Jesus starts his sermon on the mount with an explanation of who is blessed. If I could sum this part up, it is all who really want to know God. They want to know God so bad that they are willing to be persecuted rather than compromise their godly life. However, they also know that they can’t possibly live a godly life without Jesus. They are willing to let other people know that they are diciples of Jesus and not hide it. They are willing to be persecuted rather than deny him.
Jesus also explains that the Law and Prophets, everything written in Old Testament, has been taken legalistically making people think that they only have to do exactly what the Law says and they will be right with God. Jesus explodes our thinking and lets us know that what was written is only the outward manifestation of what should be going on in our hearts. He shows that anger and murder, lust and adultery, and other outward sins all originate in the heart and even a sinful attitude is just as sinful as the outward actions. The Sermon on the Mount doesn’t just show us how to live but shows us we can’t possibly measure up on our own.
In between these two monologs, Jesus tells why he came. The first point is that he didn’t come to abolish the Law or Prophets but to fulfill them. In other words, he didn’t come so we may ignore moral rules that keep society functioning correctly. He didn’t come so we may do whatever we want. Breaking those rules are still sinful. Therefore, if we tell someone that adultery, stealing, lying, homosexuality, is now OK because Jesus has fulfilled the Law, we are going to be in trouble. If we teach them as he outlines in the rest of the sermon, then we will be in good standing.
However, just to make sure we don’t think we will be in his kingdom just because we are teaching the commandments as he wants, he lowers the boom on our expectations. He tells us we have to be more righteous than the scribe and Pharisees. You may think that would be easy because Jesus continues to put them in their place throughout the Gospels. The point isn’t to compare ourselves to them, but to compare ourselves with the Father. We are to be perfect just the way the Father is (Matt 5:48).
Now, it becomes clear that without Jesus dying for our sins and filling us with the Holy Spirit, there is no way we can be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. We can’t be perfect. Only by Jesus fulfilling the Law can we have a chance of really knowing God because he now imputes his righteous to us who are trusting in Jesus for our salvation rather than trusting in our ability to follow all the rules and regulations.
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