Latest / Reformed Thinking / Murder in the Heart and Peace at the Altar: Jesus’ Exposition of the Sixth Commandment (Matthew 5:21–26)

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Murder in the Heart and Peace at the Altar: Jesus’ Exposition of the Sixth Commandment (Matthew 5:21–26) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed Thinking, and this is another one of our
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deep dive. That's right.
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This is where we take some of the most, well, frankly the most
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challenging passages in Scripture and theology, look at
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the sources and really try to pull out what they mean for how
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we see God and the world. And for this deep dive, we are
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tackling a passage that is, I think, both intellectually tough
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and just incredibly convicting on a personal level.
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It really is. We're going to be focusing on
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Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 to 26.
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It's the part of the sermon on the mound where Jesus takes aim
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at the 6th commandment. You shall not murder.
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And you know, the 6th commandment has always been
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something of a moral safety blanket for the for the
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outwardly respectable person. Oh, absolutely.
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The person who can kind of sit back and say, well, I've never
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physically killed anyone. So on this point, I'm I'm good.
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I'm innocent before God. That exact feeling, that
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comfortable sense of confidence, is precisely what Jesus just
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completely tears down here. He does.
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Our sources show that Jesus's mission here is to move the
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whole discussion away from just the external crime of homicide
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and into the well, the much deeper and darker Tyrone of the
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human heart and the tongue. And the tongue, Yes, the goal
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seems to be to force every single person, especially the
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one who feels pretty secure in their morality, to face this
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possibility that in God's eyes they could be a murderer in
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principle. That is a staggering thought.
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A murderer in principle. Before we even get into that,
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though, we have to set the stage.
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We need to understand the kind of authority Jesus is claiming
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here and the standard he's putting forward.
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Exactly. We have to start with the
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context of fulfilment. OK, so let's start there.
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Section 1. The surpassing righteousness.
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Jesus kicks this whole section off in Matthew 5 verse 17 with
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this huge declaration. He says, do not think that I
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have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
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That right there sets the stage for everything that follows.
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He's not throwing out the Old Testament.
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Not at all. He's making it clear that the
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moral standard is still in place.
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He's not getting rid of Moses's original command, he's exposing
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how badly the later traditions had twisted it and frankly
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emptied it of its power. I.
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Think a lot of people get that backward.
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They hear Jesus raising the bar so high and they assume he's
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just canceling out the old law. It's a common mistake, but the
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sources we've looked at really breakdown three specific ways
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he's fulfilling the law, and that's a really necessary thing
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to get straight. OK, what's the first one?
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The 1st and maybe the most relevant for our passage is what
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we'd call authoritative exposition, meaning Jesus is
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showing the laws true meaning. It's spiritual depth.
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He's coming against what our sources call the truncated
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externalistic handling of the law.
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Truncated. That's a good word for it.
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It was cut short. It was the religious teachers of
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his day had taken this deep spiritual standard and reduced
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it to behavioral checklist. So he's fulfilling it by showing
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it's real scope. He's basically saying this is
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what the commandment meant all along, you just decided to
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ignore the really hard parts. That's it exactly.
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The law was given to bind the conscience, not just the hands.
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So that's the first way. The second way he fulfills it is
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through anticipation. The prophetic dimension.
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Right, he brings to pass everything the Old Testament was
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pointing forward to. He is the destination the law
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was mapping a route to. And the third way, and this is,
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you know, this is the center of our hope, is his perfect
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obedience and atonement. This is where his life and death
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come in. Yes, His act of obedience, we
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call it. He fulfilled the law with his
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sinless life. He lived a life that met the
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law's standard perfectly, not just on the outside, but on the
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inside in his heart. And then his passive obedience.
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His sacrificial death, he bore the penalty that the law
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demanded because we failed to keep it.
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And understanding that threefold fulfillment is just, it's
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critical because without it, the standard he's about to lay out
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here is not just high, it's completely impossible.
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So when we hear that famous formula, you have heard that it
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was said, but I say to you, we have to hear the weight of that.
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Oh, it's an assertion of divinity.
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It's the long giver himself speaking.
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Yes. He's not arguing with Moses.
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He's standing against the corrupted, superficial human
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traditions about Moses's law. He's claiming the unique right
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to define righteousness, and he's driving it past what people
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can see in public and into the hidden places of the soul.
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And the framework for this whole discussion is laid out just a
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verse before our passage in Matthew 520.
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And it's maybe one of the most unsettling demands in the Bible.
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I would. Agree.
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That the righteousness of those who enter the Kingdom must
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exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.
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Which is just astonishing to his audience because the Pharisees
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were the moral superstars of their day.
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I mean, if anyone looked righteous on the outside, it was
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them. And Jesus says that's not
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enough. So what's the real difference?
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What separates that Pharisaical righteousness from what Jesus
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calls Kingdom righteousness? It really comes down to the
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source of the righteousness and and how far it reaches.
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Fair sake of righteousness was all about external conformity.
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Just what people could see. Exactly.
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It was measured by public acts, rituals, visible compliance.
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They drew the line at the physical action.
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So for the 6th Commandment, the line was physical homicide.
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And that system? It allowed for what our sources
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call a boast of supposed innocence.
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Right, because I can always find someone who looks worse than me.
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I can say, well, I haven't crossed that line.
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It's morality by comparison. It is.
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It's a morality that only judges the bad fruit, Kingdom
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righteousness. On the other hand, it demands
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internal transformation. It's not about quantity, it's
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about quality. It's a righteousness that has to
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reach the heart, the motives, the whole inner person.
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Not just the hands. Not just the hands.
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It understands that sin doesn't start with the ACT, it starts
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with the attitude. So the Pharisees saw the law as
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a fence, a fence around your behavior to keep you from
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falling off a Cliff. But Jesus shows it's actually a
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window, a window into the soul that shows the rot inside that
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nobody else sees. But God sees it, and that's the
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core theological verdict Jesus gives here.
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He says harboring that sinful anger makes you, in God's sight,
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a murderer and principle. A murderer and principle.
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The commandment isn't kept just when no blood is physically
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shed. It's kept when there's no desire
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to harm or diminish or destroy another person who's made in
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God's image. This exposes that murderous
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principle that lies, you know, dormant or not so dormant in
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every fallen human heart. It just strips away any comfort
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you might get from not having committed some big spectacular
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sin. It does, which leads us right
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into the text itself. OK, so let's get into the heart
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of it. Section 2.
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Heart Murder Jesus starts with the 6th commandment.
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You shall not murder. And right away, he moves the
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goal posts. Or rather, he shows where they
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were all along. Right.
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In a human court, you're only liable for the final act.
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But Jesus immediately shifts the conversation to God's court, to
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the divine reckoning, and he starts with the internal state,
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the. Root of it all, sinful anger, He
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says everyone who is angry with his brother will be labeled to
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judgement. Now this is where we have to be
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really careful. Extremely careful, because we
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know from scripture that not all anger is sinful.
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Controlled righteous anger is a real thing.
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I find this so hard to parse in my own life.
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How do we tell the difference between a legitimate moral anger
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like Jesus in the temple and the destructive kind of anger Jesus
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is condemning here? That's the key question.
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The sources really help us by looking at the specific Greek
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word used here, or Giza my in this context, it's not talking
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about a quick flash of irritation or even a passionate
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but controlled response to real injustice.
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It's something deeper. It's describing A characteristic
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disposition. You could call it a settled,
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self-centered, vengeful anger. It's the anger that holds a
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grudge, that refuses to let go, that secretly or openly wants
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the other person to be harmed or diminished.
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OK, so righteous anger is directed outward.
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It's directed at sin or at injustice, and it wants to see
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things made right. It wants reconciliation.
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But the sin, anger, this orgasm, I it's directed inward.
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It's about me and my wounded pride.
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And it wants payback. That is the critical difference
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when your anger is fueled by a refusal to love your neighbor
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and its goal is to make them suffer or feel small and be
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defeated. That is the murderous principle
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at work in your heart. And Jesus just says it plainly.
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Harboring that inside makes you just as liable as the person who
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carries up the physical act. That's the verdict that just
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dismantles all our moral pride. It doesn't matter if I pick up a
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knife or if I just sit in my chair and wish for my brother to
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fail. In principle before God, I'm
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guilty. The same thing.
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And as we all know, that kind of anger, when it just sits and
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broods in the heart, it almost never stays there.
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It has to come out, and its favorite weapon is the tongue.
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Jesus immediately makes the connection between that
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Interstate and the outer expression.
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Ridicule character assassination.
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So the heart murder, the intent to harm, becomes what you call
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the verbal execution of another person's worth.
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Yes, and the text gives 2 very specific culturally loaded
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examples of this Raqqa. And you fool, we have to feel
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the punch these words carried. Let's start with Raqqa.
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What exactly does that mean? So.
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Raqa. It's an Aramaic insult, a very
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common but very deep term of contempt.
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It translates to something like empty head or worthless good for
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nothing. So it's not just calling someone
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stupid, it sounds like a complete dismissal of them as a
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person. That's it.
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That's exactly right. It's a contemptuous label meant
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to dismiss the other as totally insignificant.
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It's a denial of their basic dignity as someone made in God's
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image. To call someone Raqqa is to say
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you are a non entity. You add nothing, you're a 0.
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It's a refusal to see their value.
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And the next one, you fool, hum Murray, that seems even worse.
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Because it's not just about their intelligence or worth.
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It's it's like a spiritual judgement on them.
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It is the word Murrow's is where we get our word moron.
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But in that context, calling someone a fool was a heavy
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ethical and spiritual charge. Like the fool in the Psalms who
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says in his heart there is no God.
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Exactly that. So when Jesus condemns using
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this word, he's targeting its use as a personal, damnatory
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verdict on the other's entire character.
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It's not just assassinating their character, it's
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assassinating their soul. It's the overflow of contempt.
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This kind of language is designed to destroy a person's
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reputation, to make them unworthy of respect or
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forgiveness or love. Jesus is showing that the 6th
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commandment goes way beyond just shedding blood.
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It reaches into the heart that would be happy to see another
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person diminished or just completely destroyed.
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The tongue becomes the executioner.
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And to really drive home how serious these these smaller sins
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are, Jesus uses this powerful rhetorical tool.
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He escalates the penalties. He goes from judgment to the
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Council or the Sanhedrin all the way up to the Hella Fire
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Gehenna. And this escalation is brilliant
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because it makes sure the listener can't just explain away
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their guilt. It sounds like a legal ladder.
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You know, local court, then the Supreme Court, then final
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execution. It's not meant to be read that
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literally. The sources are pretty clear
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that the main point is rhetorical.
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It's meant to show that any of these sins, even the ones that
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seem trivial to us, an angry thought, a cutting word, all of
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them are worthy of the severest divine scrutiny.
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So he's not saying, OK, anger gets you the lower court, but
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calling someone Rucka gets you the middle court.
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He's saying all of these things, all these expressions of
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contempt, they make you liable for the highest judgement.
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That's the key. They all bring you into
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liability before God himself and his choice for that ultimate
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penalty, Gehenna would have been absolutely terrifying to his
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audience. Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom.
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It was a literal place outside Jerusalem, a garbage dump
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basically, that was always burning, and it had this
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horrible history of Pagan child sacrifice.
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Right. So by Jesus's time, it was the
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perfect symbol for final, irreversible eschatological
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judgement. Hell.
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Hell, by choosing that specific term, Jesus is stressing the
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fearful reality of divine retribution for these inner
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sins. He's wrecking the assumption
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that God only cares about the big public sins.
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He connects A contemptuous word directly to final judgement, and
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that forces us to see that the cost of our self-centered
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contempt is infinite. Our inner life is not a private
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space exempt from God's justice. Not at all.
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And after exposing all of this, this destructive negativity,
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Jesus immediately pivots. He moves to the positive demand
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in verses 23 and 24. The demand for relational
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integrity. He shifts the scene from the
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courtroom to the temple, and it's a very jarring image.
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It is the worshipper is standing there at the altar, about to
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offer his gift. This is the peak of religious
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duty, the moment of highest religious seriousness.
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It's a vertical act of worship. And right in the middle of that
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moment, Jesus gives a command that just stops everything cold.
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It does. The worshipper remembers.
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Or maybe the Holy Spirit brings to mind that your brother has
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something against you. And notice it's not that you
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have something against your brother.
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Right. The focus is on the grievance
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the brother holds against me, the responsibilities on me, the
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offender, to go and make it right.
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Which is radical. It's completely radical.
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I have to stop here because if offering a sacrifice to God is
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the most important thing I can do and, and maybe the grievance
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is small. Maybe my neighbor is just being
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too sensitive. Is Jesus really saying my duty
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to God takes a backseat to my duty to my, you know, my easily
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offended neighbor? He is stoning with no ambiguity
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at all that your duty to God is conditional on the integrity of
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your relationships with people. The command is so sharp.
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Leave your gift there before the altar and go.
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Stop the sacred act. To stop it, first be reconciled
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to your brothers, and then come and offer your gift.
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That little adverb first for Tom in the Greek.
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It makes reconciliation the non negotiable antecedent condition
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for the acceptability of the worship that follows.
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So I can't separate my relationship with God from my
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relationship with my neighbor. I can say I love the God.
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I can't see if I'm holding contempt for the brother I can
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see. That's the inescapable point.
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It's a theological statement. God wrote the laws about
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worship, and he wrote the laws about loving your neighbor.
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To fail in the second makes your attempt at the first a complete
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sham. You can't approach a holy God
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while you're willfully letting a relationship breakdown.
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And this is such a huge blow against what we could call
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spiritual compartmentalization. It really is.
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The idea that my really solid church attendance or my deep
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prayer life can somehow make up for the fact that I'm giving my
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spouse the silent treatment or holding a grudge against someone
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in my small group. Jesus is saying no.
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Your devotion to God is inseparable from a sincere
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pursuit of peace with your neighbor.
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Worship cannot be walled off from ethics.
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If your worship lets you sidestep the hard, messy work of
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making peace, then your worship is a lie.
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You see this theme all through the prophets, don't you, Isaiah.
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Amos They were constantly hammering Israel for keeping up
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the temple rituals while ignoring justice and love.
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They were essentially saying your sacrifices are an insult
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because your hearts are full of murder and your hands are full
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of greed. It's the same prophetic line of
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thought. God wants mercy, not just
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sacrifice. Right.
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And the danger is thinking God can be fooled, that he can be
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placated by some liturgical performance that bypasses the
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hard work of confession, repentance and peacemaking.
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Our sources say to do that, to refuse to deal with a grievance
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while offering a gift, is to engage in hypocrisy.
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It's an insult to God. It implies he can't see what's
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really in your heart. And the setting right there at
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the altar is meant to highlight that the closer you get to God,
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the more you are required to deal with the state of your
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relationships with other people. So the horizontal relationship
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has to be addressed before the vertical 1 can be genuine.
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It must be. Reconciliation comes first.
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Then, and only then, is the offering acceptable.
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So after establishing the priority of making peace, Jesus
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then immediately turns to the urgency of it in the next couple
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of verses, and he changes the scenery completely.
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We go from the holy temple courts to the secular civil
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courts. And that shift in imagery is
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designed to bring in the reality of consequences and maybe even
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more, the reality of limited time.
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The temple shows us our duty. The courtroom shows us the
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danger of putting it off. He says come to terms quickly
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with your accuser while you are going with him to court.
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I mean, the common sense advice is to settle before the whole
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thing gets out of your control and you're standing in front of
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the judge. The keyword is quickly.
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The phrase while you're going with him points to a limited
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window of opportunity in a real court.
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That window closes the second you arrive at the courthouse.
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In the spiritual sense, this means you have to pursue
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reconciliation now in this life. Before death slams the door on
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the opportunity for repentance and for settling things.
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Right. So the danger of delaying is
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it's really two things. First, you risk standing before
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the final judge with this massive, unsettled account.
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And 2nd, the delay itself is a moral failure.
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Procrastination and peacemaking is in itself a moral refusal.
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You're actively choosing your grudge over Christ's command to
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love. Delay let's that sinful anger
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calcify into bitterness, but the heart gets harder and harder,
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more and more resistant to grace.
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The longer you wait to have that hard conversation, the harder it
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gets to have. It becomes almost impossible.
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To really feel the urgency, though, we have to look at this
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little parable spiritually. Who's the accuser?
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Who's the judge? What's the prison?
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It's clearly pointing toward a final judgement.
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It links right back to the Ghana penalty you just mentioned.
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So the judge, the critique, that has to be God himself.
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And the journey to court is our life, the path we're all walking
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toward that final moment of reckoning.
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Exactly. And the accuser in this story is
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the brother whose legitimate grievance we've just ignored.
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So my refusal to make things right turns my brother into my
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accuser on the way to God's courtroom.
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Correct. And in the parable, the judge
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hands the offender over to the guard who throws him in prison.
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That prison, that guard, they symbolize the irrevocability of
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divine judgment once it falls for these sins of the heart.
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And the final line is the one that really lands with force.
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You will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
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This is so important because people often misread this.
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They see it as teaching some kind of purgatory, a temporary
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place to work off your debt. But that's not what the sources
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suggest at all. Jesus is not describing a
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temporary holding cell. He's stressing the infinite
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severity and the complete unavoidability of divine
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judgement for guilt that hasn't been dealt with.
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The last penny. It shows that God's justice is
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perfect. It's not approximate.
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It's not every single debt, every angry thought, every
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cutting word has to be fully paid for.
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And since we as finite sinful people can never pay that last
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penny, I mean the debt is infinite against an infinite
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God. This warning is meant to do 2
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things at once. Yes, it's a crushing indictment
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of our own ability to save ourselves, and it's meant to
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drive us straight to the gospel. The only hope?
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The only hope for someone facing that eternal debtors prison is a
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third party, a substitute, the payment that Christ provides,
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which is applied to us by faith. So the warning pushes us to act
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now, to make peace now, and to rely on Christ now before we
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stand in front of the judge who demands the last penny.
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Which? Brings us to the theological
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core of all this. How do we integrate what Jesus
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is teaching here with our broader Reformed theology?
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Well, this passage is just a perfect illustration of the
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comprehensive nature of God's law and at the same time our
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complete and total dependence on Christ.
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So first, it confirms what theologians call the
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spirituality of God's moral law, that it's not just about
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actions, but about motives, feelings, words.
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It is. And this depth is exactly what
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our confessions are getting at. When they summarize the 6th
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Commandment, they don't just say don't murder, they say we have
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to guard against all discontented and injurious
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passions. Things like anger, hatred, envy,
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desire of revenge. And even provoking words,
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oppressions, cruel usage, I mean, Jesus is teaching here is
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basically a perfect distillation of that deep spiritual intent of
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the law. And when you understand the law
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that way, the implications for our understanding of human
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nature are just massive. I'm thinking specifically of the
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doctrine of total depravity. It's a devastating confirmation
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of it, isn't it? Yeah, Jesus just collapses that
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comfortable moral gap between the nice church going person and
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the violent criminal. He's saying the same murderous
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principle. The same principle of wishing
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harm on another image bearer of God is in every single fallen
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heart. The outwardly respectable person
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is just maybe better at hiding it or has been blessed with
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circumstances that don't bring it out.
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So we're guilty of the principle long before we ever commit the
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ACT. We might not commit homicide,
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but we are all guilty of heart murder.
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And that exposure just rebukes any kind of shallow optimism
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about human goodness. It teaches us our problem isn't
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a list of bad behaviors we can fix.
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Our problem is a corrupted, murderous heart that wants to
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see others diminished. When you realize that even your
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anger deserves Gehenna, you start to grasp the totality of
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your guilt. And that realization immediately
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brings up the next question. If the law is that deep, if it
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reaches my most secret motives and my careless words, how could
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anyone possibly satisfy? It, which is where Christ's
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fulfillment of the law becomes such a comfort.
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His righteousness has to be just as deep, just as comprehensive.
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Let's think about his act of obedience first.
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Christ's sinlessness wasn't just on the surface.
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It was moral down to the level of motives and desires.
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Christ never once harbored unjust anger.
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He never spoke a contemptuous word, a Raqqa or a mutray to
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tear someone down. His life was one of perfect self
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giving love. It was So the righteousness
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that's credited to believers isn't some legal fiction.
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It's the actual perfect record of a life that was totally
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aligned with the spiritual intent of God's commands, A life
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completely free from heart murder.
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And then his passive obedience, his death, answers the penalty.
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Yes. Christ's death bore the penalty
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not just for physical violence, but for every angry thought and
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spiteful word of his people. The justice of Gehenna, that
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eternal debtors prison we deserve for our heart murder.
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It all fell on him. He stood before the judge and
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paid the last penny for all of our contempt.
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That brings so much comfort to know that when I confess my
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sharp words or my simmering resentment, I'm confessing sins
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that Christ has already fully paid for.
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Not sins I have to somehow work off myself.
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So if the penalty is paid and the righteousness is given to
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us, what's the role of a terrifying passage like this for
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a believer? It's not a death sentence
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anymore. For those who are in Christ,
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it's no longer a word of condemnation.
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It becomes what we call the third use of the law, a rule of
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life, a guide. It's the blueprint for
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sanctification written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
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It shows us how Christ lived and how out of gratitude, we should
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strive to live. But the warnings are still there
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in the text. Why does God keep warning us of
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judgement if we're securing Christ?
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Because we still fight against the remnants of that murderous
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principle every day. The warnings keep us vigilant.
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They push us towards self examination and active
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peacemaking. They remind us how serious hard
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sin is and keep us from getting complacent.
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From thinking that just because we're not committing huge public
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sins, we're holy. So the law guides our growth.
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It demands we pursue that costly countercultural life of
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reconciliation. A life that should flow
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naturally from the fact that we ourselves have been reconciled
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to God. This is all timeless, of course,
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but I can't think of a time when the warning against contemptuous
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speech has been more relevant than right now.
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We've said that Jesus located the sin in the heart, not the
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medium, and our modern digital world is just a breeding ground
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for heartburner. It's the primary testing ground,
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isn't it? I mean, our entire digital
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ecosystem, social media, comment sections, cable news, it's all
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built to reward outrage, Sarcasm, mockery, contempt gets
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clicks. And we operate under this
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terrifying illusion that words we type in a hurry and send to
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strangers through a screen somehow way less before God than
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words we speak face to face. We dehumanize people, we reduce
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them to a political label or a stereotype, and then we feel
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free to pour out our contempt because there's no immediate
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consequence. But Jesus's teaching just cuts
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right through that. He doesn't care if the contempt
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was spoken in Aramaic or typed in a tweet.
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It's the intent of the heart that matters.
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And that contemptuous speech finds new and massively
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amplified ways to express itself online.
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So give me some modern digital equivalents of Raqqa and Murray.
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OK for Raqqa, the word that dismisses someone as worthless.
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Think about the way we use these broad, dehumanizing labels in
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our arguments, calling an entire group of people sheep or woke or
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deplorables or bigots. It functions in the exact same
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way. Exactly.
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The label is designed to say you are insignificant, you are not
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worth listening to. You were dismissed.
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It's a refusal to see the person as a complex image bearer of
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God. And what about you, fool, That
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damnatory verdict on someone's soul?
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That's the performative outrage we see everywhere online.
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The goal isn't to persuade anyone, it's to signal your own
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moral superiority. It's when you assign the worst
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possible motives to someone, and then you publicly execute their
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reputation in a comment thread declaring them morally bankrupt
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or just evil. And the speed of it all makes it
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so easy. Instantaneous.
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You can go from a simmering private anger to a public
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anonymous execution in seconds, and it feeds that murderous
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principle in US. So the application here is it's
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a call for a radical reformation of our communication habits.
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We have to consciously slow down, refuse to get swept up in
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the outrage cycle, and stop participating in the culture of
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slander. And we have to measure every
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single word typed or spoken against the standard of love.
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If what I'm about to say is meant to diminish or destroy
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someone's worth, it falls under the severest divine scrutiny
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that Jesus warns about. We are constantly practicing
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heart murder against people we've never even met.
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Let's bring it closer to home, back to that instruction at the
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altar. How does this apply in our
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churches and in our families? The sources talk about the
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scandal of chronic, unreconciled relationships.
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And Jesus is directly challenging that.
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What we might call ecclesiastical complacency, we
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just tolerate it. We tolerate quiet hostility,
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cold shoulders, factions in the church, all while we go through
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the motions of worship every Sunday.
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We'll stand there and sing a hymn right next to someone we
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are actively refusing to forgive.
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Or someone we know has a problem with us and we just refuse to
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address it. We prioritize the smooth running
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of the institution, the polished service, the sound sermon over
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the messy, hard, uncomfortable work of making peace with his
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sister sitting three rows back. But Jesus demanded we stop the
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most important act of worship to do that very work.
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Which implies that no amount of correct doctrine can cover for a
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community that refuses to live in peace.
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If the horizontal relationships are broken, the vertical worship
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is compromised. And what about in the family?
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The family is often where we first learn and perfect the art
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of heart murder. Absolutely.
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It's where we feel safest to let the mask slip.
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And so it's where our contempt often comes out in its rawest
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form. Harsh tones, Simmering anger
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that lasts for years, unspoken grievances.
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The silent treatment, so many people think that's a legitimate
27:28
tool. And it is, in fact, a profound
27:30
form of contempt. It's a refusal to even
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acknowledge the other person's existence or worth.
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It's a living embodiment of Raqqa.
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So how does this change the way we should apologize in our
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families? It demands specificity.
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We can't just say I'm sorry you felt that way.
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We had to name the sin for what it is.
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I sinned against you. I practice heart murder when I
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spoke to you with contempt. We have to own the sinful anger
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and the contempt and see them as a violation of the 6th
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Commandment, not just a moment of impatience.
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And finally, Jesus wraps this all up with this intense
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urgency. That courtroom parable is a
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fierce command to act now. We all have a tendency to put
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off hard conversations. I'll deal with that later when I
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feel up to it. And Jesus reminds US, time is
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not infinite. Unresolved sin isn't just
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sitting there neutrally. It's actively hardening our
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hearts. It's accumulating debt before
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the judge. Every single day of delay is
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another moral refusal to listen to his morning.
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So if we know a relationship is broken and we're at fault, what
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is our duty? Our binding duty is to take a
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concrete step now, the text says quickly.
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Don't wait until you feel perfect about it.
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It means you write the e-mail, you make the phone call, you ask
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to meet. You own your sin and you seek
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peace as far as it depends on you.
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You have to choose the costly, uncomfortable work of
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reconciliation over the easy, deceptive comfort of just
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avoiding the person. And in doing that, we move out
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from under the fear of the law's warning and into the beauty of
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the Gospels reality. We seek peace because Christ
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bought our peace with God. Let's try and sum this up.
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We've spent this time in Matthew 5 seeing how Jesus just
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radically expanded the 6th Commandment.
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He's demanding A transformation that's not just about our hands,
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but about our hearts. He exposes that settled anger
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and contempt for what they are, heart murder.
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And then he commands active, urgent reconciliation as the
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absolute precondition for any kind of authentic worship.
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The law, as Christ explains it, shows us the true horror of our
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own hearts, the bankruptcy of our own self righteousness.
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It puts us in front of the final judge with a debt we can never,
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ever pay. But the Gospel, which is all
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about Christ's fulfillment, provides the only way out His
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perfect life, His act of obedience, gives us a
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righteousness that's free from heart, murder and His death.
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His passive obedience bore the penalty of Gehenna for every
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angry thought we've ever had. He is the righteousness and the
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reconciliation that we desperately need.
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So as we finish up, here's something for you to think
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about. Christ set this terrifying
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priority. If the most sacred act of
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worship requires you to stop and seek reconciliation because your
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brother has a legitimate grievance against you, what does
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that imply about the acceptability of your private
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prayer when you are knowingly refusing to forgive a legitimate
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grievance that you hold against your brother?
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A necessary question. That link between our love for
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God and our peace with others is inescapable.
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Thank you for joining us for the Deep Dive on Reformed Thinking.
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We'll catch you next time.