The Course of Righteousness
Notes
Transcript
The Pharisees have the try-hard from the outside kind of righteousness. Jesus is going to contrast His righteousness, transforming the disciple's life from the inside out. This is the thesis statement that sets the stage for everything that follows: this is what righteousness looks like. Let's pursue Jesus life, let's be GREAT in the Kingdom of Heaven.
River Tubing
River Tubing
When I first moved here to Colorado, there was a great tradition. Every year on July 4th, we would gather tubes and go up to a spot in Longmont on the St. Vrain Creek. Super fun.
But July 4th is about as late as you can do that.
One year, Eddie Henry and I decided we were going to go again… and we were going to ride all the way through Boulder… and it was going to be awesome.
But, at least that year, by mid/late July the water level had dropped. Tubing is not so fun when you are sitting in your tube, in a little puddle, not going anywhere. Moving one foot at a time.
So most of the “tubing” was what we called the “walk of shame.” Standing up, picking up your tube, and awkwardly walking down in the river among the rocks trying to find another spot we could maybe ride for a few feet. Or out to the sidewalk. And you can’t hide your intention, because you’re wearing a swimsuit and carrying a giant river tube.
The Walk of Shame.
What were we talking about today? Righteousness. (Kevin told me the more confusing the intro the better).
Stay Salty, Stay Shiny
Stay Salty, Stay Shiny
Last week, Jesus closes out his introduction, the beatitudes, and then launches into his sermon. The first part is a powerful metaphor. You are the salt of the world, you are the light of the world. So stay salty, stay shiny.
Let everyone see and know your righteousness, and glorify the Father.
And it really sounds like he means that the actual people he is talking to are going to go out and do this.
Abolishing the Law
Abolishing the Law
But then we get to our passage today. And this is where many theologians and many Christians take a hard turn in their interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.
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.
18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Unless your “righteousness” exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees… you won’t get in.
Well… righteousness is right relationship with God that leads to right living that leads to right relationship with God.
The scribes and Pharisees took this INCREDIBLY seriously. They wanted to keep every detail of the law. If the law said to wash their hands to the wrists, they would wash to the elbows. They picked out 613 commandments out of God’s law… and then built thousands of buffer, fence, commands around those to be sure they didn’t get close to breaking the ones God commanded.
That’s… pretty thorough.
And Jesus said, you have to be more righteous then those guys!
How is that going to be possible for Matthew, listening to this, a hated tax collector. How is it going to be possible for John and James, the “sons of thunder?”
Here we go, pure gospel: Jesus is already living out perfect righteousness, right in front of them. All that the law requires, inside and out, all that it meant, Jesus is living it out. And he knows He is headed to the cross, to lay down his life for all of us, that our debts would be paid and we would have his righteousness before God.
How do we get “more righteous than scribes and Pharisees?” Jesus. The righteousness of Jesus.
And so, many scholars say, Jesus “fulfilled the law” and so now the law has served it’s purpose. They’ll quote folks like Paul:
24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,
and goes on: neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female...
And, don’t put yourself under the law again, that would be:
1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
There is powerful truth in there.
It’s no wonder that people who hear Jesus talking and preaching would think “Oh, he has come to abolish the law, that’s what fulfill must mean.”
But if “fulfill” essentially and effectively means “abolish” why would Jesus say “I have not come to abolish?”
In fact, he doubles down, you are going to be EVEN MORE righteous than the most righteous people you know. “Scribes and Pharisees.”
More righteous than the Pastors and Priests.
Choose your reference. More righteous than cardinals and the Pope, more than seminary professors and Mother Theresa.
And then all the examples he gives are of his hearers in their actual lives.
The way that Jesus “fulfilled” the law can’t mean that he abolished or destroyed it. Why? Because he says that twice:
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.
Don’t even think it.
So, some other folks say, Jesus gives us a clean slate, then we have to live righteous lives after that. To kind of “earn” it. You get a Jesus-do-over, then it’s all about your righteousness.
And they’ll quote folks like John:
3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.
4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,
So, you could read that and think, well I better keep every one of the commandments now or I am not “in Jesus” and it’s right back to “works righteousness.” That’s not the gospel, that’s legalism.
So on the one hand, we have what’s called “anti-nomialism” or “anti-law.” On the other, we have legalism, works righteousness, which is really what the Pharisees were all about.
What do we do???
The Third Way
The Third Way
Stuck between legalism and anti-nomianism… but those are both distortions. Paul wasn’t stuck there, neither was John, certain Jesus wasn’t. And great theologians throughout history have helped us understand the “third way.”
We are not made righteous by doing righteous deeds; but when we have been made righteous we do righteous deeds.
Martin Luther
When God declares a man righteous he instantly sets about to make him righteous.
A. W. Tozer
This is so important to understand, because it sets the stage for EVERYTHING Jesus is going to say for the next few chapters.
One reading is that Jesus is just correcting their understanding of righteousness to show that it is impossible to be more righteous than the Scribes and Pharisees. In this reading, Jesus’ goal is that His audience despair of actually living the kind of righteousness He describes and find salvation in Him. By grace alone, by faith alone.
You can hear, there is truth there. And this is a common interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.
How odd, to turn from “good news, yours is the Kingdom...” to “despair, you will NEVER be righteous.” Wait three years in despair until I go to the cross, and then you won’t really get righteousness after that in real life, just in an “imputed” “before God” kind of sense that gets you into heaven but has no effect on your present life.
“Walk the aisle and wait for heaven.”
That would be 12 verses of good news, a few irrelevant confusing verses about salt and light, and then three chapters of all the ways you are WAY worse than you thought you were.
And Jesus is just meaner than Moses, because even your thoughts are murder, and you’re hopeless.
But certainly, no one can just “try harder” and achieve “more righteousness” than the scribes and Pharisees. That’s a trap too.
Jesus saves you, and that forgives your past sins, and then you are to earn your righteousness from there. He gave you a fresh start, now go earn your righteousness! Now you need to be perfect!
There is a legalism there, trying to earn grace, earn salvation, just after the fact. There are Christians out there bound in chains of religion, in slavery to law, wracked by guilt and shame that Jesus freed them from. Their “chains are gone” but they’ve found Halloween chains and they are dressing up in them, and living the life of a slave.
So. What’s the other option. When faced with an “either or” question, notice Jesus always picks a third option.
Jesus is our righteousness. He lived a perfect life, perfect holiness, perfect righteousness, fulfillment of law in deed and thought and emotion, all of it… and then as we are included with him in death, we are included with him in resurrection, and he gives us His righteousness, clothes us in it, robes of righteousness. We are new creations, pure and holy. Amen.
Because He has made us righteous, new creations, the Holy Spirit comes upon us, takes up life and residence in us, and we live with God the Spirit within us.
Does that have an impact on your actual life as you live it?
The Course of Righteousness
The Course of Righteousness
The law is never the source of righteousness, but it is forever the course of righteousness.
-Dallas Willard
I love this quote, it’s helpful to me, maybe it’s not to you. Let’s unpack this.
I had a long talk with a wise friend, he HATES this quote because “course” and “source” sound much the same. It sounds like “Jesus saves you, then you have to be righteous after that and earn it.” Jesus’ righteousness is always enough and more than enough. And if anything I am about to say confuses that… go back to “Jesus righteous is enough and more than enough.”
Okay, here is the metaphor.
Life is the St. Vrain river. The law is God describing the course of the river, the boundaries. There’s a big old bush with thorns on the left, stay away from that. There’s a house with a fishing pier over on the right, keep an eye out, it’s super cool.
Jesus is the water. Jesus’ righteousness fills up the river, living water, life and restoration.
The question of salvation is “do you have water?” “Do you have Jesus?” Are you “in Christ?”
It is not, can you perfectly draw the map of the St. Vrain river, or even “have you ever touched the shore???”
But if you stay in the center of the water, what is that current going to do? It will perfectly lead you down the course of the St. Vrain River. Because Jesus’ perfect righteousness will do that.
And now you are perfectly following the law… because you are in Christ, walking by the Spirit of Christ. What describes the course you are taking? The Law. Perfectly, completely, but not because the law earns you anything, it’s because you’re in Christ, you’re in the water.
If you don’t like the river analogy, Paul uses the analogy of fruit.
17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
But if you walk in the Spirit, you get fruit that is perfectly aligned with the heart of the law
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
I believe Jesus is painting a picture, a “good news” picture, of what life could actually be like for you and for me. In this actual life. Not an impossible standard, though it’s absolutely impossible without Christ. But a vision of what life was always supposed to look like… and one that is absolutely possible for you in Christ.
Life without: anger, lust, divorce, verbal manipulation, retaliation. A life of love, generosity, intimate prayer, invincible treasure, unshakeable hope.
The question is, what do you do when you hit one of these areas… and your life doesn’t look like that life?
This isn’t hypothetical. This is going to happen to you, at least once, in the coming months. Maybe I have some of you already on the calendar, I have guesses. We are going to come to hear Jesus describe a “life without lust...” and you’ll say, that isn’t my life.
Anger? I have that. Anxiety? I have that. My life doesn’t look like the picture that Jesus describes.
What do you actually do?
Here’s our opposite errors.
One option, TRY HARDER! Buckle down, use the tools of self-manipulation, use guilt and shame, turn the screws, clench your jaw and maybe fake it until you make it. Learn to pretend REAL hard that you aren’t angry.
“Antinomialism” says “I am free from the law and forgiven in Christ so it doesn’t matter.”
Oh… it does. John coughs and says “liar.” It matters. First, it is life you are missing out on, life as God created it to be, life more abundant.
Second, it is a symptom of pieces of yourself you are holding back from God. Whatever is acting out there, that isn’t by the Spirit, it isn’t in the footsteps of Jesus, it’s a little piece of death you’re holding on to.
The answer is going to be “Jesus.” Get further into the river. Diving deeper into the gospel, growing to seek and to learn, to know and understand who God is, to more fully receive his grace and love and forgiveness.
Jesus gives us a motivation for this. Motivation to keep the law.
Let’s Be Great
Let’s Be Great
Matthew 5:19 (ESV)
19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called
least in the kingdom of heaven,
but whoever does them and teaches them will be called
great in the kingdom of heaven.
It comes down to this. Do you want to be least… or do you want to be great? Called great? Be great?
I don’t think this is all about winners and losers. Who is enjoying the “River of Righteous” more: the guy floating in the middle seeing all there is to see… or the guy who is splashing in the water, holding on to the tree at the start the whole time?
Who is truly living life in the Kingdom of God? Someone who is walking in the footsteps of Jesus, seeing the fruit of the Holy Spirit, blessing those around them, seeing God work miraculously through them...
Or someone stuck in the same old patterns of sin and self. Least because they are missing out on so Much Sweetness, so much life. Are they “in the Kingdom?” They are… but least.
I don’t want to be least. I don’t want to miss out on anything Jesus has for me. I want you to be GREAT and GREATEST… That this is a place where we spur one another on to that kind of Greatness: Be salty, be shiny, BE GREAT!
“The law is never the source of righteousness, but it is forever the course of righteousness.”
You have the perfect righteousness of Jesus. You now have the freedom and divine power to LIVE it.