Matthew 5:20-26
Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement.
As we ask this question of our text for today we’ll see that:
- The righteousness of the Pharisees can never keep the Law.
- Jesus has fulfilled the Law perfectly on our behalf.
- Christ’s righteousness and the Holy Spirit help us more fully keep the Law.
Jesus tells his disciples that their righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees or they will never enter the kingdom of heaven. These are hard words for them.
Surely the scribes and Pharisees are the most righteous people in Israel. It’s their job to be righteous. They work hard at it, all the time. How can the disciples possibly be more righteous than them?
The scribes were responsible for making copies of Scripture, and would ensure their copies were absolutely correct by counting every letter, so they literally knew every “letter of the Law”.
The Pharisees would read and hear the Law at least twice a week as it was a mandatory part of every synagogue service.
And just as we have done here in the reading of Exodus 20:1-17, they would read the tables of the Law. The First Table being the first 3 commandments which tells of how we are to show our love for God.
They would then have heard the remaining 7 commandments, the Second Table of the Law, that tells how we should love others so that we can be a blessing to our family and our neighbours. Starting with the 4th commandment that prioritises how we should love our parents, and honour our civilian government and those in authority over us.
Then the 5th commandment that Jesus raises with his disciples here, tells how we should love those outside of our family, that is, our neighbours. And so on.
Despite knowing these Laws all too well, the scribes and Pharisees didn’t understand them in the context of love as I’ve just described the commandments. They did not understand that the spirit of the Law that God had given was about addressing the attitude of the sinful heart. They enforced and followed the “letter of the law” not it’s spirit. So for the 5th Commandment, they restricted God’s explanation of the meaning of “kill” to actual murder, rather than its spirit through which God wants us to help our neighbours in all their needs.
So this commandment of God became to the Pharisees a mere external legal constraint on external behaviours.
Paul sums this up wonderfully in 2 Corinthians 3:5-6
Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
And as Martin Luther wrote: “Behold, that is the beautiful holiness of the Pharisees, which can cleanse itself, and remain pious, so long as it does not kill with the hand, though the heart be filled with anger, hatred, and envy, the tongue also with cursing and blaspheming.”
The righteousness of the Pharisees ensured that only the external end result of the sin was penalised and punished, but the sinful desires, thoughts and words, that lead to murder were not.
And often people attempt to justify their own failings by saying things like: “I’m not so bad, at least I haven’t killed anyone.” As though the things they know they’ve done wrong are way down the league table of wrongs.
The outward, physical sins are in the top tier of the sin Premier League, with murder at the top, and those minor indiscretions, those inner thoughts and desires that don’t result in an outward expression are way down in the relegation zone and are hardly sins at all.
But Jesus here tells his disciples, and us, that being angry with a brother makes you liable to the same judgement as someone who murders, and the person that gives way to anger and condemns his brother as a ‘fool’ is as great an offender in God’s sight as the one that kills another in cold blood.
Who hasn’t yelled out in anger when stubbing your toe “Who put this chair here?”, or grabbing your foot and hopping around as you shout “Who didn’t put their Lego away, again?”. And while this anger often subsides quickly along with the pain, it can seem as though even previously harmless inanimate objects are now rising up to make our lives difficult, to add to the list of our grievances and the injustices we are suffering.
And it’s natural for us to feel aggrieved when suffering injustice.
And we say: “Surely I have a right to be angry when someone wrongs me! My anger is righteous! I have been wronged, surely it’s my right to be angry and seek justice, and at least see the offender punished and hurt as much as they’ve hurt me?”
This anger grows and justifies itself by proclaiming its innocence before God and the world.
“I am a victim!” it screams.
This anger is not righteous. It is self-centred, dangerous and not God focused. It doesn’t glorify Him.
James 1:19-20
19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
This anger is deadly. It enables Satan to get a foothold in hearts and destroy them.
As Paul tells us:
Ephesians 4:26-27
do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil.
Scripture shows us the danger of letting this anger fester so that it becomes hatred combined with contempt and believes the object of that contempt is a ‘fool’. We see this most clearly in Cain’s unchecked anger with God and his brother Abel that simmers, poisons and eventually boils over:
Genesis 4:6-7
6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
And we know the result of Cain failing to rule over his anger.
So how do we rule over anger?
As always Jesus’ Word gives us the solution. In verses 23 and 24 of our text, he says:
23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
Jesus says that you are to make the first move to be reconciled with your brother and with your neighbour. If you’ve sinned against your brother don’t try to appease God by bringing an offering to Him.
Forgiveness given and received immediately removes the footholds for Satan.
Christ tells us that it’s far more important that you and your neighbour are at peace, than to perform an external ritual.
But there is a righteous anger that does not break God’s command.
True righteous anger is grief over sin. It is the anger that arises when an offense against God or His Word is committed.
It is the anger that God showed when Adam and Eve rejected Him for Satan’s lies. It is the righteous response to the Israelites when they rejected Him for a Golden Calf at the precise moment when God was making them His special people by making a covenant with them through the Law.
It is the anger and wrath that we deserve as sinners since birth, rejecting God for our own gods.
God’s righteousness, His holiness, demands perfection, and despite all the outward demonstrations of righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, they could never fulfil the Law. And neither can we on our own.
But this righteous anger doesn’t seek to harm. It stems from love because God wants all to be saved. He knows that the wages of sin is death, but His amazing love desires to reconcile us to Him.
2 Peter 3:9
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
And so rather than pour out this righteous anger on us, He chose to pour it out on His innocent Son on the cross for our sakes. The Son who willingly joined us in our sinful dark world, who sought out the company of sinners and the sick, and in love allowed himself to be humiliated and nailed to the tree.
Thank God, that Christ fulfils all requirements of the law perfectly as we never will be able to. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:17
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
Through hearing God’s Word, we see Christ’s perfect life and death as our example, and as we grow in faith our hearts and minds are transformed to be more Christ-like. To desire to more fully love God and our neighbours.
12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” as Paul tell us inColossians 3:12-13
God clothes you in Christ’s righteousness as his adopted sons and daughters and at the Lord’s Supper, He reminds you of your baptism, that “the Lord has forgiven you”.
He has given you the Holy Spirit, the Helper, so that you are able to forgive as you’ve been forgiven, and to grow in love for God and your neighbour. And as love grows your desire to sin, to respond with anger, diminishes.
You, His blessed ones through faith in Jesus, called to be a blessing to others, are therefore no longer condemned by the letter of the Law.
Day-by-day by His Holy Spirit and Christ’s righteousness enable us to more fully obey the spirit of the law:
To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.
Go in peace, go in Christ’s love.
Amen