NOTES for Mat 5:17-32
In conversations with His disciples and in His preaching, Jesus often speaks about the Torah and its proper understanding. In the Synodal text, the Torah is usually called the “Law.” Although this translation is formally correct, it does not fully convey the meaning of the corresponding Hebrew word. The Torah is more than simply law in the sense in which we usually use that word, more than legislation or the legal order it establishes. The Torah also presupposes a way of life corresponding to the law, including the inner spiritual state appropriate to such a way of life. In Gospel times, the concept of the “living Torah,” which every believing Jew should ideally become, became quite widespread in rabbinic circles and in the Synagogue generally. This meant a person’s spiritual state in which the Torah becomes something inwardly inherent, determining the whole of life in all its manifestations. This understanding was very close to Jesus. It is no accident that He Himself says He came not to destroy or change the Torah, but to bring it to fullness (v. 17; in the Synodal translation this thought is conveyed by the word “fulfill”). The first thing to which He draws His listeners’ attention is their intentions, or, as psychologists say today, their intentionality. If you hate, consider yourself a murderer (vv. 21–22); if you lust, consider yourself sexually immoral (vv. 27–28). Otherwise, according to Jesus, our righteousness remains within the bounds of ordinary religiosity and “does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees” (v. 20), who, as deeply religious people, naturally observed all the commandments of the Decalogue outwardly, at the behavioral level. But that, it turns out, is not enough for the Kingdom. This is not about requirements deliberately set too high so that one might be “holier than everyone else.” It is simply that in this world our actions determine our spiritual quality and condition, while in the Kingdom our intentions do. One might say that in our fallen world we are what we do, while in the Kingdom we will become what we desire. If, while hating someone, we refrain from murder for God’s sake, this is a serious spiritual achievement for our fallen world. For the Kingdom, however, it is a failure. The spiritual standard Jesus raises so high is needed to save us from such a failure.