‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the thirty-second of the fifty emails.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Matthew 5:17
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12
One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’
Matthew 22:35-40
Matthew 5-7 – the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ – sets out the way of life of those who belong to the kingdom. And from beginning to end, it assumes a world we know – where people hurt others through anger, where women are demeaned through lust, where marriages collapse, where Christians are persecuted, where people tread on our toes, where we worry about what to eat and wear even while others are forced to beg. Sound familiar?
We live in this world, but we do so as Jesus’ disciples, disciples of the one who, according to his own claim, fulfils the Law and the Prophets. Faithfulness to Jesus entails faithfulness to all that has gone before in God’s dealings with his people through lawgiver and prophet – but only as Jesus fulfils it. Which means that the Sermon on the Mount is not just about getting to the ‘true meaning’ of the Law, but knowing and following the one to whom the Law points. Far from setting aside the Law and the Prophets, Jesus carries them into a new era of fulfilment in which his authoritative voice will govern the disciples’ obedience.
Matthew 7:12 reinforces what is apparent throughout the Sermon – that our discipleship happens in relationship not just with God but with others. Jesus declares that our doing to others what we would have them to do to us is the Law and the Prophets (echoing 5:17), the true direction in which the Old Testament points.
He makes the same point to the lawyer in Matthew 22:34-40, where the whole Law and the Prophets are said to ‘hang on’ love for God and neighbour. The Old Testament continues in full force for disciples of Christ, but – mediated through Jesus who fulfils it – its regulations are understood and embodied as expressions of love of God and of one’s neighbour being worked out in every aspect of life.
All of which shows that Jesus’ teaching is not concerned with constructing a system of disembodied rules, but with re-orientating the whole of life around a new reality – God’s inbreaking reign. Jesus’ exhortations are not faceless demands, but presuppose certain things about him and about the kingdom he brings, which means that the Law and Prophets are no longer the centre of gravity – Jesus is. We are not just called to live a particular lifestyle but to follow a peerless Lord.
For further reflection and action:
1. The principle to emerge from Matthew 5:17-20 appears to be that all the Old Testament law applies to Christians, but none of it applies apart from its fulfilment in Christ; its validity continues only with reference to him. Look at the examples in Matthew 5:21-48 to see how this works out in practice.
2. Why might it be important not to abstract Jesus’ demands from the story told in the gospel as a whole, which reaches its culmination in the death and resurrection?
3. For Paul too, love is the fulfilment of the law (Romans 13:8-10; cf. Galatians 5:13-15). Think and pray about your week ahead – at work and at home – and the opportunities you will have to express love for God and love for others.
Showing posts with label Matthew 5-7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthew 5-7. Show all posts
Monday, 9 November 2009
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Glen H. Stassen on the Sermon on the Mount
[The following review was first published in August 2007 on the UK Christian Bookshops Directory website, which contains lots of helpful reviews, and is my first port of call for looking up the location of Christian bookshops. Thanks to Phil Groom for giving me the opportunity to review the book.]
Glen H. Stassen, Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Grace and Deliverance (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), xvii + 222pp., ISBN 9780787977368.
The constant stream of books and studies published on Matthew 5-7 shows the enduring appeal and challenge of the section commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. Now Glen H. Stassen, Professsor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, has added another contribution, which forms one of the volumes in the ‘Enduring Questions in Christian Life’ series from Jossey-Bass, nicely produced as a compact-sized hardback.
Although written in a clear and engaging style, this book comes with the significant academic reinforcement provided by the volume Stassen co-authored with David P. Gushee: Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003). This means that those who would like to do so may ‘graduate’ from this book to the longer, more detailed one; and those who for various reasons might deem Kingdom Ethics too unwieldy could find this one more useful for their needs.
Some of the points Stassen makes have been made before, but are worth making again. One is that the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) provides an organising centre for the whole sermon with its main themes picked up in the surrounding text. More significantly, perhaps, is the reminder that Jesus’ teaching comes with his claim that the kingdom of God has arrived in his ministry; and Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom needs to be understood in the light of the Old Testament, Isaiah especially, and its promises of salvation for the people of God. Some approaches to the Sermon on the Mount have tended to allow its teachings to float free as contextless ethical maxims. But Jesus understood his own mission in terms laid down in Isaiah, that God was reaching out to Israel and the nations through his own ministry of teaching and healing. This means the exhortations in the Sermon are not faceless demands, but presuppose certain things about Jesus and the kingdom he brings.
This alone should be enough to suggest that it would be hard to overestimate the significance of the Sermon on the Mount in reflections on Jesus’ teaching and Christian ethics. It’s also difficult to imagine there could be any fresh perspectives, but Stassen offers a distinctive view that the Sermon is not patterned in terms of ‘high ideals’ (that we don’t be angry, and don’t lust, and don’t take oaths, and don’t assert rights), but in terms of ‘transforming initiatives’.
So, in Matthew 5:21-26 (on murder and anger), Jesus is often interpreted as giving a command not to be angry and not to call anyone a fool. In fact, Stassen points out, what’s described in 5:22 is a vicious cycle we can get stuck in: we get angry, we insult one another, and it leads to trouble. Jesus does give commands, but they’re not found in 5:22, they’re found in 5:23-26, and they’re examples, says Stassen, of ‘transforming initiatives’; they are ways of deliverance from anger. They are not merely illustrations attached to a command not to be angry; they are the climax of the teaching. In this case, the angry person is transformed into an peacemaker who, in turn, transforms the enemy into a friend.
Stassen sees the teachings in the main body of the Sermon as a series of such ‘transforming initiatives’, where the main emphasis is placed on the third part of the sayings, not on negative commands but on the regular practices which enable us to participate in God’s way of deliverance from vicious cycles. Even if this pattern is not always as clear as Stassen makes out, it does shed helpful light on a number of passages.
The Sermon on the Mount not only shows us what Jesus is like, but what God is like – the one who brings the grace and deliverance mentioned in the subtitle. It’s a liberation which involves the things about which the sermon speaks: practising reconciliation, keeping our marriage covenants, telling the truth, making peace, loving enemies, forgiveness, economic simplicity. The challenge is not just to know these things but to live them out; hence the first word in the title – Living the Sermon on the Mount.
The book could profitably be used by housegroup leaders or preachers working through the Sermon on the Mount, or as a devotional aid for an individual, and comes highly recommended.
Glen H. Stassen, Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Grace and Deliverance (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), xvii + 222pp., ISBN 9780787977368.
The constant stream of books and studies published on Matthew 5-7 shows the enduring appeal and challenge of the section commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. Now Glen H. Stassen, Professsor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, has added another contribution, which forms one of the volumes in the ‘Enduring Questions in Christian Life’ series from Jossey-Bass, nicely produced as a compact-sized hardback.
Although written in a clear and engaging style, this book comes with the significant academic reinforcement provided by the volume Stassen co-authored with David P. Gushee: Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003). This means that those who would like to do so may ‘graduate’ from this book to the longer, more detailed one; and those who for various reasons might deem Kingdom Ethics too unwieldy could find this one more useful for their needs.
Some of the points Stassen makes have been made before, but are worth making again. One is that the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) provides an organising centre for the whole sermon with its main themes picked up in the surrounding text. More significantly, perhaps, is the reminder that Jesus’ teaching comes with his claim that the kingdom of God has arrived in his ministry; and Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom needs to be understood in the light of the Old Testament, Isaiah especially, and its promises of salvation for the people of God. Some approaches to the Sermon on the Mount have tended to allow its teachings to float free as contextless ethical maxims. But Jesus understood his own mission in terms laid down in Isaiah, that God was reaching out to Israel and the nations through his own ministry of teaching and healing. This means the exhortations in the Sermon are not faceless demands, but presuppose certain things about Jesus and the kingdom he brings.
This alone should be enough to suggest that it would be hard to overestimate the significance of the Sermon on the Mount in reflections on Jesus’ teaching and Christian ethics. It’s also difficult to imagine there could be any fresh perspectives, but Stassen offers a distinctive view that the Sermon is not patterned in terms of ‘high ideals’ (that we don’t be angry, and don’t lust, and don’t take oaths, and don’t assert rights), but in terms of ‘transforming initiatives’.
So, in Matthew 5:21-26 (on murder and anger), Jesus is often interpreted as giving a command not to be angry and not to call anyone a fool. In fact, Stassen points out, what’s described in 5:22 is a vicious cycle we can get stuck in: we get angry, we insult one another, and it leads to trouble. Jesus does give commands, but they’re not found in 5:22, they’re found in 5:23-26, and they’re examples, says Stassen, of ‘transforming initiatives’; they are ways of deliverance from anger. They are not merely illustrations attached to a command not to be angry; they are the climax of the teaching. In this case, the angry person is transformed into an peacemaker who, in turn, transforms the enemy into a friend.
Stassen sees the teachings in the main body of the Sermon as a series of such ‘transforming initiatives’, where the main emphasis is placed on the third part of the sayings, not on negative commands but on the regular practices which enable us to participate in God’s way of deliverance from vicious cycles. Even if this pattern is not always as clear as Stassen makes out, it does shed helpful light on a number of passages.
The Sermon on the Mount not only shows us what Jesus is like, but what God is like – the one who brings the grace and deliverance mentioned in the subtitle. It’s a liberation which involves the things about which the sermon speaks: practising reconciliation, keeping our marriage covenants, telling the truth, making peace, loving enemies, forgiveness, economic simplicity. The challenge is not just to know these things but to live them out; hence the first word in the title – Living the Sermon on the Mount.
The book could profitably be used by housegroup leaders or preachers working through the Sermon on the Mount, or as a devotional aid for an individual, and comes highly recommended.
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