Matthew 5:20 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.
In the news recently there was reported that several hundred US military have been discharged for refusing to take the vaccine. Here are highly trained, some having received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of training, and they are being discharged, many who have a religious objection to the fetal tissue being used to develop the vaccines.
We all have things over which we won’t compromise. Or at least I hope we value some things you hold so dearly that even the loss of your job won’t dissuade you from holding. We now know that even the vaccines aren’t effective at either preventing the spread or the illness itself. Let’s not talk about the vital doctors and nurses who can’t work now. We have plenty of these well trained and available professionals. No need to worry about a shortage of care at this moment!
So how do we handle bumping into people who have a different standard than we do? What standard is right for us? And how do we chose which standard will apply?
For the people living at the time our text was written, there were two standards by which a Jewish person would have held. The first and foremost was the Jewish Law as outlined in the Old Testament. The second was that of the Roman civilian rulers which also imposed penalties for violations.
The author writes that the hearers of Jesus’ words have a higher standard than either of these. We know this because of the two examples of people that he references here in our text. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were at the top of the “top ten list of groups who are getting it right.”
Some people of Jesus’ day worked very hard to live up to the standards set out in the Law. They devoted their lives to reaching what they thought was perfection. And they did it out of an obligation and a hope that if they did live up to the standard, God would accept their actions and they would be part of His Kingdom.
So when Jesus tells his hearers that they must do better than these two groups, yikes! How could anyone possibly do better than they were doing? If they were doing enough, then the ordinary person had no chance at all of pleasing God. Game, set, match.
Luckily for us, the following sections of Jesus’ talk on the plain give us some examples of what that would look like. This new way of living, upside down from the way the Pharisees and teacher of the law lived, touches our anger, our sex life, our marriages, our promises, our right to retribution, our attitude toward our enemies, our money, our prayer life, our fasting, and the list continues.
You see, this upside down way of living intersects with every aspect of our lives. There is no easy list to follow, not even translated Chinese assembly instructions. This higher standard requires a resident instructor, the Holy Spirit. We can’t possibly live this out without the vibrant and active relationship with God Himself.
The Arnold Journey 