Daily Scripture
Matthew 5:20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah-teachers and P’rushim, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
21 “You have heard that our fathers were told, ‘Do not murder,’[Matthew 5:21 Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17]and that anyone who commits murder will be subject to judgment. 22 But I tell you that anyone who nurses anger against his brother will be subject to judgment; that whoever calls his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing!’ will be brought before the Sanhedrin; that whoever says, ‘Fool!’ incurs the penalty of burning in the fire of Gei-Hinnom! 23 So if you are offering your gift at the Temple altar and you remember there that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift where it is by the altar, and go, make peace with your brother. Then come back and offer your gift.
38 “You have heard that our fathers were told, ‘Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.’[Matthew 5:38 Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21] 39 But I tell you not to stand up against someone who does you wrong. On the contrary, if someone hits you on the right cheek, let him hit you on the left cheek too! 40 If someone wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well! 41 And if a soldier forces you to carry his pack for one mile, carry it for two! 42 When someone asks you for something, give it to him; when someone wants to borrow something from you, lend it to him.
43 “You have heard that our fathers were told, ‘Love your neighbor[Matthew 5:43 Leviticus 19:18] — and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 Then you will become children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun shine on good and bad people alike, and he sends rain to the righteous and the unrighteous alike. 46 What reward do you get if you love only those who love you? Why, even tax-collectors do that! 47 And if you are friendly only to your friends, are you doing anything out of the ordinary? Even the Goyim do that! 48 Therefore, be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Complete Jewish Bible).
Reflection Questions:Author of the Harry Potter books J. K. Rowling told Harvard graduates, “We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”* Jesus imagined and offered better—a righteousness “greater” than that of his day’s proud religious leaders. That “greater” righteousness grew from purified thoughts and motives, not just obeying outward rules. He called people to seek reconciliation, not revenge. Be like God, he said, loving tirelessly rather than settling scores.
John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, said Jesus called us to be “perfect in love,” always growing toward loving with God’s all-inclusive love. He rejected the idea that “perfect” meant never sinning (missing the mark). Does it challenge you more, or less, to think that being “complete” or “perfect” is about the state of your heart rather than just your outward actions?
* Quoted from text of speech at https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/
Read today's Insight by Brandon Gregory
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at Vibe, West and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard wrote a book called Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. It’s a weighty book, but it boils down to this: if we do good in the hopes of doing some other good for ourselves, we do it with a double mind. If we do good because we fear punishment, or because we want to feel morally superior, or because we want to garner favor with our peers, or because we want a compromise to avoid doing something else good, we’re not acting with a pure heart. Stripping away those ulterior motives that only we know (and we know, deep down within) is the surest way to actually be good because it’s only then that our good becomes fully good and not self-serving.
As I said, it’s a weighty book, but all of Kierkegaard’s ideas pull from Jesus’s words in the sermon on the mount. We can all agree that murder is wrong, but Jesus goes further and says that if we bring harm to, or even wish to see harm come to someone else, we’re guilty of the same transgression as the murderer. We can all agree that we need to love our friends, but Jesus says that we’re not actually loving people unless we treat our enemies with that same love. These are crazy things to say. I work in IT. I don’t know that I go a single day without wishing harm on somebody.
But Jesus’s point wasn’t to show us that we’re all terrible people; it was to show us that the true goal of a good life is not simply to abstain from evil, but to actually be good down to the deepest parts of your soul. Too often, we treat morality like the child who is always looking for a loophole in your words to accomplish their goal: “You said not to go in the kitchen, but my foot was still in the dining room, so I wasn’t technically in the kitchen when I grabbed those cookies.” We come at situations like lawyers trying to determine if something is wrong, but we too often fail to ask if something is good.
There’s another Kierkegaard parable that tells the story of a man who was told to entertain himself for the entire day. Around lunchtime, he declares, “Alright, I’m done!” It doesn’t mean he’s just really efficient, it means he failed in his task. God has given us the task of seeking out the good for our entire lives, in every action, in every minute. If you ever look at your actions and declare, “Alright, I’m good!” it doesn’t mean you’ve met your good quota for the day; it means you’ve stopped seeking the good and become content with who you are.
God doesn’t want us to live lives free from wrongdoings—he wants us to live lives full of goodness. He desires pure hearts, and as Kierkegaard said, purity of heart means doing good simply because it’s good. If we’re trying to justify ourselves, or feel morally superior to others, or impress our peers, we are not choosing the good—we’re choosing ourselves. Choosing to seek only the good is something we can and should spend our entire lives trying to get better at, and it’s only once we start digging into our own minds and intentions that we start seeing the most meaningful parts of God.
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43 “You have heard that our fathers were told, ‘Love your neighbor[Matthew 5:43 Leviticus 19:18] — and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 Then you will become children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun shine on good and bad people alike, and he sends rain to the righteous and the unrighteous alike. 46 What reward do you get if you love only those who love you? Why, even tax-collectors do that! 47 And if you are friendly only to your friends, are you doing anything out of the ordinary? Even the Goyim do that! 48 Therefore, be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Complete Jewish Bible).
Reflection Questions:Author of the Harry Potter books J. K. Rowling told Harvard graduates, “We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”* Jesus imagined and offered better—a righteousness “greater” than that of his day’s proud religious leaders. That “greater” righteousness grew from purified thoughts and motives, not just obeying outward rules. He called people to seek reconciliation, not revenge. Be like God, he said, loving tirelessly rather than settling scores.
John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, said Jesus called us to be “perfect in love,” always growing toward loving with God’s all-inclusive love. He rejected the idea that “perfect” meant never sinning (missing the mark). Does it challenge you more, or less, to think that being “complete” or “perfect” is about the state of your heart rather than just your outward actions?
- Concerned about outward righteousness, Jerusalem’s religious leaders asked Pilate to hurry the deaths of three people to protect the purity of the special Passover Sabbath (cf. John 19:31(John 19: It was Preparation Day, and the Judeans did not want the bodies to remain on the stake on Shabbat, since it was an especially important Shabbat. So they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies removed.)Complete Jewish Bible). Jesus asked God to forgive the people who nailed him to the cross (cf. Luke 23:34(Luke 23:Yeshua said, “Father, forgive them; they don’t understand what they are doing.” They divided up his clothes by throwing dice.[Luke 23:34 Psalm 22:19(18)])Complete Jewish Bible). How does that illuminate Jesus' meaning when he spoke of a righteousness “greater” than one concerned only with externals?
* Quoted from text of speech at https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at Vibe, West and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard wrote a book called Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. It’s a weighty book, but it boils down to this: if we do good in the hopes of doing some other good for ourselves, we do it with a double mind. If we do good because we fear punishment, or because we want to feel morally superior, or because we want to garner favor with our peers, or because we want a compromise to avoid doing something else good, we’re not acting with a pure heart. Stripping away those ulterior motives that only we know (and we know, deep down within) is the surest way to actually be good because it’s only then that our good becomes fully good and not self-serving.
As I said, it’s a weighty book, but all of Kierkegaard’s ideas pull from Jesus’s words in the sermon on the mount. We can all agree that murder is wrong, but Jesus goes further and says that if we bring harm to, or even wish to see harm come to someone else, we’re guilty of the same transgression as the murderer. We can all agree that we need to love our friends, but Jesus says that we’re not actually loving people unless we treat our enemies with that same love. These are crazy things to say. I work in IT. I don’t know that I go a single day without wishing harm on somebody.
But Jesus’s point wasn’t to show us that we’re all terrible people; it was to show us that the true goal of a good life is not simply to abstain from evil, but to actually be good down to the deepest parts of your soul. Too often, we treat morality like the child who is always looking for a loophole in your words to accomplish their goal: “You said not to go in the kitchen, but my foot was still in the dining room, so I wasn’t technically in the kitchen when I grabbed those cookies.” We come at situations like lawyers trying to determine if something is wrong, but we too often fail to ask if something is good.
There’s another Kierkegaard parable that tells the story of a man who was told to entertain himself for the entire day. Around lunchtime, he declares, “Alright, I’m done!” It doesn’t mean he’s just really efficient, it means he failed in his task. God has given us the task of seeking out the good for our entire lives, in every action, in every minute. If you ever look at your actions and declare, “Alright, I’m good!” it doesn’t mean you’ve met your good quota for the day; it means you’ve stopped seeking the good and become content with who you are.
God doesn’t want us to live lives free from wrongdoings—he wants us to live lives full of goodness. He desires pure hearts, and as Kierkegaard said, purity of heart means doing good simply because it’s good. If we’re trying to justify ourselves, or feel morally superior to others, or impress our peers, we are not choosing the good—we’re choosing ourselves. Choosing to seek only the good is something we can and should spend our entire lives trying to get better at, and it’s only once we start digging into our own minds and intentions that we start seeing the most meaningful parts of God.
Like this post? Share it!
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- Or download this week's printable GPS.
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011.
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