Matthew 5:29-30 “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cat it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”
I think that it is important for us to remember that all of this section of the Sermon on the Mount that we have been studying and that we will continue to study for a few more weeks is built upon the all important statement of Jesus, “I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds (or surpasses) the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will be no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” In His kindness He does not make a statement like that and then leave us to figure out what surpassing righteousness looks like, He reveals it to us. Abstaining from murder is not righteousness, controlling and resolving our anger is. Surpassing righteousness does not allow anger to live in our hearts, it rejects the notions of grudges and bitterness, controls the tongue in a manner that won’t allow insults to be the response to hurt or aggravation and endures in intercession long after all others have given up. Jesus says that the simple rejection of murder is not surpassing righteousness and then He says that the physical avoidance of adultery is also not surpassing righteousness, that righteousness begins in the eyes and lives in the heart. He was very pointed in His words when He said “whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The most difficult word in that statement is “already”. We have somewhat conditioned ourselves to believe that there are lines not to be crossed, that idea allows us to get as close to the line as possible without believing we have sinned, but here Jesus reveals that sin is not limited to our actions, it is birthed in our hearts and righteousness is not the avoidance of a list of immoral actions it is the state of mind and heart that desires to love God with all of our heart, all of our mind and all of our soul in all of our lives. Surpassing righteousness is birthed out of the first commandment, love for God above everything else and then it is lived out by what Jesus called the second commandment, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Love for God shapes our hearts, love for our neighbors influences our actions. In today’s text, we will see that Jesus does not just reveal the necessity of surpassing righteousness He reveals the severity of sin. I believe that without realizing the severity of sin we will never truly grasp or embrace the call to surpassing righteousness. If sin is allowed to be vague we will often find ourselves living in the midst of it before we realize our hearts have been hardened. Isn’t that what happened to Lot? He pitched his tents toward Sodom, then we find him at the city gates, living in the city and one of its leaders, then we see him engrained in the culture and the sin of the city so much so that he endangers his daughters. All of this started because the action of sin was more of a draw than the severity of sin was a deterrent. John Stott wrote that a narrow definition of sin leads to a broad definition of purity. That is exactly what the scribes and Pharisees had done, sin was the physical act and so purity had nothing to do with the heart and everything to do with your hands. Jesus comes and says the righteousness of my Father and of My kingdom is birthed in your heart and it is done so by love. This morning I pray that we will all see that and eternal awareness of the severity of sin reveals the enormity of God’s love and creates within us the ability and desire to fulfill and obey the first and greatest commandment. Surpassing righteousness, as I believe Jesus defines it for us in this Sermon, is simply to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our mind. I Peter 4:8 says that “love covers a multitude of sins”, I believe that where love abounds sin is taken seriously and where sin is taken seriously, surpassing righteousness is revealed.