Attempts at Honesty

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More righteous than the Pharisees?

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More RighteousI have written on this verse before but have some thoughts to add. In verse 20 of Matthew 5, Jesus makes a curious statement about being righteous:

“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20, ESV)

Let’s set the Way Back Machine to approximately 30 AD when Jesus made this statement in an attempt to understand how his listeners would have reacted to it.

The Pharisees were the group that sought to reclaim the religion of Israel and drive it back to it’s Biblical roots. They were the fundamentalists of their day. They sought to follow the law of God in every particular. They were obsessive about being righteous according to the law of what we call the Old Testament.

A few hundred years earlier, the Pharisees began as a group in reaction to the general disregard of the law of God. They sought revival of correct belief and practice. Therefore the Pharisees were the ones who were pushing the nation of Israel toward following the Old Testament law. They also lead by example and practiced what they preached. The Pharisees were the poster boys for righteousness according to the law.

When Jesus made this statement in the sermon, his hearers would have understood how radical it is. How can one be more righteous than a Pharisee? They display ultimate obedience to the law. This would be like telling me to be a better basketball player than LeBron James. No amount of effort could make me better than LeBron.

We, like Jesus’ first listeners, have a tendency to hear this statement in terms of what we do (or perhaps this is only me). Too often we take it as an encouragement to try harder, to work at being righteous. But if it is impossible to be more strict in our observance than the Pharisees, then what could Jesus mean by this statement?

Habakkuk 2:4 tells us that the righteous must live by faith. Abraham was declared righteous because of this faith, not because of his perfect obedience as the Apostle Paul demonstrates in Romans 4. It is belief and not practice that allows us to be declared righteous. By the exercise of faith, we can be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees.

But faith is only effective if the object of the faith is effective. As Christians our hope is in Christ alone. Paul follows up his discussion of the faith of Abraham with these words:

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1–2, ESV)

We are justified (declared righteous) by having faith in Jesus Christ. What many of the Pharisees (ancient and modern) miss is that the path to true righteousness is through faith in the one who trades our mess for his righteousness (1 Cor. 5:21).

It is this trade that allows our righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.

This post is #18 in the Sermon on the Mount Series

Farewell to a neighbor: Four lessons I learn from his death

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Gravestone
Used by permission of freefoto.com

He was my neighbor. On Friday he was found in his home, the victim of an apparent heart attack. He had been dead for quite some time but no-one knew. His death was entirely unexpected.

I would like to say that he was a good neighbor. I would like to say that he was pleasant and friendly. I would like to say that he had a kind word for anyone and everyone. I would like to say all of these things but none of them were true. He was not a nice man and he terrorized the neighborhood with threats and misinformation.

I am relieved to have to no longer deal with my neighbor’s nonsense. But I find that the initial sense of relief is giving way to a sadness that is of an intensity that is surprising to me.

I will admit that I prayed many times that my neighbor would either move away or be healed. Certainly I did not enjoy the status quo, not knowing if he would become violent or carry through on one of his threats. I also did not enjoy the fact that he took a particular dislike to me. I would have been happy to find that my neighbor moved away. But I was not happy about getting the news of his death.

The way it ended was not something that I wished for him. Ezekiel 18:23 declares “Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked,” declares the Lord God, “rather than that he should turn from his ways and live? This story could have had a much nicer ending.

In the end, my neighbor chose a path that left him alone with no-one to comfort or care for him. He died friendless because of poor choices throughout his life. He was like the proverbial dog that bit the hand of the one who fed him, reaping the consequences of his actions. Over the years people had reached out and tried to help my neighbor but some combination of pride, delusion and anger prevented him from receiving that help.

Could something have been done to help this man? Should the state have stepped in long ago when his behavior started being erratic and antisocial? If current child protection laws were in effect in the 50’s and 60’s could the abuse that my neighbor suffered at the hands of his father have been avoided? If so, would the outcome have been different?

These questions are unanswerable; any answers would be speculative at best. But they highlight one source of my sadness. My neighbor’s life did not have to be what it was. He was the victim of poor choices, some his own and some the choices of his own father. A life not lived well contributes to my sadness.

As a Christian I also understand that there are eternal consequences to the choice that we make in life. Part of my neighbor’s rejection of the people around him was tied up in his rejection of God.

I mentioned above his particular dislike for me. Prior to our purchase of our house, it was a rental property. One of the tenants while it was a rental was the pastor of a local church. His name was also Mark and he also shaved his head. In his delusion, my neighbor would sometime get me confused with that pastor and would express his hatred toward God and the church.

In Matthew 7:23, Jesus warns that a relationship with Jesus is the requirement for entrance into Heaven. I do not presume to know if my neighbor ever entered into that relationship, but there was no evidence that he had. This also contributes to my sadness and forms the bigger portion of it.

All this reminds me of four things:

  1. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, statistics prove that one out of one of us dies. We all must face that ultimate transition and how we end up is a summation of our choices, both small and large. We should, moment-by-moment, choose well.
  2. I am reminded that it is all about relationship. In the end there is one relationship that matters and that is the one with Jesus Christ. The first great command is to love God with our entire being.
  3. The second command is to love our neighbor. It seems to me that one who seeks to live out the two great commands will not die friendless. I am reminded that people matter more than accomplishment or things.
  4. I am reminded that we fathers have a huge responsibility. We must follow the medical code of “first do no harm” and above that seek to do good for our children.

Jesus does not agree with this church marquee . . .

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A friend of mine, @jimworth, tweeted a link to this picture:

Jesus Doesn't Agree

The problem with this statement is that Jesus doesn’t agree. In John 14:6, Jesus is recorded as saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus made a definitive statement that only those that believe and trust in himself will get to Heaven. This is an exclusive claim. You must choose to accept this as true or declare it to be false, there is no middle ground. It can’t be “sorta” true. Jesus won’t allow you to think of him as just another spiritually enlightened man. He is not just another prophet. He is the way or he is not the way.

If Jesus is correct in his statement, then all other religions are false and Christianity is the only true religion.

If Jesus is wrong and there are many ways to get to Heaven, then Jesus is irrelevant and Christianity is a waste of time. If Christianity is just a bunch or rules or moral principles, then it has very little to offer.

But if Jesus is correct, and Christianity is true, then we are offered a way of being in right relationship with God. Jesus is that way.

You can’t have it both ways. You cannot worship Jesus and declare other religions to be equally true. You have to make a choice. Jesus demands that choice.

What this church presents may be new but it is definitely not Christianity.

The blessing of being poor (in spirit) – Matthew 5:3

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Matthew 5:3 reads:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (NASB)

One must assume that Jesus knew what he was doing when he put this Beatitude first in the list. Blessed are the poor in Spirit. Luke’s record shortens this saying to simply, “blessed are you who are poor” dropping the qualifier “in spirit.”

Most of us spend a majority of our time and energy in an effort to avoid being poor, so this blessing seems to be at odds with our understanding of what life is about. Is Jesus talking about material poverty? Or does the qualifier in Matthew force us to limit our application of this blessing to the spiritual realm only?

The third possibility is that material poverty and spiritual poverty are connected in some way.

Poor

The word that is translated “poor” conveys the root meaning of “crouch” or “cringe” and carries the sense of absolute destitution. This is the word used to describe Lazarus in Luke 16:20. To be poor in this sense is to be without resources.

In Matthew 19:23 and Luke 18:24 Jesus indicated that it is particularly difficult for those who are rich to enter the Kingdom of God. Why is this? Certainly it is not because the rich are necessarily more evil than the poor. It is not because God’s grace is insufficient to save a rich man. And it is certainly not because God loves the rich any less than he loves the poor.

It is easier for those with material prosperity to maintain the illusion of control in their lives. They can think that they have achieved their wealth by their own effort and skill, and as a result they may be more likely to think that no-one else’s help is required. They are susceptible to thinking that they are self sufficient.

The good news of the Gospel is that we can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, the precise blessing associated with being poor in spirit. Why do those without resources have an advantage in gaining the kingdom?

To appropriate the good news first requires that bad news is understood and accepted. The bad news is that without the work of Jesus on the cross, I am not able to attain entrance into Heaven. I must first admit my inability to make myself worthy of Heaven before I can accept the offer of salvation from Jesus. To achieve spiritual health, I must first acknowledge my disease and accept the cure.

This is precisely where the poor have an advantage. They do not have any pretense about whether they are in control. They are dependent upon others for their day to day existence. It is much easier for them to acknowledge their need of a a physical and a spiritual savior. Their eyes are not clouded by their material possessions.

I suppose the take-away for those of us in Western Society, who are rich enough to afford computers or access the internet, is that we cannot let our resources inhibit our relationship with God. It is so easy to be distracted in obtaining and maintaining stuff, that we can forget the God who made the stuff possible.

It is my belief that one can have wealth and still be poor in spirit, but it is difficult. Being poor in spirit is to come to terms with our helplessness in the spiritual realm and seeking the one who promised to never leave us (Matthew 28:20).

Throughout the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows us how helpless we really are. If we are honest when reading this sermon, our eyes will be opened to what true righteousness is and we will be forced to admit how far short of the standard we fall.

As we move forward in the study of the amazing sermon, may it cause us to realize our poverty and turn to the one who promises spiritual riches (Ephesians 1:18).

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