Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  By way of additional note, if Matthew used Mark, we have now “dated” Matthew after Mark, and since most date Mark in the late 60s to early 70s, Matthew was probably written sometime in the 70s or even 80s, but a slightly earlier date for Mark (say the early 60s) makes it entirely possible for Matthew to have been written before AD 70. Any proposal for dating Matthew must remain tentative.44

  If our source-critical conclusion is accepted, we have another piece of evidence for considering the authorship question. If Matthew used Mark, and if Matthew is the tax collector, then Matthew copied Mark’s story of Matthew’s own conversion story.

  Mark 2:14 Matthew 9:9

  As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

  As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

  There is nothing here that can really prove or disprove Matthew’s authorship, but it strikes more than a few readers today odd that an author, in this case Matthew, would copy someone else’s version of his own conversion even if he changed the name from “Levi” to “Matthew.” It is possible that Matthew had two names, Levi and Matthew, but that doesn’t relieve the oddity of copying someone else’s record of your own conversion.

  The evidence is not compelling in any direction. Craig Keener has summed this up well: “Matthew’s claim to authorship on any level [is] the weakest among the four canonical Gospels.”45 Yes, and with Keener I would contend that this argument comes down to whether or not we trust the earliest evidence and that a reasonable view is that Matthew is either the original deposit of this gospel or the author of the whole gospel. I will call the author “Matthew” because I think that is the most likely conclusion we can draw.

  The question of structure for the Sermon is incapable of any kind of firm resolution.46 There are a few proposals for the structure of the Sermon, the most intriguing being the one that suggests from the Lord’s Prayer on we have expositions of each line in the Lord’s Prayer.47 The evidence in Matthew 6 and 7, though, must be stretched to fit those lines. The safest way to read and preach this Sermon is to recognize clearly discernible topics about discipleship that move one to another. The opening lines about disciples gathering around Jesus (5:1) with the ending having crowds (7:28) suggests to many that Matthew has composed a sermon based on sayings given by Jesus about ethics from a variety of his ministry locations.

  Notes

  1. P. Lapide, The Sermon on the Mount: Utopia or Program for Action? (trans. A. Swidler; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986).

  2. Ibid., 4.

  3. For an exceptional study of how the Sermon has been interpreted by major theologians, see J. P. Greenman et al., The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries: From the Early Church to John Paul II (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007). A more complete sketch can be found in C. Bauman, The Sermon on the Mount: The Modern Quest for Its Meaning (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1990); H. D. Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Hermeneia; ed. A. Collins; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 5–44. For a brief sketch of three major interpreters of the Sermon (William Stringfellow, David Lipscomb, and sixteenth-century Anabaptists), see R. Hughes, “Dare We Live in the World Imagined in the Sermon on the Mount?” in Preaching the Sermon on the Mount: The World It Imagines (ed. D. Fleer and D. Bland; St. Louis: Chalice, 2007). Also see G. Strecker, The Sermon on the Mount: An Exegetical Commentary (trans. O. C. Dean; Nashville: Abingdon, 1988), 15–23; W. Carter, What Are They Saying about Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount? (Mahway, NJ: Paulist, 1994); C. Quarles, Sermon on the Mount: Restoring Christ’s Message to the Modern Church (NAC Studies in Bible and Theology; Nashville: Broadman & Homan, 2011), 4–11; R. Schnackenburg, All Things Are Possible to Believers: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount (trans. J. S. Currie; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 10–21.

  4. Two classic German examples: J. Jeremias, The Sermon on the Mount (Facet; trans. N. Perrin; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963); E. Thurneysen, The Sermon on the Mount (trans. W. C. Robinson; Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1964). Two recent examples, one better than the other: G. H. Stassen, Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Grace and Deliverance (Enduring Questions in Christian Life; San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006). Stassen maintains a balance of finding a theological, or soteriological, context while affirming the demand of the Sermon. But Carl Vaught (The Sermon on the Mount: A Theological Investigation [Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2001]) seemingly can’t find Jesus saying what he thinks Jesus ought to have said, so he works hard to show that Jesus can be made to be say what he wants him to say. Vaught might instead have written a commentary on Romans.

  5. I have attempted to show this in The King Jesus Gospel. Of the many studies, see D. Wenham, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995); J. R. Daniel Kirk, Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

  6. J. Pelikan, Divine Rhetoric: The Sermon on the Mount as Message and as Model in Augustine, Chrysostom, and Luther (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000).

  7. For an older study, H. K. McArthur, Understanding the Sermon on the Mount (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 105–48. Here are McArthur’s twelve approaches: absolutist, modification [of the absolutist approach], hyperbole, general principles, attitudes-not-acts, double standard, two realms, analogy of Scripture, interim ethics, modern [now classic] dispensationalist, repentance, and unconditional divine will.

  8. The literature here is overwhelming: S. Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); R. J. Mouw, The God Who Commands (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); J. P. Wogaman, Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993); O. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); D. Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002); S. Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004); S. Hauerwas and S. Wells eds., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); W. C. Reuschling, Reviving Evangelical Ethics: The Promises and Pitfalls of Classic Models of Morality (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008); N. T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010); S. Wilkens, Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics: An Introduction to Theories of Right and Wrong (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011).

  9. This is a major point of A. MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). Also S. Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

  10. Willard, Renovation of the Heart, 85.

  11. Nikki Coffey Tousley and Brad J. Kallenberg, “Virtue Ethics,” in Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (ed. J. B. Green; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 814–19. Their definition summarizes Aristotle’s approach but shows how adaptable virtue ethics can be: “Virtues are (1) habituated dispositions involving both an affective desire for the good and the skill to both discern and act accordingly; (2) learned through practice within a tradition (i.e., a historical community with a rich account of the ‘good’); and (3) directed toward this tradition’s particular conception of the good (making virtues ‘teleological’)” (p. 814).

  12. Reuschling, Reviving Evangelical Ethics, 31–41.

  13. S. Hauerwas, Matthew (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), 88.

  14. John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (rev. ed.; Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011).

  15. One good example is G. H. Stassen and D. P. Gushee, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Pr
ess, 2003).

  16. This is not to say they don’t each contribute to reading the Sermon. Charles Talbert’s Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Character Formation and Decision Making in Matthew 5–7 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004) is framed through virtue ethics rather than through norms for decision-making. The same is true of N. T. Wright’s After You Believe. My criticism is that Jesus isn’t speaking in this manner when he teaches his norms, morals, or ethics. Virtue ethicists focus on character (or virtue), not on norms or commands; Jesus focuses on the latter. That is what is in need of theoretical explanation. I will contend it is found in Christology: his demands confront us with who he is, the Lord, the Messiah/King.

  17. K. C. Kinghorn, John Wesley on the Sermon on the Mount (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 19. On Wesley, see Mark Noll, in J. P. Greenman et al., The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries, 153–80.

  18. Hauerwas, Matthew, 65.

  19. Ibid., 75.

  20. I have a slightly more academic outline of this approach in the forthcoming revised Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), s.v. “Ethics of Jesus.”

  21. D. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4; trans. B. Green; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996). On Bonhoeffer’s Sermon on the Mount, see S. Hauerwas, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Howard Yoder,” in The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries (ed. J. P. Greenman; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007), 207–22.

  22. W. C. Reuschling, “Divine Command Theories of Ethics,” in Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (ed. J. B. Green; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 242–46.

  23. See Mouw, The God Who Commands.

  24. See Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom; idem, Community of Character.

  25. Wright, After You Believe. In other words, Wright’s virtue ethics is a modified virtue ethics. Wright’s serious work of appropriating creation can be explored further in O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order.

  26. S. McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).

  27. Hauerwas, Matthew, 60.

  28. J. Kapolyo, “Matthew,” in Africa Bible Commentary (ed. T. Adeyemo; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 1117.

  29. D. A. Hagner, “Ethics and the Sermon on the Mount,” Studia Theologica—Nordic Journal of Theology 51/1 (1997): 48.

  30. M. Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958).

  31. Wilkens, Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics.

  32. B. Gert, Common Morality: Deciding What to Do (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  33. W. J. Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Wells, Improvisation. Also, W. J. Webb, Corporal Punishment in the Bible: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic for Troubling Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 57–73.

  34. There are a number of books exploring Jesus’ self-consciousness (who did he think he was?); N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2011); McKnight, King Jesus Gospel, 100–111.

  35. Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 10–20.

  36. N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone (2 vols.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 1:53.

  37. E. Lohse, Theological Ethics of the New Testament (trans. E. Boring; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991).

  38. Yoder’s only study of the Sermon on the Mount, presented in 1966 in Uruguay, found the “political axioms” of the Sermon to be an ethic of repentance, discipleship, testimony, fulfillment, perfect love, excess, and reconciliation. See “The Political Axioms of the Sermon on the Mount,” in J. H. Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2003), 34–51.

  39. Hauerwas, Matthew, 61.

  40. See a helpful emphasis in Reuschling, Reviving Evangelical Ethics.

  41. See S. McKnight, “Gospel of Matthew,” DJG, 526–41. For a recent study, R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 1–22. On the structure, see Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 21–26. On rhetoric, H. Betz, Sermon on the Mount, 44–70. For the purpose and setting, see Carter, What Are They Saying, 56–77. On empire criticism, see W. Carter, “Power and Identities: The Contexts of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount,” in Preaching the Sermon on the Mount (eds. D. Fleer and D. Bland; St. Louis: Chalice, 2007), 8–21. For evaluation, S. McKnight and J. B. Modica, eds, Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013).

  42. C. S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 38.

  43. For my own take, see S. McKnight, “Source Criticism,” in Interpreting the New Testament: Essays on Methods and Issues (ed. D. A. Black and D. S. Dockery; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 74–105.

  44. See Keener, Matthew, 42–44.

  45. Ibid., 39.

  46. A dense summary of proposals can be seen in ibid., 163.

  47. R. A. Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 363–81.

  Resources for Those Teaching or Preaching the Sermon

  Commentaries abound, and the number of works on the Sermon staggers. So I will list studies only on the Sermon that have risen to the top in my own study. In the process of writing this commentary I began always with Luther and Calvin, dipped into the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, and then read through representative commentaries on offer today: Dale Allison, P. Lapide, Ulrich Luz, Don Hagner, David Garland, J. Nolland, R. T. France, David Turner, and Craig Keener. When I was all done, I read Stott’s and Bonhoeffer’s expositions. In writing this commentary I realized time and time again how many items I have read over the years on Matthew and this Sermon, many written by friends and colleagues, but in this context I have chosen to restrict dramatically those with whom I will interact. Here is a list of six significant items for those who want to build a library.

  Bonhoeffer, D. Discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.

  Allison, D. C. J. The Sermon on the Mount: Inspiring the Moral Imagination. New York: Herder, 1999.

  Talbert, C. H. Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Character Formation and Decision Making in Matthew 5–7. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.

  Guelich, R. A. The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding. Waco, TX: Word, 1982.

  Lapide, P. The Sermon on the Mount: Utopia or Program for Action? Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986.

  Greenman, J. P., T. Larsen, and S. R. Spencer, eds. The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries: From the Early Church to John Paul II. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007.

  Chapter 1

  Matthew 5:1–2 and 7:28–29

  LISTEN1 to the Story

  5:1Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him….

  7:24“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

  28When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. 8:1When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him.

  Listening to the text in the Story: Matthew 4:23–25 and 9:35; 17:1–8; John 6:3; Exodus 19:3; 24:12–13; 34:1–2, 4; Deuteronomy 9:9; 10:3.

  It is against every known method of reading, but we must begin reading the Sermon on the Mount by listening carefully to the ending of the Sermon (7:24–27 and 7:28–8:1) and tie that
ending to the beginning at 5:1–2. As we begin at the end, we also must listen to how Matthew sets the context for the Sermon at 4:23–25 and 9:35.2

  First the context. When the gospel of Matthew was written, no chapter divisions were used. To indicate transitions authors in the ancient world used a quarry of devices, one of which was summary statements. Matthew’s summary statement in 4:23–25 is nearly repeated verbatim in 9:35 and 10:1.

  4:23Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. 25Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.

  9:35Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.