Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Proclivity

  Humans have a proclivity to judge, and they have that proclivity especially if they know God’s will for society and have a zeal for God’s glory. But Jesus urges us to posture ourselves as God’s citizens in the kingdom, not as God. That posture leads us first to examine ourselves; only after we have duly inspected ourselves through the searching guidance of the Spirit of God, confessed our sins, and made peace with God, can we see the sins of others in such a way that we strive with them to live together in love, justice, and peace. So instead of caving into the proclivity to be gods, as was the case with humans from Adam and Eve to the Essenes and the Pharisees and to modern-day Christian critics, we are called to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

  It’s about a self-awareness and an other-awareness shaped by a God-awareness. Jesus urges us to cease being condemners by first examining ourselves. To be sure, when we peer into our own hearts, we will have sufficient cause—even laughably ridiculous cause—to see our own sin and be humbled before God. That will lead us to an other-awareness that our fellow disciples and humans are like us, sinners in need of mercy, grace, forgiveness, and patience. This reversal of the proclivity to be gods creates on our part a tenderness in our perception of the sins of others.

  Tendency

  Christians tend to be harder on fellow Christians than on others, and this can sometimes breed suspicion of one another and judgmentalism. The Pharisees were most provoked by Jesus because, as it turns out to the historian, he was closer to them than to the Sadducees, Zealots, and Essenes. So in our day we find more family squabbles within denominations and local churches than with other faiths or other denominations. Calvin saw in the words “Do not judge” a tendency to become overly curious about the sins of others (including those closest to us) that needed to be checked and handed over to God—who alone is the Judge.

  Besides damning our own too easily, we also tend to distort things: what is central becomes decentralized and what is inessential becomes the focus of our attention. Jesus addressed this when he said to some of his contemporaries in 23:23–24 something similar to what he said in 7:1–5:

  Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

  Even today we tend to be censorious of other Christians for the most insignificant of things, especially if they are not in our “group,” and we fail to see important failures on our own part. What happens to this tendency when we come down from the throne, stop acting the part of God, and learn to see ourselves as recipients of God’s grace and forgiveness—the sort of grace we are then called to extend to others?

  Michael Cheshire tells a story of encountering a man with notoriously public sin, and it taught him about being judgmental and extending grace:8

  I didn’t plan to care about Ted Haggard. After all, I have access to Google and a Bible. I heard about what he did and knew it was wrong. I saw the clips from the news and the HBO documentary about his life after his fall. I honestly felt bad for him but figured it was his own undoing. When the topic came up with others I know in ministry, we would feign sadness, but inside we couldn’t care less. One close friend said he would understand it more if Ted had just sinned with a woman. I agreed with him at the time. It’s amazing how much more mercy I give to people who struggle with sins I understand. The further their sin is from my own personal struggles, the more judgmental and callous I become. I’m not proud of that. It’s just where I was at that time in my walk. But that all changed in one short afternoon.

  Michael encountered the harsh judgmentalism of Christians toward other Christians in a conversation with a non-Christian who said he could not be a Christian because they eat their own. Michael absorbed that statement, and it began to work on him:

  I began to distance myself from my previously harsh statements and tried to understand what Ted and his family must have been through. When I brought up the topic to other men and women I love and respect, the very mention of Haggard’s name made our conversations toxic. Their reactions were visceral…. So I felt I needed to meet Ted for myself. So I had my assistant track him down for a lunch appointment. I live outside Denver and he was living in Colorado Springs, a little over an hour away. Perfect!

  In less than five minutes of talking with Ted, I realized a horrible truth—I liked him. He was brutally honest about his failures. He was excited that the only people who would talk to him now were the truly broken and hurt…. I met his wonderful wife, Gayle. She is a terrific teacher of grace and one of my heroes. When I grow up, I want to be Gayle Haggard. And so I became close friends with Ted Haggard.

  But then the funniest thing started happening to me. Some Christians I hung out with told me they would distance themselves from me if I continued reaching out to Ted. Several people in my church said they would leave. Really? Does he have leprosy? Will he infect me? We are friends. We aren’t dating! But in the end, I was told that my voice as a pastor and author would be tarnished if I continued to spend time with him. I found this sickening. Not just because people can be so small, but because I have a firsthand account from Ted and Gayle of how they lost many friends they had known for years. Much of it is pretty coldblooded. Now the “Christian machine” was trying to take away their new friends.

  It would do some Christians good to stay home one weekend and watch the entire DVD collection of HBO’s Band of Brothers. Marinate in it. Take notes. Write down words like loyalty, friendship, and sacrifice. Understand the phrase: never leave a fallen man behind.

  In many ways I have not been aggressive enough with the application of the gospel. My concept of grace needed to mature, to grow muscles, teeth, and bad breath.

  If we need to learn that we are not the judge, that God extends us grace, and that the experience of grace leads us to extend grace to others, there’s something else to learn too.

  Moral Discernment and Mutual Edification

  Many in our day climb under the moral shade of Matthew 7:1 to take the supposed high road in saying, “I’m not the judge.” Those who take this supposed high road may be missing the whole point of Jesus’ words: sin is sin, and one cannot follow Jesus and turn a blind eye to sin. What Jesus is calling us to here is not the absence of moral discernment. After all, he concludes our passage with the permission to help with the moral failings of others, and then he turns around in the very next verse (7:6) and refers to some people as “dogs”!

  Instead, he is calling us not to assume the condemning role of God. We are to discern things morally, after we have inspected ourselves, and we are to speak the truth about sins. The New Testament is filled with authors who had to utter strong words about sins. These are not damnations but discernments. I take James as an example. Read James 3:1 through 4:12 and you will see a brother of Jesus who both calls sin sin and then calls us not to be judges. This is the tension of 7:1–5 that has led to squishy moral theology in the church and culture.

  An Ethic from Beyond transcends judgmentalism by pursuing both sanctification and reconciliation. As Jesus had to rebuke his followers when they failed (see 14:22–33), so he also forgave them and called them back to the path of discipleship. So we are to do the same: when we fail, we confess our sins; then we get back up and follow Jesus. Close to the heart of obeying this passage is a willingness to be people of introspection and confession. The church has always taught us to confess our sins, both before God and before one another, and the routine practice of confession makes us aware of our own sins and merciful to those of our brothers and sisters in the kingdom. But this does not make us mute; it makes us humbly seek to grow together in love for God and one another, to grow in holiness and justice, and to become a society marked by authentic honesty and genuine growth in both personal and ecclesial spi
ritual formation.9

  A meme of our culture today is that Christians are judgmental. Two recent studies have revealed that many don’t like the church or Christians because they perceive them as judgmental.10 Before I proceed to strip some of this criticism bare, we need to confess our sin of standing in judgment on others at times. Having said that, however, we need to point out the major issue: much of the “Christians are judgmental” meme never gets beyond the simple observation that Christians, because they are Christians and read the Bible and seek to practice it, think some things are wrong—like adultery and divorce and homosexuality and gossip and greed and Green Bay Packers (sorry, but I was groping for another “g”). It is one thing to be judgmental; it is entirely different to say greed is wrong or that sexual sins are wrong, and saying so is not judgmentalism. Some, I am arguing, of the accusation is simply an intolerance for those who think something is wrong (that many in our culture think is none of their business).

  Perhaps the best example of how to live out the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:1–5 can be found in John 7:53–8:11, a text that is probably not original to the gospel of John but which may well be a solid remembrance of what Jesus one time did. I close with that text:

  Then they all went home, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

  At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

  But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

  At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

  “No one, sir,” she said.

  “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

  Maybe what Jesus wrote on the ground was: “Do not judge.” Maybe he wrote: “Grace works wonders.”

  Notes

  1. M. A. Powell, What Do They Hear? Bridging the Gap between Pulpit and Pew (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007).

  2. See also Kapolyo, “Matthew,” 1123–24.

  3. Kinghorn, Wesley on the Sermon, 247.

  4. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 171.

  5. Allison, Sermon on the Mount, 152; Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 169. One sees that in the parallel passage in Luke 6:37, “Do not condemn [katadikazō], and you will not be condemned,” follows an identical parallel to Matthew’s “Do not judge….” Guelich thinks 7:1 illustrates the opposite of forgiving others; see Guelich, Sermon on the Mount, 374. Some Anabaptists find grounds for the Christian not taking up the office of a judge; see Luz, Matthew 1–7, 351.

  6. Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 132–33.

  7. McKnight, New Vision for Israel, 224–27. A connection of not judging and forgiveness is found in 1 Clement 13:2 (“forgive, that it may be forgiven you. As you do, so it will be done to you”), and by Polycarp in Philippians 2:3 (“forgive and it will be forgiven you … the amount you dispense will be the amount you receive in return”).

  8. Michael Cheshire, “Going to Hell with Ted Haggard,” from Christianity Today online: www.christianitytoday.com/le/2012/december-online-only/going-to-hell-with-ted-haggard.html.

  9. T. F. Latini, The Church and the Crisis of Community: A Practical Theology of Small-Group Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 106–17.

  10. G. Lyons and D. Kinnaman, Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity … and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007); D. Kimball, They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).

  Chapter 18

  Matthew 7:6

  LISTEN to the Story

  6“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: Exodus 19; 24; Leviticus; 1 Kings 2:1–9:9; Isaiah 6; Ezra 9–10; Revelation 4–5; 20–22.

  Mormons have holy underwear, Catholic priests can’t throw away consecrated wine, Anglicans can’t walk by the communion table without genuflecting, and it seems low church evangelicals have nothing physical that evokes that sense of the sacred. Yet the Israelites had a temple open to almost no one, and Jesus informs his followers that there is something so “sacred” they are to be exceedingly careful to whom they divulge it. Just what that “sacred” might be is discussed below, but what needs immediate attention is that the Bible’s Story affirms over and over the division between the sacred and the common. God is holy; his people are to be holy; those not in God’s people are unholy. God’s people are to know and honor the difference.

  Three factors seem to work against our appreciation of the sacred/secular divide. First, the wall separating Gentiles from Jews was broken down by the gospel about Jesus Christ (Eph 2:11–18), and we all now have direct access God (Heb 4:14–16; 9:1–10:18). Democratized access to God benefits us all, but some go too far. Second, the Reformation teaching on the priesthood of all believers alongside Luther’s brilliant teaching that everyone’s job is a vocation paved the way for a modern-day diminution of the sacredness of a pastoral calling versus a “secular” calling. Finally, our post–Thomas Paine’s Western world’s embracing of the “rights of man” have been converted by some into entitlement for all into the realms of what was previously sacred. When many today mix the above three into postmodernity’s irreverent soup, we are not surprised that many hesitate at the door of words like those of Jesus in Matthew 7:6.

  But for Jesus there was a sacred versus secular divide because he lived in a world where the temple’s sacredness permeated the consciousness of all of his followers. So we dare not forget that when Jesus said, “Do not give dogs what is sacred,” none of his followers thought it inappropriate to see some things as profoundly sacred. That raises the question of what Jesus meant by “sacred.”

  EXPLAIN the Story

  How does 7:6 fit in its context? Some have suggested connections between 7:1–5 and 7:6, or between 7:1–5 and 7:11 or 7:12, but such explanatory connections struggle to be convincing.1 We can put these lines together in a variety of ways, but none seems compelling. I stand with Don Hagner: “This verse appears to be a detached independent logion [saying] apparently unrelated to the preceding.”2

  Matthew 7:6 is a classic “chiasm.”3 Chiasms say one or two things and then repeat those same items in reverse order. Thus, “ABBA” is a chiasm. Here’s how it works in Matthew 7:6:

  A Do not give dogs what is sacred;

  B do not throw your pearls to pigs.

  B´ If you do, they may trample them under their feet,

  A´ and turn and tear you to pieces.

  The important download for interpretation here is that the “pigs” and “trample” belong together, while the “turn and tear” and “dogs” belong together. Some have made valiant attempts to explain the ferocity of pigs because they think A´ describes the behavior of pigs, while a chiastic reading of it leads us to see that line describing dogs, who were mostly wild and ravenous.

  The animals chosen by Jesus were among the most despised; thus, to speak of other humans in such derogatory terms reveals the utter seriousness of Jesus. Dogs and pigs have no sense of value, so dogs will rip apart a precious item and pigs will trample on items of immense worth. Jesus is labeling those who despise the kingdom (also at 7:21–23; 13:24–30, 36–43; 15:26–27; 18:17).
The chiastic organization leads us to see “sacred” and “pearls” as synonyms and therefore provokes two questions for Bible readers: What is this “sacred” or “pearl”? What is Jesus teaching his followers not to do?

  There is a splendid history on what “sacred” means. It begins with the Jewishness of what Jesus said. “Do not give dogs what is sacred” had an original connection to sacrificial meat or to leaven. Thus, Leviticus 22:10 reads: “No one outside a priest’s family may eat the sacred offering.”4 The later rabbis said something quite like this statement by Jesus: “For they do not redeem Holy Things to feed them to the dogs” (m. Temurah 6:5). Jesus has obviously adapted a typical expression and applied it to his own sense of the sacred.

  What might that be? The traditional understanding is that this refers to saving one’s gospeling energies for those who will listen and not wasting one’s energies on those who will not listen.5 Since “pearl” is used in Matthew 13:45–46 for the supreme possession of the kingdom, and since Jesus elsewhere demands that his missionaries wipe the dust off their feet on communities that do not respond to the kingdom (10:14), we can safely say that “sacred” and “pearl” refer to the gospel. But others have pushed further to see esoteric or insider teachings of the church, which is not unusual for those who are a minority or persecuted. Hence, silence, or insider-only talk, might be the preferred approach to speaking (cf. 13:36–52). Yet others suggest the sacred is the Eucharist; since it is only for those who believe, the Eucharist is closed to outsiders (Did. 9.5).