6th Sunday after Trinity + Matthew 5:20-26 + July 8, 2018

Grace and Peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Most everyone today thinks they are righteous. They wouldn’t use that word. They would use the word ‘good.’ And externally, many people are ‘good’ to a certain degree. They don’t murder or steal. They don’t commit adultery or perjure themselves in court. They don’t complain out loud. On top of all that they don’t do, they’re nice folk who work hard and for the most part mind their own business, at least in comparison to others. This is what passes for “good” and “righteous” in our day. The same mentality passed for righteousness in Jesus’ day. The scribes and the Pharisees thought they were righteous as long as they kept God’s Law externally. They didn’t murder or steal. They didn’t commit adultery or perjure themselves. They didn’t complain out loud. They were pious folk who stood on the street corners praying. They tithed a tenth of all their possessions. They went to the Temple as often as they could. They did righteous things. They looked righteous. The similarity between the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees and the righteousness of people today is that both are entirely external while leaving the heart untouched and unrighteous.

Jesus condemns outward righteousness and tosses it in the garbage. “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will be no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” The external won’t do. Jesus then takes a commandment, the commandment that is, in an external sense the easiest to fulfill, and uses it to show how shallow the righteousness of the scribes, the Pharisees, and folks today is. “You have heart is said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of judgment.” The commandment is simple. Don’t murder your neighbor. Externally most of the population fulfills this by abstaining from murdering their neighbors. Many people today imagine what the scribes and Pharisees imagined, that the Fifth Commandment has to do with homicide, parricide, infanticide, and suicide. That means don’t kill your fellow man, your parents, your children, or yourself. And most people check that commandment off their list of righteous requirements each day just as the scribes and Pharisees did. But the commandment touches the entire man, not just the hands, but the heart also.

“But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” We all expect a murderer to face the judgment of man and the judgment of God. But anger is just as sinful as murder and puts you in danger of the judgment of God who has created your neighbor. This is sobering but it’s also offensive to our sinful nature. Everyone wants to claim some bit of righteousness for themselves. Some try to make an escape by assuming that Christ is making too much of the commandment. But Christ is not making a new, stricter commandment. He is giving the true intention of the Lord who gave the commandment, which the Lord explained in Leviticus 19:17, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart.” Still others try to escape the condemnation of the Law by comparison to others. Everyone gets angry at one time or another. Sometimes our anger is justified, but more often than not our anger is without cause. The commandment strikes our heart. We may not murder with our hands but we often hate our neighbor in our heart. We may not physically strike another person, but we often strike them with hateful and judgmental words. Anger in the heart, in the hands, and in our mouths, all deserve God’s judgment for they all violate the will of God. As James says (1:20), “The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

The righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is the righteousness of Christ. His is true righteousness. He loved His neighbor as He loved Himself. He loved His fellowman from the heart. Even when Christ became angry it was with cause and a just anger against those who separated God’s people from the grace of God through false teachings. Christ’s is the only righteousness that avails before God because He was sinless throughout His life. By dying upon the cross to atone for the sins of the entire world, Christ earned a perfect righteousness that is promised to all who believe in Him and flee to Him to mercy. Paul writes in Romans 10:4, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” This means that the Law no longer condemns and judges because by faith you possess the righteousness of Christ. You don’t possess it through the works of the Law, by your working of the law and human, external righteousness. Paul says, “To him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5). The righteousness of Christ, apprehended by faith, not through works, is the righteousness we need to enter God’s kingdom.

When God declares us righteous by faith He gives us new hearts with new movements so that we begin to fulfill the Law. We strive to fulfill God’s Law, not out of coercion and not to gain a righteousness of our own apart from faith, but because we love God our Father and desire to do His will. The faith that justifies then works through love. We don’t simply do the external works God commands us. We begin to fulfill the Law from the heart. We begin to love our neighbor so that we want to be reconciled with him, no matter what he may have done to us or how he may have offended us. When anger overtakes us, the Holy Spirit works to quench that anger. Solomon tells us, “The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook a transgression” (Proverbs 19:11). When angry flares up in our mind, we remember the Spirit’s admonition to be slow to anger and overlook our neighbor’s sins against us, remember that “The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy” toward us (Psalm 103:8), so we ought to be the same to our neighbor. When we are angry with cause, the Holy Spirit calls to mind His words written through St. Paul to the Ephesians, “Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.  And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:26, 31-32).

God our heavenly Father wants a better righteousness from us than the shallow, external righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. He wants more than ‘good’ people who are only good in comparison to others. He wants us to be truly righteous so Christ earns for us a perfect righteousness. He offers it to you in the promise of the Gospel so that by faith in that promise you receive everything Christ earned for you: His righteousness and the forgiveness of all your sins. This righteousness is the only righteousness that avails before God because it is perfect. It is the only righteousness that is truly righteous because through it we walk in newness of life and begin to do the things that God wills for us, so that we love our neighbor from the heart and forgive Him when he sins against us, even as God daily and richly forgives us all our sins through faith. Amen.

May the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.