Jesus regarding murder

Except Your Righteousness Exceeds

Part Two – You shall not Murder

A meditation for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

By Dan McDonald

 

            Jesus declared to his hearers, according to Matthew 5:20 that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees that we would by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. This is a transition statement in which Jesus begins to give instruction on the meaning of the God’s commandments. He is proclaiming how the commandments are fulfilled. In Jesus’ teaching while the commandments seemed to express a negative that ought not to be done they would only be fulfilled by a positive life affirming action and attitude to be pursued. The law put a fence up to keep men from doing evil and Jesus turned the commandment from avoiding doing the evil to actually pursuing the good.

            One of the great mysteries within Christian teaching, beyond our full ability to comprehend or to explain, is the teaching that Jesus Christ is God become flesh; fully God and fully man. This leads us to realize two things about Jesus that in our minds might not seem compatible but are both expressed in the Scriptures. On the one hand the New Testament teaches us that one who has seen Christ has seen the Father. The writer of the Book of Hebrews explains that Christ is the express image of the Father. So the Christian is one who believes that our best understanding of who God is, is shown to us in Jesus Christ. But equally important in the Christian understanding of truth is that Christ in his fullness of humanity learned righteousness through learning obedience even as he suffered in that obedience. Luke’s Gospel express the reality that Jesus faced growing in his humanity like we do by telling us in such simple words how Jesus “grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and men.” (Luke 2:52)

            One of the interesting considerations of the truth of God’s Word found in the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings of the Old Testament is how the Scriptures became involved in teaching Jesus, the God become flesh, how he was to become that man of God who would save his people from their sins. The Psalms were his prayer book by which he learned to become intimate in hid prayer life with his Father in heaven. He came not to abolish the commandments but to fulfill them. His fulfillment of the Law was neither legalistic nor libertine. He was capable of recognizing that there were things in the Old Testament Scriptures given because humanity was hardened in sin and it was better to allow certain sins to continue than to try to bridle sinful men into societal responsibilities they would not accept in the hardness of their sins. He wove his way through the commandments to recognize that the summation of the law was to love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love neighbor as one loved self.

            As we look at what Jesus says about not murdering we begin to see that Jesus must have been a man who meditated on the Scriptures. The words he speaks in Matthew 5:21-26 show a flawless exposition of the story of Cain and Abel found in Genesis 4. In Genesis 4 Cain grew angry at his brother without just cause. The two brothers gave their first portions, Abel of his lambs and Cain of his grain. God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s offering. The cause for God’s rejection was not because one offered grain and the other offered a lamb. These offerings were clearly not sin offerings requiring blood but first fruit offerings requiring the fruit of their produce. Something seems to have been amiss in Cain as he offered the first fruits of his grain. God reprimands Cain not because he didn't give the right sacrifice but because there was something in him amiss as he offered the sacrifice. Thus in Matthew 5 Jesus speaks about our need to make restitution with our brother before trying to offer our sacrifice. Cain's failure to do so led to destructive consequences.

            In the fourth chapter of Genesis, the Lord intervenes and addresses Cain and tries to bring him to a righteous reversal of his attitude. He warns Cain that his anger means that sin is near at hand and that sin’s desire is to master him and destroy him. He encourages Cain instead to master his spirit, to set aside his anger. He encourages him to change his attitude towards his brother Abel and to make peace with him rather than to nurse the grudge he has against him.

            But Cain chose to nurse his bitterness. Jesus in preaching in Matthew 5 rightly shows us that “thou shalt not murder” cannot be kept merely by a mere containing of our anger or bitterness to the point that we merely refrain from taking another a human life. The law was not given to teach us a way to contain our anger to avoid murdering someone but it was given to point us towards a noble life characterized by love of God and love of neighbor. As such every ill thought must be transformed to a desire to seek reconciliation with the brother unto whom we harbor ill thoughts.

            Jesus also realized what we often forget about murder. We often say that the first murder was when Cain slew Abel. But Jesus described Satan as the one who was a murderer from the beginning. It was in the Garden of Eden that the Tempter sought to encourage us to sin knowing that sin would bring about death. Jesus also met this tempter, who showed Jesus the peak of the temple and told him that surely he would not die if he cast himself off from the peak of the temple for God would not let his son be harmed. Jesus understood that in every sin there is a murderer inciting us towards our destruction. He understood that against the power of sin and death the only greater power capable of overcoming sin and death was a reconciliation offered by God unto man, and then shared by men and women with other men and women. The world had fallen into the grips of a murderer and now the only true escape was to receive and participate in God's work of redemption.

            This is surely the righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. It would be revisited later when Jesus tried to explain to the Pharisees that the elder brother should rejoice in the younger brother’s reconciliation with the Father. He described in the story of the returning prodigal how unfitting it was for the elder brother to be angry when the Father received the wayward son with joy. The elder brother should have yearned for the father and his younger brother to be reconciled but instead he stood in the way of the returning brother. But Jesus would accept the role of the elder brother, who instead of obstructing reconciliation would by his great work bring us to the Father and open the doorway for our return to the Father through the Son. This would be the righteousness that exceeded that of the scribes and the Pharisees.