Why Jesus said the so-called “righteous” people are wrong – Breastplate of Righteousness, Part 2

In the previous post, we observed Jesus preaching the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7). At the outset, it seems like Jesus is taking his culture’s precious Mosaic Law and ripping it up. 

How so? 

First, in his Beatitudes teaching he says that the Kingdom of God is available to all!  The Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t just for those spiritual and wealthy elites, Jesus said, it was for everyone.  Never mind that the spiritual and wealthy elite tried very hard to make it seem like heaven was just for them, Jesus says, “All you poor, hungry, meek, lowly, persecuted people…heaven is for you too!”  No one in the crowd that day would have heard that teaching before.  It was shocking.

Second, Jesus taught that people should become the salt of the earth, the light of the world, meaning they should be the very ones to proclaim in word and deed that the Kingdom is available to all, so even more people would praise God in heaven.  To give the peasants in the crowd that day the affirmation that God wants to use them for his Kingdom was an unbelievable affirmation of their worth in God’s eyes.  It was shocking.

So shocking in fact that most of them would have said, “Sounds good, Jesus.  Very good…but too good to be true.  Stop messing around with the Mosaic Law like that.  You can’t just come here and change God’s word!  You can’t just overturn it.”

The people didn’t realize that he wasn’t overturning the Law.  He was overturning a false version of the Law that the religious and wealthy elite had created to keep themselves in power!

But the peasants didn’t know that.  They accepted the old system, faults and all, as the word of God.  So they would be thinking at that moment too: “Woah, Jesus, are you totally disagreeing with our system?”

Notice that in Matthew 5, verse 17, he anticipates their reaction.  He says, “No! Do not think I have come to abolish the Law.  I have come to fulfill the law.”  How will he fulfill the Law?  He is talking about his perfect life, and looking forward to his death and resurrection. 

Jewish society was stagnant, rotting with a false understanding of God’s heart.  In these few verses Jesus is stirring the waters with cyclone force, trying to bring new life, looking for a change.  How?

He calls the people to follow the real law, even to teach it. 

Then he says what would have sounded like lunacy to the people in verse 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.”

Hear that?  Jesus is saying, “You need to have a life that is more righteous than the people who are considered to be the most righteous people, or you will not enter his Kingdom.”  But how?  The people in the crowd that day would have thought Jesus was out of his mind.  The religious leaders were supposed to be the epitome of righteousness.  At least that’s what they declared about themselves, and it seemed to be true because they followed all the religious laws and rituals.

What this resulted in was a general feeling among the peasantry that not only were they themselves, the peasants, not righteous like the elite, but also that they had little hope of becoming righteous.  Maybe you’ve felt like that too. That you are just who you are, that you’ll always struggle in this area or that, probably won’t make much progress.  Becoming more righteous sounds like an impossibility to you.  Or it just feels exhausting.

But hear what Jesus has said.  You can have a righteousness that surpasses those who seem to be righteous.  There is hope for all of us.  We can access the righteousness of God, which is a true righteousness, and it is neither impossible or exhausting. 

This is not how the people have been taught to follow the law from the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. 

So we need to ask ourselves, “What kind of righteousness do I have?” How can I tell which righteousness I have?  That of religious elites?  Or the surpassing kind of righteousness?  The true righteousness?

We’ll learn more in the next post.