Little Angel

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
(Matthew 5:43-48)

Jesus: "Keep your word."
Us: "Check."
Jesus: "No revenge."
Us: "Sigh...OK, anything for You, Jesus."
Jesus: "Love and pray for your enemies...and be perfect."
Us: "For real?!"

The thing about Jesus is that He always keeps pressing.  And praise God that He does, because I'm prone all too often to try and "be good" at what I think is the minimal level for the passing grade.  When I do that it's because I really still just don't get it.  I keep thinking that if I get a little better at the rules, if I'm a bit more disciplined, and if my doctrine becomes a little more pure, THEN I'll be more of a Christian than ever before.  THEN I'll be that perfect little angel people need me to be.  See the halo?  Talk about burdens to carry.  Didn't Jesus say that His burden for us was light?

Yes, and it's not our job to have our walk with Him start that way and then work hard to make it heavy over time.  We forget sometimes our starting point which is what Jesus proclaimed as the single greatest commandment everything else was to flow out of: Love God with everything you've got (Deut. 6:5).  GET THAT FIRST.  It's the only way forward and the only sustainable course.  If we remember that and then see everything else Jesus says as a way of urging, "Here's what the God you're in love with looks like, and here's how you can love like Him," then we'll operate according to a swelling heart instead of according to religious expertise.  That's why Jesus could pray for His murderers' forgiveness.  That's why Stephen, when he was being stoned to death, prayed for the same.  That's how we can love our enemies (which might just be people we work with, see at holidays, or even sit across the pew from who seem to be begging for a good neck-wringing).  Jesus wants us to know what God's perfect love looks like so that we can have perfect love...not just the natural, reciprocal kind.

All this makes for a battle inside our souls; no doubt.  It is not easy to love well.  It's complicated to say the least.  But the cool thing is that we don't have to try and plan every detail of what it needs to look like in those tough moments.  We just need to devour more of God every day and hunger for Him in a way that kills us if we start to fall off the wagon and entertain ourselves with lesser things and find us insensitive to the needs around us.  We need to look at the cross that Jesus hung on and be astounded over God's love for us when we were still His enemies.  It's only then that the loving of our own will make any sense and start to flow.

God motivation over rule motivation.  That's another part of the rock Jesus gives us to build our lives upon.

Cliff Toss

“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 the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you."
(Matthew 5:38-42)

I'll just be honest--I'm not a big fan of this passage.  I like those scenes in movies where the hero who has been harmed or taken advantage of gets to throw the villain off a cliff.  That's not revenge, it's just justice, right?

But how about real life, and how about flipping things around a bit.  We tend to think about ourselves as the ones under the oppressive hand of a bully we want to punch in the throat, and the passage is even written in such a way that speaks to the victim.  Think of those times though when you've been the mean one--physically, verbally...on facebook.  Aren't you glad when, after you've been an idiot and realized it, the offended doesn't come after you?  Aren't you thankful and humbled when, whether the one you smacked around does so consciously or not, he/she obeys Jesus and dismisses the offense (or is even kind to you)?!  It's nice to NOT get what you deserve in those instances--and we've all been in them plenty.  Denial of such just makes us arrogant or ignorant...not innocent.

Here's the deal: Jesus is always speaking to us in a way that challenges us to reflect His own humility, patience, kindness, generosity, and strength.  He was never out to take down the legal and state institutions that do protect the innocent and bring the wrongdoers to justice.  Those eyewitnesses who followed His teaching closely and then gave us the rest of the Bible make that very clear.  God is for, not against, the establishment of governing authorities in every society.  Neither is He against individuals appealing to those systems when injustices are at hand.  The "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" Biblical concept was one that was set in place so that order and peace would reign and "survival of the fittest" rule would be kept at bay.

Now to be sure, knowing these things doesn't necessarily make it easy in the moment to accept harassment instead of avenging it.  But it does give us the opportunity to ask ourselves the question, "How am I going to interact with others (especially the nasty others) in a way that most shines forth the character of Jesus and speaks to my love for Him?"  All we have to do is look at the cross for the right answer to such a question and see the Lamb who was silent before His accusers.

Again, Jesus later wraps up this mountain-top sermon by saying that His words provided a rock to build our lives upon.  It's painful, but how about we bank on God's much-need grace and work together to hammer in the meekness stake?  Ready...Aim...CLINK.

Pants on Fire

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil."
(Matthew 5:33-37)

"But you PROMISED!"  Such are the words of those who have had their hopes dashed by oath-breakers.  Sometimes they are spoken sadly, sometimes through clinched teeth of wrath, or occasionally with a chuckle after being taken hook, line, and sinker once again by the family practical joker.

We put a good deal of stock in promises that people make precisely because we live in a world of liars.  If you can get a guarantee or someone can get one from you, the promised feels he has the right to hold the vow-maker to her word.  It's a sad deal really, but what are you going to do?  Jesus' answer is quite simply, "be different; just be honest, plain and simple."  He looked at the people of His day (just as He would look at us now) and heard their absurd extra wording tacked onto half their statements of intent and reminded them of how silly they sounded.  Was heaven or earth or Jerusalem or one's own head going to hold the speaker to his word because he had mentioned their substances?  Or just how big do we think we are that we would presume any of those items might shift or change because we do or don't stick to what we say?  Just try swearing your way into spontaneous hair color alteration--not gonna happen.

This is one of those examples where we humans have failed to recognize what's sometimes called the "spirit of the text."  In other words, yeah, the people looked back at the ancient writings of Scripture and saw that God told people to be honest and to look at those specific times where they had made some kind of declaration outside of casual conversation that warranted a consideration of the weight such words carried.  But clearly what He was NOT saying was that a certain portion of our daily vocal expiration was fair game for later denying at our convenience.  Quite the contrary.  The emphasis throughout the Scriptures, regardless of situational context is: Say what you mean and mean what you say.  If you don't do that, the indictment is, "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

Jesus says that living for Him means that part of the rock we're to build our lives on is the slab of straight-up honesty.  People should look at us and see the opposite of shadiness.  Christians ought to be the most trustworthy people on the planet, come wind or high water.  How are we doing?  I swear on the grave of my great grandaunt that I'll do better...wait...no I don't.

Getting Goodness

It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
(Matthew 5:31-32)

We're pretty good at wrongly defining goodness.  We look for ways to get around what is best, what is most honoring to God and others, and try to find a rule that we haven't broken in order to make the things that we do appear to be good.  But that's not how goodness works.  Goodness looks toward improvement.  Goodness looks toward blessing.  Goodness doesn't ask what it can get away with but instead what would be most gracious toward all.  Goodness doesn't take what is a huge thing of great disruptive consequence and make it small because it can do so given some loophole in the law.

Jesus took a look at the marriage situation of His day and saw how people didn't look at this union in at all the right way.  Men loved that they had an out through something Moses had written long ago--something he had written which, Jesus tells us elsewhere, was put down because people's hearts were hard...not because he was rewarding them for understanding God's intentions for husbands and wives.  God in His kindness has always taken care of the woman.  Yes, He has held her responsible for her actions just like He has done with every man, but because there have been men who have always wanted to abuse their strength or authority, He has put protections (like certificates of divorce) in place so that abusers could not continue to merely kick wives that they didn't like out to the curb.  To be fair, these things may have at times protected men also when their wives were found unfaithful, but it seems that Jesus in this case is more upset with the men of his culture who were wrongly understanding Moses' (and God's) intentions.

What Jesus wanted to make clear was that a guy who gave his wife a piece of paper (just because he could) that said something to the effect of, "You can marry somebody else," the slate wasn't clean.  If sexual immorality wasn't part of the equation, the divorced woman was put in the awkward and terrible place of seeking another man to provide for her while, in God's eyes, she still belonged to her first husband.  Any subsequent marriages would be seen as adulterous.

This is such a messy subject in our culture (even church culture) today and everyone has their own story of why their situation ought to be the exception.  And, the reality is, we ALL need buckets of grace to dump on one another no matter who we are or what we've done.  But one of the points that we don't want to miss in looking at passages like this one is that we shouldn't make small things that God says are large and of profound consequence--things like divorce.  If God Himself is our motivation for why we joyfully persevere through life and jobs and child-rearing and marriage, then we will not look to make our own standards of goodness and look for loopholes that help us gratify twisted desires.  We'll instead yearn that His love fill our hearts and our way match the way of Jesus.  We'll take His words and build the structures of our lives on them, setting down anchors deep. 

The Sinking Corner Post

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.'  But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.  (Matthew 5:27-30)


You know that house that Jesus says we're all building...that one that is either being built on the storm-ready rock or on the shifting sand?  Well, imagine a house that just has one corner set into that mud or sand and the rest on the rock.  What will that mean for the house?  At first, it might be OK.  The strong foundation under most of the house might make the less stable corner pretty inconspicuous.  But then what happens when a big gully-washer comes?  That corner post starts to sink or lean and the strain put upon the rest of the house causes other things to bow or crack.  Or maybe there's not even a big storm that comes through, but you notice that over time that corner ends up receiving the responsibility of a piano placed in it--piano's are heavy but they're not a big deal if everything is solid underneath.  Well, over time, that corner begins to sink, the roof starts to pop, and eventually a supporting beam of the house splits.


What happened?  There was a corner in the wrong place, "doing" the wrong thing, slowly taking the whole house down with it.  What needed to be done?  That corner needed to literally be removed--that's right; no more square house.  Now that process would not be an easy or convenient one.  It would mean setting braces on that rock foundation to hold up the walls attached to that corner.  And it would mean building a new wall with two new corners set on solid ground.  It's going to look funny at first, but over time, as the builder establishes that house in other ways and maybe even constructs an addition on the other side of the home--a side where there's plenty of rock to build out onto--some will begin to look at it and say that it's a work of art and that it's the kind of home they would like to visit and model some of their own construction after.  The owner might take them through and show them the old cracks and strains...the "scars" in the home from when the house had that bad corner so that others could learn from that mistake and see the wisdom in cutting that corner away, challenging as it was at the time to remove it.


Jesus told his listeners that it was better to perform an amputation on one's life than that to let what was damaging set the entire course for one's eternity.  With Jesus, it was always all or nothing.  He pointed to the Word of God, and as He lived it out and filled it in, said, "Going all in with Me is worth the loss of life and limb."  Be careful here...remember that lust or greed or anger are all matters of the heart and don't have to lead to their physical actions of fulfillment like adultery or theft or murder.  The heart is enough to cause that sinking corner that destroys the life.  Wrap the arms of your heart around Jesus.  Set your feet upon His.  Cut away anything that keeps you from doing so.  May He be behind every motivation of your heart today.

Commandment Number 6

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.   (Matthew 5:21-26)

"Commandment number 6 of 10?  Oh, I'm good there.  Finally something easy from Jesus; I don't plan on murdering anyone anytime soon."  I wonder if people of Jesus' day had those similar thoughts because I know they're present day ones.  We all like to know of those areas where we're doing OK on the righteous-ometer.  But then about every time we start to get comfy, Christ takes things and pushes them into us a little further.  He drives what was out in front of us on an ink-stained page right on in to our hearts, telling us that things like anger and insults are murderous as well.  Jesus did this because we needed it done to us.  He didn't come so that we could find out that we were obeying a law or two; He came so that we could have rich and full life in Him which meant pulling out the gunk inside.

Just a moment or two of really thinking about it brings us to that place of listening more intently with the realization that, yes, being stirred up in our hearts with bitterness toward others is poisonous in nature.  It's poison for our own soul and literally hellish in the end.  But then we would have to agree that it's highly impractical as well because holding onto it with some proud and puffed up spirit on the way into a court room may end up being our ticket into a place like prison!  Sometimes Jesus did this with His message; He took the outward consequence of an inward issue to show just how much we needed heart surgery.  The reasoning in this case goes like this: You might go to prison for ever...because you wouldn't humbly make things right with your fellow man...because you have a murderous heart.

But then in the middle of this whole deal Jesus says something to Christians today, ones that might be just like you and I.  He tells us we're not hunky-dory with Him if we're not clean with others.  We can't go about our churchy activities at the "alter" when things are a mess with our neighbor.  Even if there are things hanging there that we don't feel we've done wrong or that we're holding onto stuff against them, He tells us that it's so important we have clean relationships with others that we should approach someone who we sense has something against us--things are to be just that fresh and clear.

So there it is again.  Jesus gives us words for the rock-like foundation we're to build our homes/lives on.  The one who seeks to have God and His way as the motivation for all things in life needs the heart change He calls for and offers through the One preaching this mountain-top sermon.

Just Add Water

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. 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. 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. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5:17-20)

I'm not one to do a lot of cooking.  If it's going to happen, it will probably take place during breakfast since the preparation for that meal tends to take the least time and the fewest brains...or maybe I just do breakfast so that it plays out that way.  Take pancakes for example.  I know you can make them from scratch, but I'm more of a "just add water" kind of a guy.  That's pretty cool.  Somehow everything that pancakes are supposed to have in them (maybe eggs, flour, oil, milk...vitamin B12?) is already in that dry whitish stuff.  The needful materials are there and you wouldn't want to pull any of them out because it was put together to have the water added.  Without it, you're not going to have pancakes.

It's always a little awkward to transition from breakfast foods to the Savior and King of the world but here goes.  Jesus tells us that the law and prophets--all the Old Testament parts of the Bible--are fulfilled or wrapped up in Him.  It's as if everything that was put down on paper was made for Him to step in and give it substance and meaning.  He made it clear that trying to get rid of or pull out any little bit of it was strictly prohibited because in the end it shows us who He is, why He's essential, and just how far we were from being able to do exactly what had to be accomplished for us to have any hope at all.

Now granted, we need to be careful as we think through what exactly Jesus means when He says we're not to relax one iota or dot from the law.  Are we supposed to impose the dietary rules again?  Should we start killing animals at the alter once more?  No, that's what the Pharisees did (and way more!), and Jesus says we've got to be better than them.  What we have to do is to see Jesus in the iota's and the dots, filling them out in the way that water does to pancake mix.  Pulling Jesus (or the water) out of things isn't the way to obey the laws.  Jesus came to be a game-changer, giving meaning and substance, and making perfectly useful the perfect instructions that were written--instructions that were not going to give us what we needed UNTIL He came and gave it the shape and the finalization that was necessary.

Really, this passage makes one of the biggest cases we have for the necessary imputation of Christ's righteousness (I know, now I've gone from pancakes to imputation...bear with me).  Jesus says that we've got to be better than the really, really, tediously "good" Pharisees who had down exceedingly well the fine points of the law stuff.  See, what Jesus is saying here and makes even clearer elsewhere is that if we don't have Him (and His perfection) in us, we don't have what we need.  If God doesn't look at us and see righteous Jesus, we're toast, because what the religious people of the day spent gobs of energy on wasn't enough.  If you don't know Jesus (or have been ignoring His awesomeness lately), just call out in faith, lay down your self-strengthened striving, and watch Him fill out your life and change you like water in pancake mix.

Yes, these are among the mighty words that Jesus says we're wise to build the "houses" of our lives upon.  Make Him your motivation for life today and watch how He gives new meaning and zest to the mix.