Matthew 5:43-48

Thoughts

To have a righteousness greater than that of the Pharisees, the law of God must pass from your head to your heart.

Love in the old testament ; an explicable power of soul given in the inward person. If one does justice to the feeling of love, one loves with all their heart, soul and strength (Dt 6:5). Love is at its strongest when targeted at persons, its potency weakens when focused on things or actions.

Interestingly, in lev 19;34 this love is focused on a stranger. How are we to love strangers or enemies.

We are actually a result of Jesus’ followers spreading love with the gentiles. Remember we were once people lost to other things.

What does it mean to love an enemy? Who is your enemy? People different to us. To the jews it was the Gentiles. Is anyone here Jewish? we are the gentiles.

Love your ‘enemies’:

The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament A. ἐχθρός outside the NT.

a. enemies in war among the Gentiles, e.g., 1 Βασ‌. 29:8; Na. 3:11, 13, and personal enemies in daily life, Ex. 23:4; Nu. 35:23; b. the nations, i.e., the Gentiles, around Israel who are opponents of Israel or its king; c. the enemies of the righteous; d. the enemies of God.

We are the enemies of God. Jesus redefines enemies, no longer national enemies of Israel.

Romans 5:10 NASB95

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

In essence it was the acts of his own people that Jesus was crucified. If not for Jesus love for us, for his enemies, then who would we be.

Jesus also redefines ‘Neighbour’ in the parable of the good samaritan.

Redefining righteousness

References to other scriptures:

- Lev 19:12, pulling an exerpt from OT law and expanding its meaning. the ‘But’ is not a negation of what lies before it, but an exploration. Jesus here is showing that The righteousness required of Jesus’ disciples goes beyond the observation of the written law. This construct is very similiar to Luke 6:27, a parrallel passage. But also is echoed throughout the remainder of the gospels and NT. Love your neighbor.

Matthew 5:21-26 . First illustration of Christ’s ethical attitude , taken from the Sixth Commandment. In connection with this and the following exemplifications of Christ’s ethical method, the interpreter is embarrassed by the long-continued strifes of the theological schools, which have brought back the spirit of legalism, from which the great Teacher sought to deliver His disciples. It will be best to ignore these strifes and go steadily on our way.

How hard to love the persecutor who thinks he does God service by heaping upon you all manner of indignities. But the man who can rejoice in persecution (Matthew 5:12 ) can love and pray for the persecutor. The cleavage between Christians and unbelievers took the place of that between the chosen race and the Gentiles, and tempted to the same sin.

God causes rain to fall on the good and the evil. The power of the fact stated to influence as a motive is wholly destroyed by a pantheistic conception of God as indifferent to moral distinctions, or a deistic idea of Him as transcendent, too far above the world, in heaven, as it were, to be able to take note of such differences. The divine impartiality is due to magnanimity, not to indifference or ignorance. Another important reflection is that in this word of Jesus we find distinct recognition of the fact that in human life there is a large sphere (sun and rain, how much these cover!) in which men are treated by Providence irrespectively of character; by no means a matter of course in a Jewish teacher, the tendency being to insist on exact correspondence between lot and character under a purely retributive conception of God’s relation to man.

Who is good?

Magnanimity (from Latin magnanimitās, from magna "big" + animus "soul, spirit") is the virtue of being great of mind and heart. It encompasses, usually, a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes

Christ commends being superior, not thinking oneself superior, the Pharisaic characteristic.

That aim for the disciple, as here set forth, is Godlikeness ὡς ὁ πατὴρ … τέλειός ἐστιν . God is what His sons aspire to be; He never sinks below the ideal: impartial, benignant, gracious love, even to the unworthy; for that, not all conceivable attributes, is what is in view. ὡς , not in degree, that were a discouraging demand, but in kind. The kind very necessary to be emphasised in view of current ideas and practice, in which holiness was dissociated from love. The law “Be holy for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44 ) was taken negatively and worked out in separation from the reputedly sinful. Jesus gave it positive contents, and worked it out in gracious love