Text for the Week: Guided by Integrity

Scripture: Matthew 5:13-20

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

¹⁷ “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. ¹⁸ I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved. ¹⁹ So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

²⁰ “But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!

Questions

1. How does being salt and light relate back to the beatitudes and is there a specific connection to the last beatitude and suffering for Jesus’ sake?
2. How does the discussion of the law beginning in verse 17 build on the preceding ideas of being salt and light?
3. Why would Jesus bring up his relationship to the law in verse 17 when he had just started his ministry, who would have accused him of destroying the law?
4. Christians often say we do not live by the law instead we live by the commands of Jesus, how should we understand that idea in light of Jesus’ reflection on the law in verses 17-18?

Background

Related Scriptures: Psalm 41, Isaiah 60:3, 1 Peter 3:13-18

Verses 13 & 14 each open with an emphatic “You, you are…” giving these verses a more commanding tone than what comes before or after.

The challenge of verse 16 is to be public about the light that we are/possess, this reflects back to the last of the beatitudes in that it is through being public with our witness that will open us up both to the scrutiny of others and to persecution.

The word translated misunderstand in verse 17 is the verb form of the noun “law” and creates a play on words in Jesus’ comments.

Jesus’ mission is to complete the law as opposed to eliminate it, this means to bring clarity to the words and purpose of the law, not simply to fulfill predictions.

The letters (or parts of letters) Jesus uses as illustrations might represent Hebrew letters or accent marks that add no meaning to the text.

Reflection

The astute observer might notice that I tackled Matthew 5:13-16 last November, and that was the impetus for this walk through of the Sermon on the Mount (you can find it here). But in that series I looked at what it meant to be salt and light, specifically to attract people. Today I want to focus on two elements that I did not highlight then, integrity and the relationship to the law. In his analogies, Jesus highlights the contrast of the flavor of salt with the bland, and the brightness of light against the darkness. Both of these analogies rest on the purity of the element involved, either the pure salt or light. Jesus is warning against contaminating what we are as Christians. Jesus has just finished the beatitudes which speak our motivations as we interact with the world. Read with the beatitudes, being salt and light is about living with integrity in the world, these analogies demonstrate that when we are inconsistent with our lifestyle our light and flavor are also inconsistent.

Being the salt and light to the world is about demonstrating consistency in our conduct, character, and beliefs demonstrating to people that we are solely focused on the righteousness Jesus desires. This is a difficult commitment because consistently living out the beatitudes will undoubtedly place us in positions where we must commit to actions that work against our natural self-interests. Showing mercy or making peace can easily place us in vulnerable positions where others can hurt us, but it is in these times that we display the undivided character that marks us as salt and light. Being salt and light to the world is about not taking the easy way out. We are light to the world so we must show mercy when we might be tempted toward making someone pay or letting them suffer, making peace when I could take revenge and continue hostility. The commitment Jesus is urging us toward is one where people around us might disagree with our stance, might even despise us for our stance, but must admit that we are consistent in our beliefs. We are not simply making up rules to benefit ourselves we are committed to a lifestyle that governs we believe governs the world and we are attempting to conform ourselves to it.

Jesus’ own commitment to integrity is spelled out in his relationship to the Torah, he is so committed to upholding it that even the accent marks will not be laid aside, until they have reached their proper end. He follows this by telling us that our commitment to righteousness (right relationships) must be greater than the Pharisees who are committed to the law. For so many this is a frightful concept because they imagine it as a commitment to rules and “doing the right thing” to a degree that no human can achieve. I believe much of this fear comes from the typical metaphor of sin being breaking the law, and God being the ultimate security camera spotting every time we break a law. But that is the mentality that Jesus will attempt to break in the next section as he interprets and expands on specific Biblical instructions. So I would suggest that we intentionally change our metaphor to see Jesus as a parent pushing a child to do something difficult or a coach instructing players. Jesus isn’t condemning us for failures in keeping to a law he is encouraging us to think about what motivates our interactions with the world and to pursue a life committed to purity of heart.

The point of maintaining the commandments and being more righteous than the Pharisees is about engaging the law from the right motives. About committing oneself to viewing the world like God in such a way that the Bible’s laws are unimportant. We are not called to examine the laws to find how they are expressed in every minuet situation as the teachers and Pharisees were doing, we examine the commandments to find the characteristics God wants us to develop and we develop those characteristics to the point that specific commandments become unnecessary.