As we dive into this sermon series on The Sermon on the Mount, one of the temptations we might face is seeing the teaching of Jesus as simply another set of rules to follow–a set that is based on the "old" rules in the law of Moses, but simply adds on more conditions.
Truth is, we're good at rules–good at making them, good at finding the loopholes in them. But when any group of people devolves into dependence upon rules to manage their relationships with each other–pointing always to the rule book instead of the relationship–then it's a sign that the group is spiraling downward. If you have to whip out a Book of Discipline at every church meeting, for example, you're probably in trouble.
What Jesus is offering here, however, isn't simply a rule book. Instead, it is the way to freedom. E. Stanley Jones, the great Methodist missionary to India in the early decades of the 20th century, called the Sermon on the Mount "the original charter of human freedom." Says Jones:
"We mistake [the Sermon] entirely if we look on it as the chart of the Christian's duty, rather it is the chart of the Christian's liberty–his liberty to go beyond, to do the thing that love impels and not merely the thing that duty impels. The fact is that this is not a law at all, but a lyre which we strike with the fingers of love in glad devotion. This glad…piety is the expression of a love from within and not the compression of a dull law from without."
"Put the man who spoke these words into the background and look only at the sayings and they become as lofty as Himalayan peaks–and as impossible. But put the warm touch of his reinvigorating fellowship into it, and anything–everything is possible, for these things were not to be worked out on the unit principle, but on the cooperative plan."
"…Jesus was the great simplification of God. He is also the simplification of duty. 'Love and do what you like,' he says in essence. And the things you will like will be just these 'impossible' things which he lays down here in the Sermon" (The Christ of the Mount, p. 34).
Indeed, Jesus boils all this down in Matthew 22:34-39 when he claims the greatest commandment as loving God, and loving neighbor as we love ourselves. That love is not a mushy sentimentality or a means of ignoring brokenness, but rather a sacrificial love that will always go the extra mile. If we truly love God, we are able to love others and ourselves. We are free to be the people God created us to be.
