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A follower of Jesus

justification vs. sanctification

Matthew 5:17-48: Having Love for Your Enemies is the Litmus Test (pt3 of 4)

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This is the difference between justification and sanctification. The moment you accept Christ, the grace of God comes into your life and you are justified, legally pronounced righteous before God in Christ. But, as you grow in grace, you are sanctified, changed as you abide with Christ. And over time, you become more “righteous.” It’s like orphans when they are first adopted. The moment they are adopted, they are legally the son or daughter of the new parents. But in the first few months, they might hide food under their beds because they still have a beggar’s mindset. But the longer they live with their new parents in their new homes, they begin to realize that everything in the house is theirs. They grow into their new role as an adopted son, they are sanctified, if you will, in their sonship. They had the status as son at the beginning but they are growing into the fullness of their new role.

We are justified and we are given the legal status as children of God at the moment of conversion. Justification. Now, live in such a way as to reflect your adoption more and more. Sanctification.

Jesus is not saying: I have an impossible standard of righteousness that you can never meet, and so stop trying to meet it, and trust in my righteousness. That’s a wrong understanding of grace. That’s not what he is saying. He is saying, If you come to me, and trust in me, and receive the power of the kingdom, and you are cleansed on the inside by the forgiveness and love of God that I offer, and bank everything on my promises, then you WILL be able to live this way. You won’t be perfect, you will still fail, but you will lead a qualitatively different life. A life of true spiritual power. And your life will be the light of the world that proves you are the children of God.

The grace of God assumes transformation, the grace of God assumes sanctification, the grace of God assumes change from the inside out. Isn’t this why people stop going to church? They look around and the so-called Christians are no different from the non-Christians out there. They cheat on their taxes just like those outside the church. They are just as greedy as those outside the church. They have bad tempers, just like those outside the church. The amount of gossip and slander within the church rivals the gossip and slander that you find in the world. There is no difference. This is why many stop going to church. Non-believers step into a church and they expect to find salt and light, but they don’t find it.

Shouldn’t Christians grow in their holiness, in their compassion, their love for others, shouldn’t there be a humility that permeates their lives? Fruit of the Spirit – shouldn’t there be signs of the Spirit’s activity in a believer’s life that flavors the corporate life of the church?

This is what Christ is promising. He is promising that it is ACTUALLY possible to have a righteousness that surpasses that of the Pharisees, not simply because Christ’s righteousness is imputed or credited to us, not simply because the blood of Jesus covers over a multitude of our sins like a blanket. There is no denying the truth of that statement. But there’s more. Christ is promising a deeper work, an inward righteousness of the heart.

In other words, Jesus is assuming that something very profound has happened to people who live the way the Sermon on the Mount calls us to live.

When Jesus says in Matthew 5:44-45–

44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

…he does not mean that loving our enemies earns us the right to be a child of God. You can’t earn the status of a child. You can be born into it. You can be adopted into it. Jesus means that loving our enemies shows that God has already become our Father, and that the only reason we are able to love our enemies is because God loved us first.

If you take the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, all the commandments assume—they presuppose—that a profound conversion has happened—a new birth—before our righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. We do not earn or merit our sonship or our entrance into heaven. We receive it as a free gift and gracious promise, and then we live in a way that shows who our Father is. Loving our enemies is proof, the litmus test that the power of the kingdom has entered your life. Loving your enemy doesn’t pay for or merit or earn your birth into God’s family; it proves you’ve been born already into God’s family.

The Sermon on the Mount and the command to love our enemies are not isolated ethical teachings. They rise up out of the same fountain of grace in the life and ministry of Jesus. It is this grace that we received when we were first saved that enables us, empowers us to love our enemies. This wellspring of grace is where we get the power to love our enemies.

The very first word of the Sermon on the Mount—and this is no mistake—is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” We don’t enter the kingdom of heaven because of the moral resources that we bring to the table. We enter by confessing with tears our poverty of spirit. We receive Jesus and his kingdom through bankruptcy—by admitting the poverty of who we are apart from Christ.

Now, we are ready to talk about v43-48. In this text Jesus is responding to a misinterpretation of the Old Testament commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.

43 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies.

What can we learn from this? How is it human nature to interpret the Law along the same lines that the Jewish leaders did?

It’s sneaky what these Jewish leaders did. The original commandment treated everyone as a neighbor. What was the distortion introduced by the religious leaders? They separated people into neighbors and enemies. Neighbors are a category of people that one loves. Enemies, this category of people, it’s okay to hate them. You see how they distorted the Law?

One of the reasons we know Jesus thought it was wrong to interpret “neighbor” merely as friend or brother or sister is that in Luke 10:29, when he was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he answered by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. In that parable the man who loved was a Samaritan and the wounded man whom he loved was a Jew. And the Jews and Samaritans were anything but friends and brothers. They had nothing to do with each other. They were mortal enemies, religiously and racially.

So Jesus doesn’t just say, I have two commands: one that you love your neighbor and one that you love your enemy. Instead, he says, I have one command: love your neighbor and I mean, even if he is an enemy.

Matthew 5:17-48: Having Love for Your Enemies is the Litmus Test (pt2 of 4)

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Starting in v21-22, we have the first of six statements.

Statement #1: v21-22

21 “YOU HAVE HEARD [meaning, here is the wrong interpretation] that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 BUT I TELL YOU [here’s the correct interpretation] that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Statement #2: v27-28

27 “You have heard that it was said, [wrong interpretation] ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you [correct interpretation] that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Do you see what the scribes and Pharisees are doing? They are restricting the biblical prohibitions of murder and adultery to the act of murder and to the act of adultery alone. Jesus interprets the Law correctly by extending the Law to include angry thoughts, insulting words and lustful looks. At the core of murder is anger and insulting words. And at the core of adultery is lust. So the correct interpretation is that murder and anger and insulting words are the same thing. Adultery and lust are the same thing.

Statement #3: v31-32

31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

The Jewish leaders took the Law at face value and lowered the bar so low that it fit the male-dominated context of the first century. Back then, women had no rights. If your wife burnt the manna toast for breakfast, the husband could go down to the local courts and have a certificate of divorce written up, no questions asked and the marriage would be over. Just like that. What does Jesus do? He elevates marriage. Husbands and wives, you may be at each other’s throats, but you have to stick it out. Because marriage is that important. God created man, male and female, He created them. From the beginning, you didn’t have two friends in the Garden. It was a man and a woman. Marriage is God’s design and we must uphold the sanctity of marriage. Jesus elevates marriage. Marriage must be preserved at all costs, but he gives some leeway–except in the case of marital unfaithfulness.

Statement #4: v33-34

33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ 34 But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne.

The Jewish interpretation restricted the command about not breaking an oath in cases where you involved God’s name. Which means, if you made a promise to your coworker, hey, it’s not binding, I didn’t swear on the Bible or anything so I can let this promise slide. Jesus says, that’s nonsense. All promises–whether promises to God, or to coworkers, or friends, or kids–should be kept.

Statement #5: v38-39

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

When it comes to punishment, if someone wrongs you, the letter of the Law says you can wrong him back. An eye for an eye. Jesus reveals the true, underlying principle. If you are wronged, should you fight back? If you lost an eye in a fight, should you go after the guy who did it and take out his eye? This kind of tit for tat, eye for eye violence is a cycle that never ends. Instead, if someone strikes you on the cheek, why not give him your other cheek? This is not the kind of Law that you can simply grit your teeth and obey. The same goes for the sixth and final statement.

Statement #6: v43-44

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

This is the most obvious distortion. This is a misquotation from Lev 19:18, which says–

Lev 19
18 Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

It’s missing the phrase “as yourself.” Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF. You can limit love to mean calling someone once a year on their birthday and nothing more, but as soon as the standard of love is love AS YOURSELF, love in the same way that you love yourself, then calling once a year doesn’t cut it. Love is far more than that. And of course, nowhere in the Bible does it say to hate your enemy. The phrase “hate your enemy” has been added. Two distortions in one verse.

If you take these six statement as a whole, you realize a pattern when it comes to the Pharisees and the scribes and their interpretation of the Law. They restricted the portions of the commandments that are difficult to obey. In addition, they took the parts of the commandments that gave some leeway and they loosened those commandments so that they could get away with more than the law intended. In other words, they made the law’s demand on our lives less demanding and the law’s permissions more permissive.

What Jesus did was to reverse both tendencies. He insisted, on the one hand, that the full implications of God’s commandments must be accepted without imposing any artificial limits. In addition, the leeway that God gives in certain situations must be upheld and it must never devolve into a “do whatever you want, anything goes” kind of freedom.

What Jesus is doing here in these six commandments is showing his disciples two things. First, how not to do what the scribes and Pharisees were doing in their distorted, self-serving interpretations of the OT law. And second, Jesus was inviting the disciples to something different, something much deeper.

So when verse 20 says, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus was saying this. There is a way of life—there is an authentic, deep, unhypocritical way of life—that you must live if you want to arrive in heaven.

No distortion. No picking and choosing. No restricting the tough parts. No stretching out the areas where the law gives some leeway. No adding of phrases. Not the least stroke of a pen, not a letter, not a dot will pass away until they are fulfilled. All must be obeyed.

So how do you reconcile obedience to the Law with the offer of grace? Grace is a gift, right? If so, then why all this talk about the Law and keeping the Law down to the letter? I thought Christianity was all grace and not rules. It’s a relationship, not religion. And it’s a relationship with a God who is abounding in grace. Therefore, can’t I just come to God as I am? If you bind me to rules and there are expectations of commandments that I must follow, then where’s the grace in that?

Listen up. This is really important. God, in his infinite grace, does accept you as you are. Esp. at the moment of conversion. God can save the worst of sinners. None of us is righteous. No person can merit salvation. So we are accepted just as we are. But, God’s grace is not without effect. If you are truly converted, born of the Spirit and you abide with Christ and stay near him, you will change. You will bear fruit. Much fruit. So much in fact that the longer you are a Christ follower, the longer you stay near to Jesus, more and more your life will resemble that of our Lord. We become Christ-like. Our thoughts are Christ’s thoughts. Our actions are more in line with how Christ lived. Our values change. Our desires change. We are not the same person.

“Just as I am” definitely applies to the recent convert. You can be an addict, a prostitute, everyone is welcome to come to Jesus as they are. But I think there is a common misconception when it comes to grace. Grace is not a license to remain as you are. If you’ve been walking with Jesus for 5, 10, 20 years or more and you are still the exact same person you were when you first walked down the aisle and gave your life to the Lord, there is something wrong. Should a 80 year old who has been walking with Jesus most of his life, cling to the hymn, Just As I Am, to cover up the shame that he is just as selfish as he was when he first gave his life to Jesus? Grace is more than a blanket to cover over our sins. Grace is the power of God to transform lives.