom. Obviously, the 'kingdom of heaven' in verse 19
means the earthly form of that kingdom. The King republishes, as it
were, the old code, and adopts it as the basis of His law. He thus
assumes the absolute right of determining precedence and dignity in that
kingdom. The sovereign is the 'fountain of honour,' whose word ennobles.
Observe the merciful accuracy of the language. The breach of the
commandments either in theory or in practice does not exclude from the
kingdom, for it is, while realised on earth, a kingdom of sinful men
aiming after holiness; but the smallest deflection from the law of
right, in theory or in practice, does lower a man's standing therein,
inasmuch as it makes him less capable of that conformity to the King,
and consequent nearness to Him, which determines greatness and smallness
there. Dignity in the kingdom depends on Christ-likeness, and
Christ-likeness depends on fulfilling, as He did, all righteousness.
Small flaws are most dangerous because least noticeable. More Christian
men lose their chance of promotion in the kingdom by a multitude of
little sins than by single great ones.
Verse 20. As the King has Himself by His perfect obedience fulfilled the
law, His subjects likewise must, in their obedience, transcend the
righteousness of those who best knew and most punctiliously kept it. The
scribes and Pharisees are not here regarded as hypocrites, but taken as
types of the highest conformity with the law which the old dispensation
afforded. The new kingdom demands a higher, namely a more spiritual and
inward righteousness, one corresponding to the profounder meaning which
the King gives to the old commandment. And this loftier fulfilment is
not merely the condition of dignity in, but of entrance at all into, the
kingdom. Inward holiness is the essence of the character of all its
subjects. How that holiness is to be ours is not here told, except in so
far as it is hinted by the fact that it is regarded as the issue of the
King's fulfilling the law. These last words would have been terrible and
excluding if they had stood alone. When they follow 'I am come to
fulfil,' they are a veiled gospel, implying that by His fulfilment the
righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us.
II. We have an illustrative example in the case of the old commandment
against murder. This part of the passage falls into three
divisions--each occupying two verses. First we have the deepening and
expansion of the commandment. This part begins with the royal style
again. 'What was said to them of old' is left in its full authority.
'But I say unto you' represents Jesus as possessing co-ordinate
authority with that law, of which the speaker is unnamed, perhaps
because the same Word of God which now spoke in Him had spoken it. We
need but refer here to the Jewish courts and Sanhedrim, and to that
valley of Hinnom, where the offal of Jerusalem and the corpses of
criminals were burned, nor need we discuss the precise force of 'Raca'
and 'thou fool.' The main points to be observed are, the distinct
extension of the conception of 'killing' to embrace malevolent anger,
whether it find vent or is kept close in the heart; the clear
recognition that, whilst the emotion which is the source of the overt
act is of the same nature as the act, and that therefore he who 'hateth
his brother is a murderer,' there are degrees in criminality, according
as the anger remains unexpressed, or finds utterance in more or less
bitter and contemptuous language; that consequently there are degrees in
the severity of the punishment which is administered by no earthly
tribunal; and that, finally, this stern sentence has hidden in it the
possibility of forgiveness, inasmuch as the consequence of the sin is
liability to punishment, but not necessarily suffering of it. The old
law had no such mitigation of its sentence.
Verses 23, 24. The second part of this illustrative example intensifies
the command by putting obedience to it before acts of external worship.
The language is vividly picturesque. We see a worshipper standing at the
very altar while the priest is offering his sacrifice. In that sacred
moment, while he is confessing his sins, a flash across his memory shows
him a brother offended,--rightly or wrongly it matters not. The solemn
sacrifice is to pause while he seeks the offended one, and, whatever the
other man's reception of his advances may be, he cleanses his own bosom
of its perilous stuff; then he may come back and go on with the
interrupted worship. Nothing could put in a clearer light the prime
importance of the command than this setting aside of sacred religious
acts for its sake. 'Obedience is better than sacrifice.' And the little
word 'therefore,' at the beginning of verse 23, points to the terrible
penalties as the reason for this urgency. If such destruction may light
on the angry man, nothing should come between him and the conquest of
his anger. Such self-conquest, which will often seem like degradation,
is more acceptable service to the King, and truer worship, than all
words or ceremonial acts. Deep truths as to the relations between
worship, strictly so called, and life, lie in these words, which may
well be taken to heart by those whose altar is Calvary, and their gift
the thank-offering of themselves.
Verses 25, 26. The third part is a further exhortation to the same
swiftness in casting out anger from the heart, thrown into a parabolic
form. When you quarrel with a man, says Christ in effect, prudence
enjoins to make it up as soon as possible, before he sets the law in
motion. If once he, as plaintiff, has brought you before the judge, the
law will go on mechanically through the stages of trial, condemnation,
surrender to the prison authorities, and confinement till the last
farthing has been paid. So, if you are conscious that you have an
adversary,--and any man that you hate is your adversary, for he will
appear against you at that solemn judgment to come,--agree with him,
put away the anger out of your heart at once. In the special case in
hand, the 'adversary' is the man with whom we are angry. In the general
application of the precept to the whole series of offences against the
law, the adversary may be regarded as the law itself. In either
interpretation, the stages of appearing before the judge and so on up
till the shutting up in prison are the stages of the judgment before the
tribunal, not of earth, but of the kingdom of heaven. They point to the
same dread realities as are presented in the previous verses under the
imagery of the Jewish courts and the foul fires of the valley of Hinnom.
Christ closes the grave parable with His solemn 'Verily I say unto
thee'--as looking on the future judgment, and telling us what His eyes
saw. The words have no bearing on the question of the duration of the
imprisonment, for He does not tell us whether the last farthing could
ever be paid or not; but they do teach this lesson, that, if once we
fall under the punishments of the kingdom, there is no end to them until
the last tittle of the consequences of our breach of its law has been
paid. To delay obedience, and still more to delay abandoning
disobedience, is madness, in view of the storm that may at any moment
burst on the heads of the rebels.
Thus He deepens and fulfils one precept of the old law by extending the
sweep of its prohibition from acts to thoughts, by setting obedience to
it above sacrifice and worship, and by picturing in solemn tones of
parabolic warning the consequences of having the disobeyed precept as
our unreconciled adversary. In this one case we have a specimen of His
mode of dealing with the whole law, every jot of which He expanded in
His teaching, and perfectly observed in His life.
A gospel is hidden even in these warnings, for it is distinctly taught
that the offended law may cease to be our adversary, and that we may be
reconciled with it, ere yet it has accused us to the judge. It was not
yet time to proclaim that the King 'fulfilled' the law, not only by
life, but by death, and that therefore all His believing subjects 'are
justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the
law,' as well as endowed with the righteousness by which they fulfil
that law in deeper reality, and fairer completeness, than did those 'of
old time,' who loved it most.
'SWEAR NOT AT ALL'
'Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time,
Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord
thine oaths: 34. But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by
heaven; for it is God's throne: 35. Nor by the earth; for it is His
footstool; neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great
King. 36. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst
not make one hair white or black. 37. But let your communication
be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of
evil.'--MATT. v. 33-37.
In His treatment of the sixth and seventh commandments, Jesus deepened
them by bringing the inner man of feeling and desire under their
control. In His treatment of the old commandments as to oaths, He
expands them by extending the prohibitions from one kind of oath to all
kinds. The movement in the former case is downwards and inwards; in the
latter it is outwards, the compass sweeping a wider circle. Perjury, a
false oath, was all that had been forbidden. He forbids all. We may note
that the forms of colloquial swearing, which our Lord specifies, are not
to be taken as an exhaustive enumeration of what is forbidden. They are
in the nature of a parenthesis, and the sentence runs on continuously
without them--'Swear not at all ... but let your communication be Yea,
yea; Nay, nay.' The reason appended is equally universal, for it
suggests the deep thought that 'whatsoever is more than these' that is
to say, any form of speech that seeks to strengthen a simple, grave
asseveration by such oaths as He has just quoted, 'cometh of evil'
inasmuch as it springs from, and reveals, the melancholy fact that his
bare word is not felt binding by a man, and is not accepted as
conclusive by others. If lies were not so common, oaths would be
needless. And oaths increase the evil from which they come, by
confirming the notion that there is no sin in a lie unless it is sworn
to.
The oaths specified are all colloquial, which were and are continually
and offensively mingled with common speech in the East. Nowhere are
there such habitual liars, and nowhere are there so many oaths. Every
traveller there knows that, and sees how true is Christ's filiation of
the custom of swearing from the custom of falsehood. But these poisonous
weeds of speech not only tended to degrade plain veracity in the popular
mind, but were themselves parents of immoral evasions, for it was the
teaching of some Rabbis, at all events, that an oath 'by heaven' or 'by
earth' or 'by Jerusalem' or 'by my head' did not bind. That further
relaxation of the obligation of truthfulness was grounded on the words
quoted in verse 33, for, said the immoral quibblers, 'it is "thine oaths
to the Lord" that thou "shalt perform," and for these others you may do
as you like' Therefore our Lord insists that every oath, even these
mutilated, colloquial ones which avoid His name, is in essence an appeal
to God, and has no sense unless it is. To swear such a truncated oath,
then, has the still further condemnation that it is certainly an
irreverence, and probably a quibble, and meant to be broken. It must be
fully admitted that there is little in common between such pieces of
senseless profanity as these oaths, or the modern equivalents which
pollute so many lips to-day, and the oath administered in a court of
justice, and it may further be allowed weight that Jesus does not
specifically prohibit the oath 'by the Lord,' but it is difficult to see
how the principles on which He condemns are to be kept from touching
even judicial oaths. For they, too, are administered on the ground of
the false idea that they add to the obligation of veracity, and give a
guarantee of truthfulness which a simple affirmation does not give. Nor
can any one, who knows the perfunctory formality and indifference with
which such oaths are administered and taken, and what a farce 'kissing
the book' has become, doubt that even judicial oaths tend to weaken the
popular conception of the sin of a lie and the reliance to be placed
upon the simple 'Yea, yea; Nay, nay.'