Text for the Week: Watch Your Language!

Scripture: Matthew 5:19-26

¹⁷ “Don’t even begin to think that I have come to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I haven’t come to do away with them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ I say to you very seriously that as long as heaven and earth exist, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will be erased from the Law until everything there becomes a reality. ¹⁹ Therefore, whoever ignores one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called the lowest in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps these commands and teaches people to keep them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ I say to you that unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the legal experts and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago, Don’t commit murder, and all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment. ²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgment. If they say to their brother or sister, ‘You idiot,’ they will be in danger of being condemned by the governing council. And if they say, ‘You fool,’ they will be in danger of fiery hell. ²³ Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift at the altar and go. First make things right with your brother or sister and then come back and offer your gift. ²⁵ Be sure to make friends quickly with your opponents while you are with them on the way to court. Otherwise, they will haul you before the judge, the judge will turn you over to the officer of the court, and you will be thrown into prison. ²⁶ I say to you in all seriousness that you won’t get out of there until you’ve paid the very last penny.

Questions

1. Is there a difference between “you idiot” and “you fool” are they complete synonyms or is one a stronger slur than the other?
2. Why does Jesus give a harsher sentence to the one who calls someone a fool than for murder?
3. Why does Jesus elaborate on the court when discussing reconciling with friends instead of the scene of “fiery hell”?
4. Why does Jesus follow up reconciliation with a brother with an accuser in a court case?

Background

Related Scriptures: Exodus 20:1-17, Numbers 35:16-34, Deuteronomy 19:1-14, Luke 12;50-57, Ephesians 4:25-32

The phrase “You have heard” in verse 21 implies that what the people have heard is true but incomplete, Jesus is creating some distance between the message the people have heard before and what he will deliver.

Jesus is referencing the Ten Commandments prohibition on “murder”, but there is some debate over what that word indicates both in the Old Testament and here. Some think that it means any taking of human life, while others limit it to the intentional and unjustified taking of life.

Temple sacrifices were a very solemn act in Jewish worship, so to leave one shows how high a priority Jesus places on reconciliation.

Reflection

Be more righteous than the Pharisees, this is how Jesus concludes his statement on fulfilling the Torah. Jesus then begins to teach on the Torah in a fashion that establishes him as the guide we should follow. He uses the phrase “you have heard it said” as a way of telling people these laws are good, but his teaching is better. This is a difficult statement because it is easy to read these next comments of Jesus as saying we must be even more committed to maintaining the minutia of the law than the Pharisees. It is tempting to see in Jesus’ statement a legalistic command that calling someone a “fool” or “idiot” is a sin that will land one in Hell. As so there are Christians who will say it is sinful to call someone a fool overlooking the fact that Jesus calls the Pharisees fools in Matthew 23:17 and Paul uses the same word to describe Christians in 1 Corinthians 4:10. If Jesus uses this word of others, why do his words in Matthew 5 seem to imply it is worse than murder? What is his new standard of righteousness that is to exceed the Pharisees’?

The difficulty comes because we are tempted to read Jesus’ words as do’s and don’ts, instead of as an easy to remember and startling proverb that we should ponder for meaning. We want to hear the rule and obey it, but Jesus wants us to think through the absurdity that murder would be treated less severely than calling someone a fool. When we recognize that Jesus’ priorities seem to be out of line we can begin to understand where his priorities truly lie. In this paragraph, we notice that the penalty one is subject strengthens as the corresponding sin is lessened. Jesus is using a rhetorical device to show us how our friction between people left unchecked leads to the type of hatred than does result in sinful actions and destruction. When we address brothers and sisters as “fool”, “idiot”, or other such language out of our anger, we are inherently doing harm to our relationship with them. We are called to spot the harm that our words, actions, and attitudes can do to our relationships; that the way we think, talk about, and act toward our brothers and sisters can have very real consequences.

Jesus provides two real world examples of making peace with a person who has been wronged, one is civil and the other religious. The example of a civil court is easily understandable to us since, the idea that settling out of court is less costly for everyone makes sense. The other analogy is more foreign to us, that of offering sacrifice and at this point where anger, hatred, murder, and sacrifice are all mentioned we should not simply think of an abstract religious duty but a story. Jesus is cluing us to think about the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:1-16, where Cain, because his sacrifice is not accepted, gets angry with his brother and murders him. Jesus is reminding us that what might seem like slights can fester to create friction and distance between people over time. These spots of tension if left unaddressed can grow to resentment and hatred. Cain’s hatred was left unchecked and that led him to kill his brother (Genesis 4:5-7), yet God had warned him that this hatred was sin crouching like a wild animal ready to destroy him. Cain’s actions resulted from hatred, from seeing his brother as something other than a brother, and that is the point Jesus is making. He is not making a rule for Christians that says “don’t call someone an idiot”, he is saying that when we use crass language about others in anger we are placing ourselves in a position to lessen them in our minds and when we lessen a brother or sister in our minds it is easier to do violence to that person. We prevent this by immediately working to restore a relationship when we recognize we have done something to offend a brother or sister. When a person has some thing against me, that is a reason to be upset with me, it is my responsibility to drop what I am doing, even if I am in the middle of the most sacred of tasks and make amends with that person, lest the bitterness and hatred grow between us and place me in the danger of destruction. Being more righteous than the Pharisees means taking the initiative to heal relationships long before the brokenness threatens to violate the prohibition against murder.