I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses
that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
We have seen that an external and performative approach to the law leaves much to be desired and is ultimately insufficient. The Pharisees were able to manipulate the law by selectively prioritizing verses that seemed to endorse their sinful impulses. For instance, they were able to take the law about Sabbath rest and use it to justify their hostile opposition of Jesus. They ended up flipping the goodness motivating the law on its head such that they ended up trying to destroy life rather than saving it. If it is "life and death, good and evil" that are before man, as Sirach wrote, they clearly stretched forth their hand to death. And yet, for all this, the law was not at fault. There were limits to what the law could accomplish in fallen human hearts. It might prevent murder and adultery, but it did this by way of external consequences, rather than by inner conversion. Jesus did not desire to simply disregard the law and start fresh. Rather he fulfilled, not only by further specifying the provisions of the law, but by fulfilling God's promise through the prophets to give new hearts to the human race.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26).
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (see Jeremiah 31:33).
Thus it is not enough for us to avoid murder will still cherishing and indulging anger within our hearts. This is similar to how it was not enough for the exile generation to leave Egypt when the Egyptian idols still dominated their hearts, when they still longed for the leeks, the garlic, and the melons of they who held them captive (see Numbers 11:5).
The internal transformative to which we are called is a gift. But it is one with which we must cooperate if our righteousness is to surpass the scribes in the Pharisees. The Spirit is the one who initiates. But we must respond when he convicts us. When he makes us notice that we are dwelling on anger or allowing ourselves to careen dangerously toward occasions of temptation to lust we must use the strength he gives us to not only avoid the bad but even replace it with good. We can, perhaps, reconcile with those with whom we are angry, or at least pray for them. We can pray for the human dignity of those toward whom we were tempted to treat as objects of lust. Or, if we cannot even safely think of them, we can at least maintain custody of our eyes and turn our minds elsewhere, to the true, the excellent, and the praiseworthy (see Philippians 4:8). Anyone who has ever attempted this struggle without active reliance of God's grace while readily confirm that it feels overwhelming and impossible. But because Jesus fulfilled the law and gave us new hearts it is possible with his help.
But I say to you, do not swear at all;
Divorce and the swearing of private oaths were realities that seemed necessary under the Old Covenant, in which the old way to influence behavior was by external regulations. But in the ideal of the New Covenant the marriage without the possibility or need of divorce became real. It was no longer merely assumed that adultery was going to be part of the story, and indeed, it did not need to be. In the New Covenant people could now desire the truth enough to avoid the need for amplification when they supposedly really meant what they were saying, which in reality often led only to greater degrees of dissembling, the evidence of which was the way the language of their oath swearing had been twisted with too much shame to directly address the Most High.
The fact that Jesus raised the standard of the law should not cause us dismay, as though he only increased the arduous difficulty of our call to righteousness. He actually makes it possible for us to harmonize in inner lives with our external actions, such that all are motivated by desire for the good, all are motivated by love. At first the vision seems illusory or at best oblique. But the more we lean into responding to the words of Jesus with the help of the Spirit the more we will even here and now begin to discover something of the reality that Paul described to the church at Corinth:
What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,
and what has not entered the human heart,
what God has prepared for those who love him,
this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
Elevation Worship - Trust In God
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