Matthew 5:48 "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

So, we've got two main points for today's devotions.

Point #1: Be perfect. Like God is.

Yep, that's about it. In recent verses/weeks, we've been seeing the moral standards increasing in difficulty. Now, just in case someone can be self-deluded enough to think they can keep all the rules up 'til now, we've got just one more rule- be absolutely perfect, the same way God is. Don't ever do anything wrong. This kind of gets rid of loopholes- no "the Bible doesn't say I can't such-and-such;" is it perfect? Go for it. Not perfect? Can't do it.

This perfection, by the way, affects everything about an action- not just the action itself, but the motives, the thought process that went into it, the hesitation, the timing, ad infinitum. If every single detail of our lives isn't perfect, we've got work to do. Yeah, none of us have gotten there yet- we've all got loads of work to do. Better get crackin'.

Point #2: OK, this is going to take a small scholarly detour here. You've been warned- if you really don't like this kind of stuff, you're probably good with point one. Honestly, though, I don't think you'll mind what I'm about to present.

So, there are a ton of interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount. In these devotionals, I've been concentrating on one of them- the "Absolutist" interpretation. This interpretation basically holds that Jesus actually means what He seems to be saying. For example, in today's devotional, when He says "be perfect," He means, "be perfect."

Now, I happen to believe not only the "Absolutist" interpretation, but also the "Repentance" interpretation. That is, I believe that when God reveals "Law" to us, He isn't just letting us know what's right and wrong, but He's showing us that we are wrong. The fact that He's given us a Law means that when we are sinful- the natural outworking of our sinful natures- we will break it and have an objective way to know that we are sinful and in need of God to save us. Paul explains this wonderfully in Galatians, but I won't go real deep into it here. The main point is that whenever we sin, God wants us to think about how much we need Him.

So, two main things for us today:

#1: Do your best not to sin, to be like God.

#2: When you fail, and you will, terribly and miserably, remember what that means- that you need a huge amount of help from God, that He was under no obligation to give it to you, but that He did in the Person and Work of Christ on the Cross for you. Let that sink in, redouble your efforts to be like God, and keep on living.

-Christopher

Matthew 5:43-47 You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy; But I tell you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, To show that you are the children of your Father Who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and makes the rain fall upon the upright and the wrongdoers [alike] For if you love those who love you, what reward can you have? Do not even the tax collectors do that? And if you greet only your brethren, what more than others are you doing? Do not even the Gentiles (the heathen) do that?

We've all been told that we should love our enemies- this part of the Sermon on the Mount is among the most famous- but we don't often hear about why Jesus states He is giving this command. We are to do this, He says, to show that we are associated with God, are His children, and are different from the World. We are to treat everyone essentially from the same attitude- love- that God, Whose children we are, does, instead of acting in the natural way, the way of the heathen and the corrupt.

The thing is, of course, that the way of the heathen and the corrupt is how you and I want to act, how we instinctively act. Last week, we learned that we are to accept abuse and actually, really "go the extra mile." Now, while it is possible to do this, to force ourselves to do this, it is possible, in fact, likely, that we will harbor less than cordial feelings towards our abusers, even as all outward signs show us "turning the other cheek." The Bible frequently teaches that what really matters is not the external appearances we present to the world, but our true internal reality. It is not acceptable to merely act like we are different from the World, but inwardly be exactly like them, but we must, through internal change, truly be different from the World, loving those whom every natural instinct urges us to hate.

So, once again, we are faced with an impossible increase in what is required of us by morality. Not only are we required to go against nature and act lovingly towards our enemies, but we must truly and actually love them! Our actions we can control through willpower and can communicate fake love, but we cannot fake our insides on our insides- we must actually, really love our enemies, no two ways about it, no loopholes.

But that's impossible.

We can't love people this way. Actions we can force- we can argue with ourselves and shame ourselves, like I did in the last devotional, into acting in a loving way towards our enemies, but we can't force our love, and our love is inadequate. We can't do what Christ demands of us without using His love. Fortunately, this is what being born again is all about: becoming a new person with the indwelling of God Himself in us. Now, with the love He has given us, the love that He showed to us while we were still His enemies, we can love our enemies.

Now it's not impossible, but it is still really hard.

In fact, I don't really feel competent to expound on this, as it is something I struggle with a lot in my own life. It's easy to put on a smile and say "hi" to someone who has hurt you, but to actually wish all manner of good on the person, to want the best for them, and to actually PRAY for this person??!! That, even with the indwelling of God Himself and our new nature given to us through our rebirth is really, really hard. It requires us to forgive completely, and it requires us to see others as God sees them, not as we see them, to see their hurts, not the hurts they've given us. This is something I seriously doubt any person can maintain for any length of time, but it is what we must all be striving for, periodically actually gaining glimpses of God's loving view of us all, and holding that same attitude ourselves. I pray you can do this this week.

- Christopher

Matthew 5:38-42 "You have heard that it was said, 'AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.' But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you." (NASB)

So, last week, I mentioned that Jesus' reason for giving the sermon on the mount was mainly to give a higher standard than the Old Testament Law. Does He ever with this one!

I have problems with this one. Like most of us, I've been hurt more than I feel I want in life, and I don't feel like encouraging someone who is hurting me to hurt me more. Instead, I want to make them stop and maybe get my "eye for eye, tooth for tooth,"- or maybe more- we often forget that the reason the Mosaic Law mandated exact retribution was to prevent the very human tendency to escalate conflict. If the consequences for hurting me, we think, are worse than what they did to me, they won't find it worth continuing to hurt me, or, at least I will be "even" with my offender.

But that's just it, isn't it? Our human desire to get even isn't what morality is about, nor is our self-preservation instinct. Kindness and goodness are the centers of morality, and our model is Jesus. Honestly, if anyone else tried to command this passage to me, I'd have a strong urge to test their cheek-turning rhetoric, but isn't Jesus the One Who actually did let us, all of us, test His teaching about turning the cheek, by turning His? My defensiveness and anger begins to fall away as I begin to realize that Jesus in fact has put His teaching to the test, but it was me who was testing Him. I am the enemy that did far more that strike His cheek or take His outer garments. I am the enemy that marched Him to Golgotha and I am the enemy that now asks, without truly understanding the magnitude of what I am asking, for my sins to be forgiven me. And I am the enemy that He died for, while I was His enemy, to whom He has not lent, but freely given me forgiveness and reconciliation. If He can do this for me, surely I can forgive what's happened to me, and even voluntarily take some abuse. Surely I can't argue with Jesus' example; you can't tell a general who charges at the head of a battle that what he's doing is too dangerous, so you aren't following him. He's taken the hardest blows, can we really find it within ourselves to refuse to do what He asks?

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?

Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

-Christopher

Matthew 5:33-37 “Again, ye have heard that it has been said to the ancients, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt render to the Lord what thou hast sworn. But *I* say unto you, Do not swear at all; neither by the heaven, because it is [the] throne of God; nor by the earth, because it is [the] footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, because it is [the] city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your word be Yea, yea; Nay, nay; but what is more than these is from evil. ” (Darby)

Hi, everyone; as you probably figured out by the time you saw “ye” in the first line, this isn't Carter. This is Chris, again. Hopefully, you don't mind too much, but I'll be writing the devotionals for this month of June, giving Carter a break. Also, hopefully you won't mind me experimenting a bit with the version I'm using- it's with Carter's permission and I'll try to compare it with the Greek before I decide to use a particular version for a particular verse- though I readily admit that I'm far from proficient in Greek, I do have two years of it freshly under my belt, and I'm continuing my studies to get better, so I don't think I'll do a terrible job. As far as I can tell with a cursory look, today's Darby translation does a more than good job. If it's a terrible problem for anyone to have a few “thees and thous,” I'll happily change versions to something without. One of the things I've learned in Greek is that it is never a good idea to place too much trust in a translation.

Anyway, this week's passage is from Matthew 5:33-37, where Jesus talks about oaths. As you've probably noticed over the last few week's Jesus is following a pattern in this part of His sermon, first citing what the “ancients” had been told, or what the audience had heard. This is the oral tradition based on the Old Testament Torah law. The specific passages the oral law is referring to when it says “Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt render to the Lord what thou hast sworn,” include Exodus 20:7, Leviticus 19:12, Numbers 30:2, and Deuteronomy 23:21-24. The oral law is actually very thorough on the subject of oaths, with an entire tractate of the Mishnah (Shevuot) devoted to oaths. According to several commentaries, part of this thoroughness was concerned with which types of oaths were binding and which weren't. In the bit of reading I did here, I did find some discussion about what types of oaths were binding and which weren't, some down to the degree of whether someone swore that he wouldn't "eat" or "eat *it*," though I didn't find any of the specific discussions on the distinctions that seem to be referenced by Jesus. There does seem to have been an opinion that swearing by (Greek en) Jerusalem was nonbinding but swearing to or into (Greek eis) Jerusalem was. (Jesus switches from en to eis when He says not to swear by Jerusalem).

Obviously, all this quibbling about exact prepositions and pronouns making an oath binding or non-binding was distasteful to Jesus. Since much of the rationale for making these distinctions comes from the idea that one shouldn't swear to God falsely, Jesus draws all of these possible things to swear to back to God. Whenever we take an oath, we are taking it before God and cannot get out of what we said by semantics and technicalities. Oaths were devised to assure someone that you are telling them the truth, not make your lie more convincing and it is a sin against God not to fulfill an oath that you swore, no matter how you swore it, as all oathtaking traces back to God.

But in all of His discourses in this part of Matthew, Jesus isn't just commanding obedience to the Old Testament Law, but is making the Law more stringent- if you thought that it was possible to follow the Old Testament Law, try following Jesus' Law. Jesus doesn't just command us to not swear falsely, but to abstain from swearing at all. It seems that, if we are telling the truth, we really shouldn't need to be swearing oaths at all, now should we? If we always tell the truth, we really never need to assure someone that we are telling the truth, do we? In fact, if we ever do swear, we really can be construed to be casting doubt on whether we are telling the truth or not when we don't swear. Swearing oaths contributes to a culture where lying is taken for granted and is thus from Satan, the Father of Lies. While, disappointingly, most commentaries disagree with me, the fact that the command not to take any oaths is confirmed in other passages such as James 5:12 shows that Jesus means exactly what He seems to mean in the English. We are not to take oaths, as taking oaths casts doubt on our truthfulness, contributes to a culture that takes lying for granted, is thus a bad testimony for Christ and is from Satan. The ultimate point and principle Jesus is communicating is that we should be truthful at all times, not ever lying.

"Oh, be careful little lips what you say,

Oh, be careful little lips what you say,

For the Father up above is looking down in love

Oh, be careful little lips what you say"

-Christopher