You also outwardly appear
righteous to men, but inside you are
full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness” (Matthew 23:25-28).
These self-appointed
religious teachers emphasized minor aspects of
the law while neglecting
more important issues. “Woe to you, scribes
and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cum
-
min, and have neglected
the weightier matters of the law: justice and
mercy and faith. These
you ought to have done, without leaving the
others undone” (verse
23). Jesus was concerned that every part of the
righteous requirement be
obeyed, and angry that they were blind to the
“weightier” parts—the
major spiritual aspects—of the law.
While they were
fastidious with their ceremonial traditions, at the
same time they took
liberties to disobey God’s direct commands. In
some situations they
actually elevated their traditions above the clear
commands of God (Matthew
15:1-9).
Behind their actions was
the base motive of self-exaltation and self-
interest. They went
public with what should have been their private devotions toward God—prayer,
fasting and giving alms—all so they could be
seen and thought of by
others as righteous (Matthew 6:1-6; 23:5-7).
Religious leaders did not keep God’s
law
Immediately after His
statement that He had no intention of doing
away with God’s law,
Jesus proceeded to give examples of the traditions
and teachings of the
Jewish religious leaders that completely missed the
point or even
contradicted the spiritual intent of God’s laws.
The first example He gave
was the Sixth Commandment, “You shall
not murder.” All that the
Pharisees understood about this commandment was that the act of murder was
prohibited. Jesus taught what should
have been obvious, that
the
intent
of the Sixth Commandment
was not
just to prohibit the
literal act of murder, but every evil attitude of heart
and mind that
led to
murder—including unjust
anger and contemptuous
words (Matthew 5:21-26).
He did likewise with
their narrow view of the Seventh Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.”
The Pharisees of the day under
-
stood the physical act of
sexual relations with a woman outside of marriage to be sin. They should also
have known, as in the case of the Sixth
Commandment, that lust
for another woman was sinful because the one
lusting had already
broken the Commandment in his heart.
These are examples of the
“righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees” that Jesus characterized as making
the outside of the cup and dish
clean, while on the
inside remaining “full of greed and self-indulgence”
(Matthew 23:25, NRSV).
Jesus instructed His
disciples that God’s law must indeed be obeyed
outwardly, but it must
also be obeyed
in the spirit and intent
of the
heart.
When Jesus taught such
heartfelt obedience to God’s laws, He was
faithful to what the Old
Testament taught: “For the
Lo r d does not see as
man sees; for man looks
at the outward appearance, but the
Lo r d looks
at the heart” (1 Samuel
16:7).
The prophet Jeremiah
looked forward to a time when God would establish a new covenant in which God
promised to “put My law in their minds,
and write it on their
hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). God’s original intent for
His law was that people
would observe it from their hearts (Deuteronomy
5:29). The failure of
human beings to obey God’s law in the “inward
being” (Psalm 51:6, )
inevitably led to outward
disobedience.
Jesus did not change the law
Jesus prefaced His
contrast of the scribes’ and Pharisees’ narrow
interpretation of the law
with its true spiritual intent using the words,
“You have heard that it
was said
...
But I say to you
...” (Matthew
5:21-22, 27-28).
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