The Sinfulness of Sin

I am eager to dive into Jesus’ sermon on the Mount again. So far, Jesus has laid out the heart and attitude of the Christian. The Beatitudes teach us all that we need to know concerning the attitude of holiness that a Christian ought to have. But because of sin, Christians have to lean into the Holy Spirit, who teaches us, convicts us, humbles us and moves us to be more and more like Jesus.

Thus a Christian is someone who is holy, who hates sin, who mourns it, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, who is meek, a peacemaker and is absolutely aware of his sinful state.

We saw also that Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, as the only perfect one who can keep the law. But Jesus also says that our righteousness ought to be greater than that of the scribes and the Pharisees. We saw last week that the scribes and the Pharisees misunderstood and misinterpreted the law. They reduced it to a bare minimum requirement, and in so doing, led themselves and others into the belief that they were basically good and alright with God. Their righteousness was external only.

Jesus takes us far deeper in understanding the law by making a distinction between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.

1. The Spirit and the Letter

I don’t know about you, but I find myself constantly battling against legalism on one hand, and liberalism on the other hand. In somethings it seems to be quite easy to tend toward legalism, and in other things to tend toward liberalism. It is a struggle, right?

What the Pharisees and the scribes, and indeed what every empty religious teacher, leader, system does is ignore the Spirit of the law, and emphasise the letter of the law. They focus on externals, what people can see, and ignore the internals, what God sees—the heart.

You see, it isn’t as though the Pharisees were not teaching the true law, they were, but they were teaching it wrongly, robbing it of the heart and the Spirit. In so doing, they robbed the true heart and love of God in the law.

Jesus now applies His fulfillment of the law by giving six examples. Jesus is not highlighting these commandments for any particular reason except to give examples of how we are to live as Spirit-filled Christians, who live out the Spirit of the law, fulfilled in Christ Jesus.

In verse 21 we have the first example, “You’ve heard that it was said to those of old,” Jesus isn’t taking that old law and getting rid of it. Rather, he’s taking the old law and he’s putting the spirit of the law back into it. What the Pharisees were doing were robbing the law of it’s application before God himself.

Jesus quotes the Pharisees as teaching, “You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13) and then adds “whoever murders will be in danger of the judgement.” Essentially, they were teaching, “Don’t commit murder, or you’ll be taken to court.” The warning, is totally temporal, totally human based, and has nothing to God. There is no reference to God in it.

In so doing, they stripped the commandment from the presence of God, and thus stripped it of the spirit of the command. For the Spirit is in regards to a life lived before God. And God is concerned with the heart, he’s concerned with our motivations, our intentions. The commandments were never meant to be reduced to merely mechanical things. They always deal with the heart.

2. You Shall Not Murder

So the first example that Jesus uses is the command against murder.

So, ‘you shall not murder’. The Pharisees took this quite literally, and thought, “If I don’t physically murder someone, I’m good with God.” This is the attitude seen in the rich young ruler, who asked Jesus about the commandments and who believed he was totally justified in saying, “All these I have kept since I was young.” But Jesus knew that he kept them only as to the letter, and not to the Spirit. He had concern only for himself, and not for others, which is what the Spirit of the law is all about. And so Jesus told him, “Get your heart into it, sell everything you have and give it to the poor.” But the man went away sad, for he was very rich.

The letter of the law, according the Pharisees said, don’t physically murder. But God is concerned with our hearts. The problem with the world today, is that we’re trying to solve heart issues, with education, laws, and the like.

To commit murder doesn’t require physically killing another human being. If we harbour anger, hatred, and disdain for a brother, then we’re guilty of murder! This is a hard thing to face. If we hold anything against a fellow Christian, without cause, if we call a brother a fool, we will not simply be in danger of the council, but will be in danger of the fires of hell! Sin is sin. But if we don’t think we’re really guilty of sin, then we won’t really see how much we need a saviour. We won’t think we’re really all that bad.

That’s what the Pharisees thought of themselves. They thought they were pretty good. They were not too bad. But Jesus revealed their hypocrisy. Jesus, as the righteous judge, judged them. He called them out. In Matthew 23, he says some very bold and condemning things against them. He did so because they rejected His true gospel message, and they clung to their own sinful ways. In so doing, they deluded themselves into thinking they were pretty good, but in fact they were treating others terribly. They thought they were keeping the letter of the law, but they ignored the Spirit. They didn’t have a genuine love for others, they only had love for themselves.

A love for others compels us to reconcile ourselves to others. We can easily think of our deeds as a scale, so that our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds, that will somehow please God. But it doesn’t work that way. If we have sin, and we go to church, and we pray, and we worship, God will not receive our worship on account of our sin. We first must make our confession. If, as we are in church, or going to church, we remember we’ve sinned against someone, we need to make that right. We need to fix it, otherwise our worship is in vain.

Ultimately, our sin is against God, and if we do not acknowledge our sin, right away, then we will be delivered to the judge. And when someone comes to you and confronts you with your sin, be quick to make amends. Acknowledge your guilt, confess it, don’t defend yourself, but agree, and seek to make things right.

3. Sin is Sinful

In verse 27, we have our second, “You have heard it said to those of old,” statement, this time Jesus is using adultery as his example. Like his teaching on murder, it is not enough to not have had an affair, or to have physically committed adultery with another person. You can commit adultery in your mind and your heart.

We are given many opportunities in movies and television to sin in our hearts and minds. Our society invites us to covet others. But we don’t even need that much help. Our hearts, our sinful natures are idol factories and we very easily fall into sin. From reading different novels, to seeing someone on the street, it is easy to lust after and to covet someone who is not our spouse.

But Jesus goes beyond mere adultery in this instance. He teaches how destructive sin is. Sin takes something good, such as an eye or a hand, and it turns it into an instrument of unrighteousness, of sin. Sin takes that which was meant to praise and glorify God, and turns it into something that uses and abuses God’s good creation.

Jesus employs hyperbole here to underscore the sinfulness of sin. It destroys good things and always hungers for more. Sin is insatiable. It wants to destroy. It wants to ungod God. It wants to lay to utter ruin every good and wonderful thing God has ever made.

We need to understand the sinfulness of sin, and the terrible cost it brings. We cannot afford to go soft on sin, because if we do, then we render the cross and Christ’s work as empty and void. Without sin, there’s no reason for Christ to be born as a human being. Without sin, there’s no reason for Jesus to have suffered and died on the cross. Without sin, there’s no explanation for why things are the way they are.

The problems we are seeing in the world today are largely because our society has decided that religion and the concept of sin is an old construct that no longer applies. All we need to do is educate and we can solve all the ills of the world. But the opposite is true. There was no lack of brilliant thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates in the past. No, the problem is sin. If sin isn’t dealt with, then it will continue to to corrupt and render good things—God’s good creation as wicked and perverse.

So we need to teach and tell people about Jesus, who has saved us from our sin. We need to instruct ourselves in the ways of Christ, so that we can defeat sin.

4. Dying to Sin

We defeat sin, by dying to it. That’s what Jesus is teaching us in this passage. Don’t pluck out your eye or cut off your hand, literally. Rather, so abhor sin, so grieve sin, that you actively choose to have nothing to do with it at all!

Consider yourself dead to sin. Don’t let it rule your hearts and minds. Apprehend the cost and the wages of sin: they are death, eternal death, eternal punishment and torment in hell. Jesus taught us about hell, he spoke about it a lot. He believed it. If you don’t like the concept of hell, or you know of Christians who don’t, confront them on it. They are in disagreement with Jesus.

It is better to deny the good and satisfying things in this life than to suffer in hell for eternity. There are people who call themselves Christians who are manipulating and twisting God’s Word to make it say things it does not—I believe they are well-intentioned. They want to love their friends and family members who struggle with sin. So, they stop calling sin, sin. If all we do is change the definition of what is sin, we’re worse than the Pharisees who at least still called sin, sin. We cannot change the definitions God has given. We must submit to Him, if we do not, then we are not Christians.

I mentioned earlier that it can be hard to avoid both legalism and liberalism. Here’s how to go: Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. Love your neighbour as yourself. Love God; we love because he first loved us. We demonstrate our love for God by keeping his commandments, both the letter, and the spirit—the spirit of the law is best seen in love for God and others.

Live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Walk in step with the Spirit, seeking to glorify God with your life. When temptation comes, turn your eyes to Christ and rest in Him. You were lost, but now you’re found, you were blind, but now you see. See the world as it really is, see Christ Jesus as he truly is, and you will find all your joy and delight in him. And in Him, all the true good, true joys, true delights in this life will be well ordered and lovely. Amen.