I was wondering what 'Sermon on the mount' means to the believers here. To me when I read the Bible as a Hindu, 'Sermon on the Mount' challenged me so much. I had something inside me, tell me that if God came to earth and setup his standard of requirement for his creation, this is what it will be. I was absolutely amazed at the standard set by Jesus. Acts 1 says, Jesus practiced and then preached. So Jesus lived by the Sermon on the Mount and it was from his life the teaching came.

To me Sermon on the Mount, is an effort by Jesus to raise the standard set by 10 commandments and prophets. He is raising the bar to a new height that is now possible by this New Covenant life. Every Believer should have this ambition to live by the standard preached in this sermon.

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Sreeram

The Sermon on the mount is New Covenant perspective, new covenant living and new covenant promises. But what stumbled everyone when it was preached was the fact the Old covenant was being lived out, preached and believed in such a way that something like this was tantamount to an alien invasion.

Jesus lived out the law in relation to his Father, his view of the law and it's authority in our lives was beyond merely the curses for disobeying it. Jesus showed what the 'true Israel' should be like and think like.

In doing this, and in bringing in the new covenant he revealed to all of us an example to follow, a way of life to imitate, a relationship with the Father to seek after.

The Sermon on the mount is a 'bridge' that shows what both old and new covenant spiritual life was and is to look like.

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Marvin

Sreeram: I would like to put this out there for consideration. In the sermon on the mount we read, "Your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the pharisees if you are to enter the kingdom of God." Immediately after this statement, Jesus begins to compare the letter of the law with the motive of the heart, that which is up to our own effort to keep and which was externally enforced with that which comes out of the motive of a regenerated heart and is internally motivated.

Think about thou shalt not kill. Under the OT law, I could hate a man all I wanted, but as long as I did not kill him, I was not punished. But Jesus said, "If you hate him in your heart, you have committed murder already."

To the common Jews Jesus was speaking to, the righteousness of the Pharisees was like walking on water. They saw the Pharisee as the spiritual elite. They felt they could never rise to that level of righteousness. And now Jesus throws out a standard that is so high above the law that it is totally unattainable.

Jesus wraps the thought up with this statement. If you are going to be right with God, you have to be perfect like He is perfect. This would have sent a collective gasp through the crowd. How is this possible. How can I be righteous like God is righteous. How can I be complete, mature, perfect like God is?

So I don't think Jesus was giving a new and higher law for us to keep. That was the very thing that He came to abolish, self effort in trying to attain to a standard and be pleasing to God. Instead He came to offer Himself as the way back to the kind of right relationship and righteousness that causes a man to have the heart and mind of God. So to give a higher law would be to build stronger the very thing He came to destroy, man's own self righteousness gained through self-effort. But if His point is to show that no amount of keeping the law can ever earn us righteousness, then He made the point very well.

So I believe Jesus goal was to show the futility of self effort, the ineffectiveness of the law, and the need to be born again and then transformed into God's image.

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Travis

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Sreeram

Hi Sree: You should know being a good student of scripture that the law in the form of Ceremonial, Temple, Priesthood, dietary, wars were all abolished.

You know this text:

Col 2:12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.

13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;

14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

As a Gentile, all of these laws are contrary to us because we could never obey them in covenant, because it wasn't until the 10th generation that a gentile would be considered in covenant relation like a Jew.

The Moral law as is contained in the 10 commandments, that which pertains to marriage and sexual relations are binding.
But even though the moral law is binding we are not justified by it. We are not antinomians but we are not law-justified either.

As to righteousness, there is no 'external righteousness', that external thing not conforming to the mind and will of God done by reason of love and devotion to God is not righteousness at all.
Everyday we have atheists who do not kill, do not steal do not commit adultery but there is no knowledgeable believer who categorizes moral-atheists as righteous. Nor do we consider moral pagans or moral skeptics or moral Mormons/Jw's etc as righteous in the sight of God.
We make that judgment not based upon external law-keeping but based upon their own testimony regarding Jesus Christ.
They deny him.

Morality has in view only the fact that a man has kept or obeyed a law and by that 'keeping' is judged moral.
But righteousness has in view the keeping of law in relation to God. Righteousness is obedience done in love and honor to God.

If you leave God out of the picture, righteousness is reduced to morality which any pagan can imitate...and when such a term is used indiscriminately blurs the difference between the life of a Christian and the life of any pagan or atheist. Our culture is full of this ignorance.

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Marvin

Sreeram: My heart is not to argue, but I do want to make sure you understand where I am coming from. Ephesians 2:15 says that Jesus, "Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;" So the enmity that He abolished in His flesh was the law of commandments. Romans 10 says that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to them that believe.

Please do not think that I am saying that God does not have a standard of holiness. He IS holiness itself. I am made like Him, but not through keeping any laws by my own efforts. I am called to live a holy life. I am called to be like Him. But living a holy life and becoming like Him is utterly impossible if I am trying to do it in my own efforts. The rebirth makes me like Him. I literally become His righteousness. I utterly abandon my own and I receive His. I am, through His sacrifice of death, dead to sin. My surrender to Him means that I died with Him. Baptism is the picture of this. Death, burial, resurrection. It is not a rite of the Christian church, it is a reality of the death and rebirth that happened in my life. The old man is dead. I now live in Him.

But the people to whom Jesus was preaching did not have this reality yet. They were still under the law and under the deception that they could somehow be righteous by keeping the law. None more so than the Pharisees. (I tithe of mint, anise, and cumin...) Jesus told the people, your righteousness must exceed this if you are to have any hope of eternal life. Not only must you not kill, steal, or commit adultery. You must also not hate, covet, or lust.

To even the modern day Christian, these seem like totally unreachable goals. How much of a typical Christian's life is spent trying to overcome just these three. And how many sermons and counseling sessions are spent trying to help people overcome just these three.

But we were never intended to try to eliminate these things from our lives. We were intended to die to self and live through Him so that these things are dead to us and we are dead to them. If we see these things as higher laws that we are to attain unto, we will fail and be frustrated because our efforts will be self originating. But when we realize that the rebirth is about becoming like Him and dying to these things, it changes everything. God does not desire us to overcome these things. He desires us to become like Christ in whom these things do not even reside.

So Jesus says that we not only must have a righteousness that is greater than the scribes and Pharisee's righteousness (which was a self righteousness based on their own effort), but we must be able to meet God's true standard of holiness which cannot be reached with external effort as it is an internal standard. How must we do this? We must be just as righteous as God is. We must be perfect like His is perfect. Not continually striving for his perfection. The text leaves no room for that interpretation. We must be just as righteous as God is. No exceptions.

But how do we get that righteousness? We cannot get it through keeping a higher set of laws. We can only receive it by death and resurrection. Death to this old man and resurrection by the very life and power of God. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. His death and resurrection provided for my own through which I receive His life and His righteousness.

Now I no longer lust. Now I no longer covet. Now I no longer hate.
Why? Because I have His perfect life living in me. My eye is single and my whole body is full of light. I am in relationship with Him in intimacy and as I gaze upon Him with an unveiled face (the enmity is gone. The veil of the law and self effort is gone. The veil is removed) I am changed into His image from glory to glory. That word changed is the word used in Romans 12:2. It is metamorphosis. But what is more, it is the word transfigured for that is the only other use it has in the NT. On the mount, Jesus was transfigured before them. He put on the glory He had with the Father and they saw Him that way. Likewise we are changed, transfigured, from one level of glory to the next, ever more into His image.

Hope that clarifies my statements a little bit.

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Travis

Marvin: Appreciate the comment. I would ask a question though. Is there a Biblical distinction between moral law and ceremonial law. I have heard those terms most of my life, but I have never personally found in scripture where this distinction is made.

What do you make of 2 Corinthians 3:6-10?

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Travis

Mavin, you are totally confused with Justification and sanctification. May be Sanctification does not even exist in your view of Christianity!

Justification is by faith in Jesus. We cannot make ourself righteous. When we repent from our Sins and believe in Jesus, then God looks us like how he looks at his Son Jesus. This is called Justification. It is positional righteousness, based on our position in Jesus.

Now when a person is born again and believes in this justification, a desire comes to obey every command of Jesus. Jesus himself said that the one who loves him will obey his commandments. The great commissions in Matt 28, is very clear, in which Jesus commanded his disciples to keep and teach every commandment of his.

But it is God who empowers us to keep his commandments by the working of the Holy Spirit. It is not by self effort, it is God who enables us.

Philp 2:12 - Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good pleasure.

Anyone who does not want to follow sermon on the mount and considers it as law is not even born again. How can someone not have love for Jesus and consider born again? If he has love for Jesus, then as Jesus said there will be a genuine desire to follow every word of Jesus. A person without such a desire is not just unsaved but is also cursed.
1 Cor 16:22 If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed.

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Sreeram

It is lie of the Devil to say that ALL the 10 commandments are no longer applicable to Christians. 9 out of the 10 commandments are mentioned in New Testament in a positive way. That is in a way to make it applicable to Christians.

If the standard of life of a Christian is below someone one who lives by 10 commandments then he has to put his head low and confess that he has no love for Jesus.

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Sreeram

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Sreeram