Sometime in the last couple years I visited a Baptist church. The pastor began his talk by saying they were going through a series on the Beatitudes. I thought, "of course you are!" I spent a lot of time in a Baptist church growing up: I'm not sure they believe anything outside the Gospel of Matthew is truly inspired.
I was reading through Matthew's gospel, and I was struck by a contrast I'm not sure I ever noticed before.
The Lord's words in the sermon on the mount are austere, "unless your righteousness surpass [that] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of the heavens" (Matthew 5:20). That's not a promising start for someone like me, and it's probably not a promising start for you either. In fact, the whole section is daunting: compare yourself to almost anything in Matthew 5 through 7, and you'll find you come up short.
But there is another thread, and it comes out in Matthew 21:31, "Verily I say unto you that the tax-gatherers and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you."
So we have this contrast: there is a righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees, but it's a righteousness that tax-collectors and harlots can have.
This contrast is probably brought out the most vividly in Luke's gospel (Luke 18:10–14). There we have a Pharisee and a tax-collector contrasted. The Pharisee commends himself to God based on his righteousness (Luke 18:11–12), the tax-collector begs God for His mercy (Luke 18:13). What's the conclusion? God justifies the tax-collector (Luke 18:14).
And so we conclude (as the epistle to the Romans does), that the righteousness that God counts apart from our works (Romans 4:5, Philippians 3:9) is a righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees.
Now, we have to guard against the idea that the tax-collector in Luke 18:10–14 earned righteousness by his penitence. There is no merit in our repentance. But there is something there that the Pharisee was missing: the tax-collector saw himself the same way God saw him.
It's fair to say that "God be merciful to me a sinner" is one prayer God will never fail to answer. It's the one request He will always grant. God doesn't deny the one who begs for His mercy, but He turns away the one who is righteous in his own eyes.
In my experience, Matthew 5–7 is used to urge Christians to live more selflessly. And it's not terribly uncommon to hear preachers give dire warnings based on Matthew 6:15 or Matthew 7:21–23 or another similar passage. It seems to me that some people think the point of the Lord's words was to urge us to out-Pharisee the Pharisees, like the take-home message is that the Pharisees just weren't trying hard enough.
Another reaction is to attempt to use the Lord's words to soften God's response to sin. It's tempting to look at passages like Matthew 21:31 and conclude that really, if tax-collectors and harlots get into the kingdom before the Pharisees, then God must not really mind at all if we live like tax-collectors and harlots. That's a difficult argument to make in light of the Lord's actual words: His condemnation of lust, for example (Matthew 5:27–29), seems to put a quick end to it.
I don't doubt that the Lord was addressing a specific group of people in a specific time and place. It behooves us to keep context in mind when we read scripture. He wasn't addressing us today, He was addressing Jewish people in Israel 2000-ish years ago. At the same time, we find in our own hearts the same shortcomings He pointed out in theirs.
In a sense, the Lord's earthly ministry was the last chance for fallen men and women to show themselves capable of repentance. Had they accepted the Lord for who He is and bowed to Him, they would have proven themselves to be something less than utterly lost. Instead, they took the Man God had raised up, hung Him on a tree, and left Him to die (Acts 5:30). That is the greatest sin anyone has ever committed: the worst thing our race has ever done. And we don't want to lie to ourselves and say we'd have done any different.
So there's a sense where the Lord's earthly ministry was a downward path to the lowest point in human history: the murder of the Son of God.
But God being who He is, He took the worst thing we have ever done, and He made it our salvation. So here we are, the Son of God has died for our sins, He has been buried, and He has risen from the dead. All we can do is say, "God be merciful to me, a sinner!"
And we know He will.
4 comments:
Sound words rightly divided...
The truth of propitiation lies at the very foundation of our faith, and on this very account it is of the first importance that the teaching of the scripture respecting it should be correctly apprehended. The word is not used in the Old Testament, though the thing itself, as we shall hope to see, is clearly distinguished in the rites of the great day of atonement. It is only found some four times in the New Testament — it is twice employed by the apostle John (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10); it is once used in its verbal form in the gospel of Luke, where it is translated, "God, be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13); and lastly, it occurs in Hebrews (chapter 2:17), where it is rendered "to make reconciliation," instead of, as it should be, "to make propitiation." That there might be no doubt as to the significance of the word, two other forms of it are also found — one in Romans 3:25, the other in Hebrews 9:5. In these cases it is ιλαστήριον and not ιλασμός, and is given in Romans as "propitiation," and in Hebrews as "mercy-seat." The latter rendering is correct; and it is important to maintain it, because the Spirit of God thereby reveals to us the connection between the mercy-seat and the propitiation, and in this way affords us the key to its proper meaning.
Christian Friend vol. 15, 1888, p. 225.
Amen -
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption... 1 Corinthians 1:30
"But if ye have bitter emulation and faction in your heart, do not boast and lie against the truth" (ver. 14).
Such is man: self is his idol, self-will his way. The profession of Christ in no way eradicates it, but makes it all the more sad and inconsistent, in Jew even more than Greek. As we see in 1 Cor. 1, 3, so we read here. "Bitter emulation" in the disciple of the crucified Lord of glory! Alas! it was no hypothetical case, but a fact. "But if ye have"; and this not in the hasty speech, but "in your heart." So early and everywhere did the Christian confessors slip away from the reason of their being, and rival the failure of Israel. So quickly did they forget that Christianity, while emphatically "faith" (Gal. 3:25), in contrast with the law (the previous tutor), depends on life from God, or a divine nature partaken of, as we have noticed in this Epistle and may in every other. Now what room is there in that new life for "bitter emulation"? Christ condemns it, root and fruit. In Him was none of it, but meekness of wisdom, and zeal for God. First and last the zeal of His Father's house ate Him up. When or where else do we hear of His taking disciplinary work in hand, expelling outrageous offenders, and pouring contempt on their profane trade? Though the Holy and the High, when does He contend for His own glory, when and where does He resent the slight and scorn of guilty man?
If Christ be, as indeed He is, the Christian's life, what is it for him to have "bitter emulation" in his heart? Is it not the indulgence in an evil work of the old man, and the dishonour of the Master by the servant? This was bad, but "faction" is worse; because it is not only the individual gratifying the vanity of an evil nature, but its spread to others too ready to exalt self and depreciate such as ought to be loved and honoured.
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