The Sermon on the Mount: A Seamless Robe of Righteousness

Taken as a Whole

Called the greatest sermon of all time, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount not only sets the tone of His entire earthly ministry but defines the very essence of the Gospel. Like His seamless robe, which the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus cast lots for rather than divide, Christ's sermon must be taken not as a collection of teachings but as a whole. As the New Testament fulfillment of the Old Testament's Ten Commandments, Jesus' sermon is morally binding upon every believer and cannot be ignored or piecemealed without negating the believer's profession of faith. This is not because Jesus has given us a new list of rules to obey. It is because He has defined what a lost heart looks like and what a changed heart must look like. His object lesson is the Pharisees themselves, whom the crowds had been led to believe represented the epitome of righteousness. But Jesus proves the opposite: that their despicable excuse for righteousness equates to filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Why? Because it is but a cloak of pretense to hide their wicked hearts.

Links to the Law

The Pharisees did not keep the law of Moses. They broke it on every hand, and only as we plunge ourselves by faith into the saving blood of the only One who has kept the law of Moses can we obey Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. But obey we must. In as winsome a manner as possible, Jesus begins His great sermon with the Beatitudes--the attitudes of the godly heart: poverty in spirit, mourning over sin, the meekness that inherits the earth, hunger and thirst after righteousness, mercy, purity, peaceability, and the fidelity that invites persecution. As salt and light, such a heart will preserve and illumine the earth and please our heavenly Father. But Jesus proceeds to issue a sharp warning. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 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. 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" (Matthew 2:17-19).

This warning shows us that we cannot please our heavenly Father, as appealing as the Beatitudes sound, unless we first surpass the righteousness that the Pharisees think they found by circumventing the otherwise impossible law of Moses. They were indeed out to destroy the law, and this they attempted to do by embroidering it with their meaningless traditions. And their fathers killed the prophets for the same reason--because they preached judgment against those who flouted God's law. Worse still, the Pharisees would seek to kill the very One who fulfilled the law, but Jesus here foretells that, even then, they would not erase one jot or tittle of the law that condemned their wicked duplicity. For years, they had indeed broken the "least" of the commandments and had taught men so--and from that teaching came the tradition that Jesus condemns in His sermon.

Contrasts between Tradition and Truth

When Jesus begins this section of His sermon by saying, "For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20), He immediately follows this drastic statement with a series of contrasts in which He juxtaposes, not the Mosaic law, but Jewish tradition, with His teachings. The coherence of His sermon sets aside in one body the traditions of men and fuses the entire Mosaic law into one central point: righteousness must begin in the heart. Over and over, Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said by them of old time . . . But I say unto you." Precisely here--in this contrast--is where we will find even today the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

The deceitful Pharisees had qualitatively compromised the law of Moses--making it more permissive and lenient--while, at the same time, quantitively cumbering it with meaningless minutiae. Pharisees today look different than they did then, but they have done the same thing with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount that those Pharisees did with the law of Moses: they have encased it in layer after layer of urban legend that renders its commands meaningless. Of this travesty, modern Christianity must repent. We must return to Jesus' words uttered straight out of His mouth without embroidering upon them with meaningless negations. If we do not, we will build our lives on false witness and stake the fate of our souls on hearsay.

I heard a great preacher once say that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is not a pathway to be saved; it is the picture of the one who is saved because only a saved man or woman can live up to it. Although to some extent that is true, I like to think of this sermon as a pathway with many entrance points, any one of which will lead us straight to our Savior. Where is Jesus taking us as He directs our attention away from the Beatitudes to the wicked hearts of the Pharisees? We must come to understand that only in the inner chamber can we find the cause of our failure to keep the law. Contrary to present-day distortions of grace, Jesus does not dismiss the law; He intensifies it. And He does so by removing the false dichotomy between private motivation and public reputation. For each of the six contrasts He draws between tradition and His words, He identifies the attitude of heart required to keep each of His commands. Likewise, He nails the bullseye of the dartboard every time by exposing the motive behind each transgression. And in case we missed it, Jesus often imbeds the consequence for disobedience in the command itself.

It is as if the smoke that arose on Mount Sinai in the giving of the Mosaic Law (written with the finger of God as Moses dwelt in His Presence) arises from Jesus' fiery words themselves. Jesus begins His series of contrasts between tradition and truth by equating hatred with murder, warning that the contempt required to despise another person as worthless--a "fool"--risks the judgment of hellfire. Have we not seen this truth play out before our eyes in this day of demonizing our opponents on social and news media? Inflammatory language has murderous results. Jesus' apt and vivid indictment of hatred and of "hate speech" as synonymous with murder foreshadows the Pharisees' hatred of Him that led to His betrayal and crucifixion.

Jesus continues His fiery sermon with an exposé of lust that equates to adultery. The eye that partakes in this evil must be plucked out, the hand that responds, cut off, lest the entire body be "cast into hell," a warning Jesus gives twice for this one sin alone--in the vein of Old Testament law that requires two witnesses to condemn the accused. If we had any reasonable doubt as to the ultimate fate in store for those who cherish lust, Jesus removes even the shadow of a doubt. Why? Lust not only is adultery, it slays the most sacred of relationships, which Jesus addresses next. In fact, hatred and lust--murder and adultery--are the two sins Jesus links with hellfire in the strongest terms possible. There is no such thing as secret hatred or private lust. Both are crimes against humanity, for both regard their target as an object to be consumed. It is no wonder that King David's lust gave way to murder.

Jesus follows His condemnation of lust with His correction of the "traditional" view of divorce. Only for reasons of fornication can this breaking of a vow be justified, and the social nature of breaking a vow as sacred as the marriage bond brings a chain of consequences that scar the innocent for years to come. It is interesting to note that Jesus equates both lust and unlawful divorce with adultery. It would be small wonder if the lustful heart is the first to distrust or disown its spouse. Jesus' teaching against taking oaths logically follows His elevation of the marriage vow. Unlike a vow made in the sight of God and kept in both private and in public, an oath is not only superfluous but also disingenuous. By its very pretense of appearing to strengthen the integrity of one's word, an oath--"I swear"--actually weakens and cheapens it. "Yes" and "no" suffice if truth resides in the vowing heart. In this contrast between tradition and truth, Jesus unveils the wholesome purity and simplicity that characterize the true follower of Christ.

Jesus deals next with a very touchy subject indeed: personal revenge that masquerades as justice. Of all emotions most likely to go from zero to ninety in a matter of seconds, revenge is utterly incapable of restricting its recoup of wounded dignity to an "eye" or a "tooth." The very idea of an enraged victim taking care to remove just one tooth proves the understated point Jesus is making. "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," the Lord says in Deuteronomy 32:35. Jesus makes abundantly clear in a series of real-life scenarios that the proper response to wrongdoing is not revenge, as tradition warrants, but redemption. Evil is disarmed, not by resistance, but by relinquishment of one's rights, where to do so seems utterly ridiculous. The unsurpassed magnificence of Jesus' sermon throughout all the ages resounds in this teaching alone. Christ Himself is the embodiment of His own words, and the divine vulnerability of surrendering to evil becomes the very strength of the Cross and the key to our redemption.

The New Testament equivalent of the Tenth Commandment which prohibits coveting anything that is your neighbor's is the sixth commandment that follows Jesus' lifelong moratorium on personal revenge. Itself the moral mountain peak of Jesus' sermon to this point, the command to love our enemies awakens at first a feeling of fear and dread, even of injustice, that immediately subsides into the divine logic of agape love. "Of course," we realize with joy. It makes so much sense, doesn't it? But here is where we fall all the way down the mountainside realizing that we can't obey this command at all--unless our own hearts are imbued with divine love--and that's the point of the whole sermon. If we can love our enemy, we can keep the whole moral law.

And thus has Jesus dealt the death blow to the last destructive emotion that wars against the Beatitudes He so graciously proclaimed. This command enables the one who is persecuted for righteousness' sake to rejoice. This command keeps the proud man poor in spirit; it comforts those who mourn; it blesses the meek who inherit the earth; it fills the hungry soul with love and rewards the merciful with mercy; it keeps the heart pure and turns one into a peacemaker. Love my enemies? I love the sound of it, but I can't do it--not without a divine makeover and a heart born again. But with this miraculous change, the one who loves his enemies will not murder and will not cherish any of the emotions that defile the human heart--the wicked heart kept concealed by the scribes and Pharisees.

There is no alternative, as Jesus makes clear. Without apology, in serene sternness, Jesus commands us to love our enemies, "That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:45). Jesus' sermon is not only a blueprint of the Christian life; it is a roadmap to heaven--and I will find the kingdom of heaven right in the words of Jesus, which He commands me to follow. My Father loves His enemies--even the wicked Pharisees, for whom Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Just think of it! Jesus died for the Pharisees and their filthy rags--those would-have-been-blood-stained rags, had they not cast their garments at the feet of Saul as they stoned Stephen. And what did Stephen pray? "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

Jesus concludes this portion of His sermon with a seventh command, which this time involves, not a contrast, but a comparison: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). To the flippant, pious-sounding cliché that nobody's perfect and that the Lord knows we can't be perfect, Jesus says that's not true. The person who insists he can't be perfect has only turned his own self-righteousness inside out as false humility. The reason he can't be perfect is because he isn't willing to be perfect. Jesus commands us to be perfect, and anything He commands is possible. We can no more excuse ourselves from this mandate than we can pick and choose which part of Christ's robe of righteousness we will put on. It is a seamless garment of truth.

Timelines and Takeaways

Jesus sets forth many more principles of righteousness in the successive sections of His sermon, but as we feature these seven commands in Matthew 5, we understand that they create a cohesive whole. As the first detailed sermon of Jesus that Matthew records, this mountaintop rises above everything else in the entire Bible, including the Decalogue, although the parallels of context and content are unmistakable. For Moses' preparation of leading his people and delivering to them the law, he spent forty years of virtual isolation in the desert. And before preaching His greatest sermon to His disciples and to the multitudes near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, following His baptism by John.

During this time of seclusion, we can be sure Jesus strengthened His spirit with prayer and meditation on God's Word. Whether out of this experience His greatest sermon was birthed remains a holy mystery, but we know that Jesus defeated Satan with the moral clarity of Scripture at every point of temptation. Out of this victory, He began His ministry in Galilee preaching John the Baptist's simple message: "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17). It is as if His Sermon on the Mount shows us why and how. With this arrow of divine truth, Jesus' look and call pierced the hearts of His first four disciples, two sets of brothers--Andrew, Peter, James, and John--fishermen who each followed Jesus immediately (Matthew 4:20, 22).

This enterprising crew interestingly enough paints a picture of true "fishers of men" from the time we first glimpse a cameo portrait of them: Andrew and Peter work together to cast a net into the sea and James and John work with their father to mend their nets (Matthew 4:18, 21). These traits of casting and mending would later characterize their mission as disciples of the Gospel, with Peter's aggression and initiative balancing John's introversion and reflection. Of these four disciples, three would remain the inner circle of Jesus' disciples throughout His three-year earthly ministry. Tragically, Peter would deny Jesus, and James would be the first to be martyred for Him, but John would be the only one who stood with Him at His crucifixion and who saw the Revelation of Christ which concludes the entire Bible. What a net of fish Jesus caught that day!

And to these disciples and the remaining eight, Jesus delivered His Sermon on the Mount. It is as if the crowds overheard Jesus' teaching, delivered in the mastery of rhetoric and oratory with parallel structure, repetition, contrast, and climax, for His disciples' comprehension, retention, and future memorization. Little did these men know on that balmy day near the seaside that, when they inscribed Jesus' words on the tablets of their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33; II Corinthians 3:3), they would become living epistles of the law of liberty (James 1:25; 2:12). And this is where we must take heed today. Our culture of cheap grace and easy-believism has dropped the word "law" from "liberty" and has forgotten the constraint of obedience from the heart. We would do well to heed the words of Jesus in their entirety, not only in this sermon, but in all of The Gospels, and we would do well to read the entire remaining New Testament as supplements and amplifications of Jesus' teaching as one seamless robe of our righteousness.