This sermon was preached to Grace Church Guildford on 5 June 2022. The full video recording of the service can be found below along with the transcript.
Holiness. What do you think about it? What comes into your mind when you hear the word ‘holy’? Perhaps for some of you, to be holy is to be haughty, to be aloof, distant, legalistic. It is to have a ‘holier than thou attitude’, believe you are better than everyone else, to be detached from this world and have rigid, rigorous rules about how to keep that distance. Or perhaps for you, holy is just another word for hypocrite. A holy person is someone who says they live one way, but secretly probably lives another. Perhaps someone who claims to value marriage, and yet harbours a pornography habit or is flirtatious with members of the opposite sex. Or a leader who says they love others and act in their best interest, and yet uses their authority to control and exploit. For some, holiness is often seen as either haughtiness or hypocrisy. However, for most of you tonight, particularly if you have been a Christian for a while, I suspect that when you hear the word ‘holy’, you flinch and get uncomfortable not because you think of haughty legalists or brazen hypocrites, but because you yourself know that holiness is a standard you consistently, repeatedly, fall short of. As one famous Christian book puts it, you are all to aware of ‘a hole in your holiness’. It might be one giant crater, a certain sin you can’t seem to overcome, or an array of smaller potholes plaguing your life. Regardless, thinking about holiness doesn’t make you feel angry, because of legalists or hypocrites, it makes you feel guilty, because of your own struggles with sin. For you, holiness is a goal that always seems out of reach. Well, whatever you think of holiness, see here in our passage what Jesus teaches about it.
Since the start of the year, we have been working our way through Matthew’s Gospel, this record of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. A few weeks ago we started into the Sermon on the Mount, the first of five teaching sections that form the backbone of the book. It is the longest recorded section of Jesus’ teaching, running for the whole of chapters 5-7. However, as David Skull preached a standalone series on it last year, we are focusing on the big picture as we go through it in just 6 weeks. Last time we considered 5:1-16, which is really the introduction. There, by way of the Beatitudes in 5:1-12, Jesus turned our idea of happiness upside down, teaching it is the poor and persecuted, rather than the prosperous, who are truly happy. That the happiest life in the present is one with hope for the future. Then, in 5:13-16, through analogies of salt and light, Jesus explained how this happiness, like the best kind of infectious laughter, spreads across the world as people see our good deeds and glorify our God. Now, having dealt with happiness, in 5:17 Jesus turns to holiness. Back in 5:6 we were told one characteristic of citizens in Christ’s kingdom is their hunger for holiness, ‘thirst for righteousness’. Here we see what this righteousness, these good deeds Jesus speaks of in 5:16, look like. Our passage breaks into two unequal parts. In 5:17-20, Jesus gives a general principle, explaining his relationship with holiness as a whole. And then in 5:21-48, he puts this principle into practice, applying it to six everyday situations. I think the main point of these two parts can be summed up in two simple statements: (1) Jesus is holy (5:17-20); (2) We must be holy to (5:21-48).
1. JESUS IS HOLY (5:17-20)
This part of the passage is only four verses long. And yet, like the rudder of a boat or the steering wheel of a car, the importance of these verses vastly outweighs their size. For here, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus explains how we put our Bibles together; how the Old and New Testament relate; how he himself stands at the centre of all God has said and done. Like a thoughtful poem or pithy proverb, here Jesus expresses in a few words what it takes the rest of the New Testament to unravel. To try and get our heads round them, it is helpful to consider two subpoints: (a) What Jesus did not come to do; (b) What Jesus did come to do. Those are the two truths Jesus sets out at the beginning in 5:17. First, he tells us: ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets...’. (a) Jesus says he has not come to abolish the Law, that he is not here to dismantle or destroy. The idea of abolishing there is that of tearing down a building, you might think of a bulldozer ploughing into the side of a house, or a wrecking ball swinging through an old tower block. Jesus begins by explaining that his ministry is not one of demolition. He has not come to abolish ‘the Law and the Prophets’. Those two terms are often used in the Bible to signify the whole of the Old Testament – Genesis to Malachi. And so, Jesus is saying that his mission is not to rip up the Old Testament, uproot God’s past revelation. Brothers and sisters, do you see here we must take care how we treat the Old Testament. We must not view it like one of those half-finished construction projects you see dotted around the countryside. Someone once had a great idea, planned a beautiful home, started construction, laid the foundation, got the walls halfway up and then they ran out of money. And so a half-finished building sits around for years, and as everyone drives past it they talk about when someone might finally get round to finishing it off. And when someone does eventually buy the site and take the project on, they inevitably knock the old half-finished building down and start all over again. See here that, Jesus is saying the Old Testament is not like that. It isn’t God’s half-finished building project that he has sent his Son to demolish and start over again. No, Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and Prophets.
Of course, this makes sense when you think about what the Law and the Prophets, the Old Testament, is. As the unchanging, unalterable Word of God, it can’t just be swept aside. As Psalm 119:160, ‘every one of your righteous rules endures forever.’ God’s laws cannot be abolished like our human laws can. A bit of a debate in Parliament, a few votes, Her Majesty’s signature and suddenly a law that was once on the books is no longer in effect. What was once illegal, even punishable, becomes permissible and acceptable. No, God’s laws are eternal, his standards never change, his requirements cannot not be altered. As Jesus himself explains in 5:18, ‘truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law.’ Earlier in our service, we seen how the Old Testament summarised the goal of God’s law. Time and time again, God placed this stipulation on his people: ‘be holy for I am holy.’ (Leviticus 11:44; 19:2; 20:7) The standard God set, the criteria for entering into his kingdom, was holiness, righteousness, a life that perfectly accords with his will, a moral purity reflecting his own. And this is an unalterable requirement, an unchangeable decree. A holy God cannot have a sinful people, he must punish wrongdoing, he must sentence criminals, he must purge all who are not perfect out of his perfect paradise. The Law and Prophets, teach us God must deal with sin. And Jesus did not come to change that. Jesus did not come to lower the bar, reduce God’s requirements, smooth the way for sinners to sneak into the presence of God. Jesus is not like that cool laid back teacher at school, the one who didn’t really mind if rules were broken as long as he was popular with pupils. No as we soon see, Jesus’ rules are every bit as exacting as those of the Old Testament. O do not go to Jesus looking for a loophole in God’s law. For Jesus did not come to abolish the Law.
What did he come to do then? Well in 5:17 he explains, ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.’ Or as he puts in in 5:18, (b) to accomplish the Law. Here we see that Jesus is not the cancellation, but the completion of the law. He did not come to abolish God’s requirements, he came to accomplish them. He came to fulfil: bring about their appointed end, reach the goal they set out to achieve. So far in Matthew, we have heard a lot about fulfilment. Throughout chapters 1-4, Matthew has repeatedly noted how Christ’s birth and life ‘fulfilled’ what was spoken by the Law and the Prophets: the virgin birth (1:22); the flight to Egypt (2:15); the slaughter of infants (2:17); his residence in Nazareth (2:23); his ministry in Galilee (4:14) are all said to fulfil what was spoken by the prophets. Do you remember why Jesus said he should be baptised in 3:15? There Jesus explains that it is ‘to fulfil all righteousness’. Fulfilment fills the early chapters of this book. Matthew goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. That far from Jesus bulldozing the unfinished project of the Old Testament and starting again, he in fact finishes what it started. If the Old Testament is where God lays the foundations and begins building the walls, we see that Jesus comes to finish those walls and put the roof on. Jesus takes the building project towards its final completion, when on that last day God comes to dwell with us again. The Old Testament ends at Jesus not because he scraps it and starts again, but because he is its goal and destination. Jesus is the sea into which all the streams of the Old Testament flow. The Old Testament, the Law and Prophets, they spoke of God having a people who would be holy as he was, that was the great goal. And Jesus came to accomplish it.
How? How did Jesus fulfil the Law and the Prophets? Accomplish this goal of God having a holy people? I think he hints at how he does this in 5:19. Did you notice there he speaks of both practicing and teaching the Law? It is the latter that is prominent within our passage. We will soon see how Jesus fulfils the Law in his doctrine, this teaching he gives in the rest of the chapter, as he tells us to pursue that perfection the Law spoke of, the perfection of God himself (5:48). However, had Jesus only taught, repeated God’s requirements, he would have failed to fulfil the Old Testament. Indeed, his ministry would have been like every prophet in the Old Testament, teaching God’s standards to those who could never measure up, preaching to a people who could not perfectly perform the law. No, for Jesus to fulfil the Law, he not only had to teach, he also had to practice, had to live a perfect life, be as holy as God himself, and then offer himself up as a holy sacrifice. For Jesus to fulfil the law, he not only needed to fulfil it in his doctrine, but also in his deeds and then in his death. Here in Matthew 5, Jesus fulfils the Law and the Prophets by teaching on a hill in Galilee. But in Matthew 27, he will fulfil them by dying on a hill in Jerusalem. The law requires perfection, a holiness like God’s, and all who fall short of that standard face punishment, the just eternal outpouring of God’s wrath on all who break his perfect law. The law requires perfection or punishment. And so, on the cross, Jesus, the perfect teacher and keeper of the Law and Prophets, took the place of his sinful people, suffered the punishment for all who will believe in him, so that the law might be fulfilled for them, so that it might be kept by its punishment being carried out on Jesus. If you are here tonight and you are not a Christian, this is the very heart of the Gospel, the good news of Christianity. The Bible makes clear we have all sinned, committed crimes against our Creator, failed to be holy as he is holy. We have all broken God’s law. We are not perfect, and so we deserve its punishment. And yet, in love, God sent his Son, not to reduce the requirements of his law, but the suffer the punishment of his law. On the cross Jesus took the punishment for all who turn from their sin and trust in him. If you are not a Christian, this evening you sit condemned under God’s law, you will face his coming judgement and eternal punishment. And yet, if you believe in Jesus, take him to be your Lord and Saviour tonight, you will be able to sing, with the hymnwriter Augustus Toplady: ‘the terrors of law and of God; with me can have nothing to do; my Saviour’s obedience and blood; hide all my transgressions from view.’ Christ is not the cancellation of God’s law, but as Paul puts it in Romans 10:4, he is its ‘culmination’, for he provides ‘righteousness for everyone who believes.’ Jesus came to bring us into God’s kingdom not by changing the entry criteria, but by changing us: taking our punishment, giving us his perfection, and sending his Spirit to work in us.
2. AND WE MUST BE HOLY TO (5:21-48)
You see, Jesus not only came to fulfil the law in his doctrine, deeds and death, he also came to see it fulfilled in his disciples (Ferguson). Again, as Paul explains in Romans 8:4, God sent his Son to be a sin offering, not only to take the just punishment of the law for us, but so ‘the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.’ Jesus did not come to abolish the Law, he came to accomplish it: by teaching it to us, keeping it for us and producing it in us. When Jesus tells the crowd in 5:20 that they will not enter the kingdom of heaven unless their righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, he really means it. Jesus requires his people to be even holier than the Pharisees. This would have shocked his hearers, for as one children’s bible puts it, the Pharisees were the ‘super-duper-holy people’ of their day. And yet, here is Jesus saying his followers must surpass them. Jesus couldn’t stress this in stronger terms. In 5:20 we see one side of this truth, that without this kind of righteousness we ‘will certainly not enter’ the kingdom. However, in 5:29-30, we see the other side of the coin, learn that a casual concern for sin, failure to pursue God’s perfection, will result in ‘your whole body [going] into hell.’ Brothers and sisters, your attitude to personal godliness, your stance towards sin, your hunger for holiness, is a clear indicator of whether you are heading to heaven or hell. The stakes cannot get higher than that. Jesus teaches that holiness is a matter of heaven and hell. No wonder then Hebrews 12:14 urges, ‘Make every effort to...be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.’
Again, this must have stunned the crowds on the hill that day: holier than Pharisees? How could that be? What more could those rigorous rule keepers do? However, as Jesus continues through the chapter, it all becomes clear. For we see how the Pharisees misunderstood holiness by harbouring some of misconceptions I highlighted at the beginning of our sermon. In 5:21-48, Jesus takes the truth he has just told us, coming to fulfil the Law, and applies it to six situations, revealing God’s requirements in relation to: murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and relations with enemies. We don’t have time this evening to walk through each of these examples. Again, if you want to do that, go back and listen to Skully’s series. However, what is common across them all is Jesus using these examples to reform their understanding of holiness. Did you notice each begins with a contrast? Something like ‘you have heard it said...’ and then ‘but I tell you...’. At the start it might seem Jesus contrasts his teaching with the words of the Old Testament. However, by the time you get to the end in 5:43, Jesus is quoting commands that aren’t in the Old Testament, but are the traditional teachings of the Pharisees. And so we see Jesus isn’t correcting God’s law, which he has just said he has not come to abolish, but correcting the Pharisees’ interpretation of it. Having just commanded Christians to have a holiness that is higher than the Pharisees, he now goes on to explain what that will look like by exposing the Pharisees’ counterfeit concept of holiness. This evening, we are going to close by highlighting three of these clarifications, which we see across a number of these six examples. So no matter what you thought holiness was before this evening, see here what Jesus means by it.
A. Holiness is wholeness
That is, holiness encompasses the whole person, both external and internal, both hands and heart, no part of the person is left out when it comes to God’s perfection. This is perhaps clearest in the first two examples Jesus gives, murder in 5:21-26 and adultery in 5:27-30. The Pharisees had limited these laws to only refer to physically taking someone’s life or physical activity with someone’s wife. For them, holiness with respect to these commandments meant simply avoiding these external actions. Yet Jesus teaches his followers that God’s righteous requirements went far beyond the external, for angry thoughts or words are equivalent to murder, and lustful thoughts and looks are akin to adultery. According to Jesus, adultery not only takes place in someone’s bed, but can happen in your own head. As MLJ explains, Jesus teaches that ‘not only must we not commit, we must not even covet.’ It is not just that we should not do, we should not even desire to do. In teaching this, Jesus revealed the real requirements of the Law and Prophets, which not only called for clean hands, but also a pure heart (Ps 24:4). Friends, do you see here how this understanding of holiness entirely precludes all hypocrisy? Hypocrisy is often defined as saying one thing and doing another, but it really goes much deeper than that. It is any inconsistency, whether external or internal. It includes not only saying the right thing and doing the wrong, but also doing the right thing and desiring the wrong. The Pharisees did the right thing by avoiding murder and adultery, but their holiness failed to extend to wholeness. For they harboured anger in their hearts and lusted in their heads. Their understanding of holiness was really hollowness: it looked great on the outside but was entirely empty on the inside. Jesus here calls not for hollowness, but wholeness. A unity of external deeds and internal desires. An alignment of words and thoughts. A consistency between what everyone else can see and what only God can see. Brothers and sisters, in our pursuit of perfection, in our hunt for holiness, we must not settle for what the scribes seen to be holiness. As Jamie reminded us last week, we must hunt every hint of immorality, drive down to the depths of our actions, words and thoughts, never stop short of slaying sin even in the secret places of our lives. For Jesus calls us to a kind of holiness that is a wholeness, calls us to a holiness higher than the Pharisees because it goes deeper into our hearts.
B. Holiness is love
If in the first two examples Jesus dispels the misconception of holiness as hypocrisy, in the last two he shows how holiness is not haughtiness. How a ‘holier than thou attitude’, a distant detached disposition, believing you are better than everyone else, is actually the very opposite of what holiness should look like. Here we see that moral purity includes not just a negative, the absence of sin, but also a positive, the presence of love. In 5:38-42 Jesus calls us to a radical generosity towards others, even when they have wronged us. If they sue you for your shirt, he says to give them your coat as well (5:40). If they demand you march one mile, you literally ‘go the extra mile’ and do a second as well (5:41). Then in the sixth example in 5:43-47, Jesus takes this generosity to the next level. Just as the Beatitudes ended with the shock of happiness meaning persecution, here Jesus finishes with the shock of holiness meaning love for your enemies. In contrast to the Pharisees, who hated those who differed from them and only greeted ‘their own people’, Jesus commands us to love even our enemies and to pray for our persecutors. There seems to be nothing someone can do to cut themselves off from this relentless love. Jesus emphasises this again in 7:12, when towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount he returns to speaking of the Law and Prophets and sums them all up in a single commandment. He says, ‘in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.’ If you had to reduce the whole concept of holiness to one word, what word would you chose? Pure? Separate? Distinct? Each of those are certainly included in the idea of holiness, but do you see that isn’t the word Jesus would choose? Nor Paul, for again and again he teaches, ‘whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.’ (Rom 13:8) Holiness is open generosity, constant compassion, relentless love. Brothers and sisters when you think of holiness, don’t think of how one historian famously described the Puritans, those with a ‘haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time.’ Don’t think of miserable people who probably disapprove of what everyone else is doing around them. No, when you think holiness, you ought to think of Jesus. One who was full of gentle goodness, had absolute moral purity but displayed endless generosity. One who constantly condemned sin and its consequences in the strongest way, yet was surrounded by all kinds of scandalous sinners throughout his ministry. One who fulfilled the law perfectly not just by remaining free from sin, but by relentless loving sinners. Surely if we lived lives like that, we might begin to see our good deeds cause people to turn and glorify our God in Heaven as Jesus promised they would do in 5:16?
C. Holiness is Godlikeness
Finally, Jesus finishes by telling us to do exactly what we have just done, see holiness as Godlikeness. See himself, and God the Father, as the ultimate example, supreme standard of holiness. For having given us 6 examples in 5:21-47, he concludes with an overarching command in 5:48, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ Here Jesus is repeating and rephrasing that central command of the Old Testament we read in Leviticus, ‘Be holy for I am holy.’ Jesus came to accomplish that, to teach his people to be a perfect picture of their perfect Father. And when Jesus says this, he means it. We must resist the urge to understand this as just a nice rhetorical flourish at the end of the chapter. No, this is a commandment. Jesus commands us to pursue perfection, to cultivate a character like his own, to have a holiness that corresponds with God himself. Here in Matthew 5, we see what Jamie has been speaking of from Ephesians 5, following God’s example, walking in the way of love like Christ. However, if we are honest, it is all rather overwhelming. Following a list of external rules like the Pharisees is so much easier than pursuing the internal and external perfection of God himself. And yet, it is the latter that we are called to. This evening if you are flagging in the fight, if staring at this standard has only heightened those holes in your holiness. As we close, can I encourage you to see that Jesus assumes those who have been forgiven, filled with his Spirit and set out to follow him can begin to walk in this way. You see, coming to this passage can feel a little like arriving at the bottom of a sheer cliff face stretching far up into the sky before you. How can you possibly hope to climb that? Perfection! How will you ever make it to the top? And yet, if you are a Christian tonight, if you look closely enough you start to see holes for your hands and feet, a narrow path snaking its way up the cliff face before you. Did you notice that apart from in the case of divorce, which is unique, in every other example, Jesus not only explains what the law means, but also points out the way to obey, our first step on the pathway to perfection. He says don’t be angry, and then calls us to immediately go and be reconciled with our brother. He says don’t lust, and then commands us to take that first step of cutting of sources of sexual immorality in our lives. He not only rejects oaths, but instructs us to let our yes be yes and no be no. He encourages us to give generously to those who ask and love our enemies by praying for them. Do you see how practical Jesus makes this pathway to perfection? Even though the journey is difficult, Jesus says it is still worth starting. The highway to holiness may be a long one, the road to righteousness is not an easy journey. Yet, like any journey anyone has ever been on, whether to the shops for milk or to the top of Mount Everest, it begins with a first step. As you sit in the short silence after the service tonight, consider what your next step on this journey is. What step can you make towards holiness tonight? What sin do you need to stop? What heart posture needs to be addressed? What desire do you need to put to death? Maybe before you go to bed tonight, you need to take the step of sending a text to someone to say sorry for what you said or let someone know you are struggling with pornography and need help. Brothers and sisters, even the longest journey begins with that first step. Even the greatest work of art starts with a single stroke. Even the biggest tree is felled by chop after chop after chop. If you are staring at a gaping hole in your holiness tonight, don’t just sit there, its not going to get any smaller on its own. Pick up your shovels and start filling it in, get others along to help you. For we must be holy. And you know what, we will be holy. One day we will be a perfect picture of our perfect Father. In that day, as we read in Isaiah 4:3, all God’s people will be called holy. For that prophetic promise is exactly what Jesus came to fulfil, it will not pass away until it is accomplished.
ALEXANDER ARRELL