Christ Is Our Righteousness :: Matthew 5:17-26
As the head of the family should teach it in a simple way ... What are the Ten Commandments? You shall have no other gods. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Honor your father and your mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Now, I invite you once again to open your service book, this time to Page 322 and join me in confessing the faithful doctrine of the Close of the Commandments.
What does God say about all these commandments? He says, ‘I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.’
What does this mean? God threatens to punish all who break these commandments. Therefore, we should fear his wrath and not do anything against them. But he promises grace and every blessing to all who keep these commandments. Therefore, we should love and trust in him and gladly do what he commands.
Grace to you and peace ...
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[Jesus said,] I tell you that unless your righteousness abounds more greatly than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you certainly will not enter the kingdom of the heavens (v 20).
So does it? You heard the Ten Commandments. Does your righteousness abound more greatly than that of the scribes and Pharisees?
It should. After all, God created you, and he doesn’t make something that’s worthless. He chose you. He chose you to be holy and righteous. He has cleansed you. That means you are priceless, not worthless. To quote Genesis, God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Gen 1:31).
So surely, you are good enough for God ... right?
I know how you want to answer this question. But after hearing his word from our Old Testament reading in Exodus 20 ... after hearing Jesus’ definition of murder in our Gospel reading ... you should know we have not lived up to God’s standard of righteousness. Although we were created in his image, we were born in the image of fallen mankind (Gen 5:2) ... born in the image of shame that we try to conceal (Gen 3:10), born in the image of unrighteousness. And even though he redeemed us from bondage to sin and death, we continue to find ourselves worshiping golden calves we continue to make for ourselves (Ex 32)?
We are a sorry lot.
To acknowledge that we are fallen ... to acknowledge that we are sinful and unclean ... to acknowledge that we hurt ourselves and each other ... to acknowledge that we don’t fear, love, and trust in God above all things, and that we don’t love our neighbors as ourselves ... requires a righteousness that is not our own. We are all sinners who sin. We continually try to convince ourselves that we have no sin (1 Jn 1:8). We tell ourselves we don’t bow to idols, that we don’t hate, that we are good people. We try to convince ourselves that our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. As the Psalmist declared, Who can discern our errors but God alone (Ps 19:12). We are liars, and cheaters, and thieves, and haters, and adulterers, and immorally indifferent to the sin around us.
The scribes and the Pharisees were experts in the law ... experts at defining righteousness in ways that would enable them to think they were in good standing with God. The scribes and Pharisees continually try to convince themselves that remembering the Sabbath day means doing nothing more than showing up on Sunday morning. They try to justify themselves.
3.
And there’s the problem.
The word justify is a legal term. To justify is to render a verdict of acquittal. You need a judge to justify, and no one allows a man to pass judgment on himself. Not even the Lord Jesus did that. As he himself said, whoever loosens one of the least of [the] commandments and teaches men in this way will be called least in the kingdom of the heavens (v 19).
When you are honest with yourselves in light of the Law, you know your righteousness, on your own account, doesn’t exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. As Saint James tells us in his epistle, whoever stumbles in just one point of the Law is guilty of it all (Jas 2:10).
To illustrate that point, Jesus explains the meaning of the Fifth Commandment ... You will not murder. You have heard that it was said to those of old, You will not murder, and whoever murders will be liable in judgment. But I myself am saying to you that everyone who is being angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Numskull,’ will be liable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘Fool,’ will be liable to the fiery Gehenna (vv 21-22). Bitter insults use the same poison as murder itself. The failure to seek reconciliation uses the same poison as murder. Ignoring the plight of the helpless in your own community uses the same poison as murder. As Saint John tells us so plainly: You know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (1 John 3:15).
What, therefore, are we to do?
Repent every one of you, remembering where your righteousness comes from.
CHRIST IS OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
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This is where our Gospel reading was headed all along.
As Jesus said to begin with, do not assume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I came not to abolish [them], but to fulfill [them] (v 17).
And so he has. The Lord is our righteousness.
Jesus who was born without sin, also lived without sin. He is what righteousness looks like. He is Perfect God and Perfect Man ... perfect in every way. The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near to you in him so that the righteousness of the Law would be fulfilled (Rm 8:4).
More than that, he is just. Though we were lost and condemned, he purchased and won you from all sin, death, and the devil. He saw your sin and experienced the sin you face. He loved you in this way, he who knew no sin became sin ... and embodied your sin, literally, on the cross. He ensured your sin was nailed to the cross and died with him. In this way, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’ (Gal 3:13).
You couldn’t do that on your own. As the evangelist to the Hebrews proclaims, In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood, but Jesus has (Hb 12:4). He is our righteousness.
When Jesus was insulted, he responded with blessing. When Jesus suffered, he made no threats. When Jesus was hated, he loved in return. When Jesus was accused, he stood silently. When others were mistreated, Jesus treated them with respect (1 Pt 2:23-25). Jesus didn’t despise the outcast, he healed them. That is righteousness.
Our Lord Jesus showed you the compassion and covenantal love that only a righteous God could. He stood in your place by dying on a cross ... for you. And because God is just, he then raised our sinless savior from the grave. He is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
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This is the righteousness that we need. Your life is now hidden in Christ, who is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of the divine nature. He sustains all things by his powerful Word (Heb 1:3). And that Word works for you ... in and with the sacraments.
God’s sacraments ... the mysteries of the faith ... deliver to you the righteousness of God. They forgive your sins. They nurture and nourish the faith he gave you. They proclaim the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. You can never return to baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper too often. As Saint Paul reminds us in our epistle. Do you know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father we too might walk in the newness of life (Rm 6:3-4). This means your sin is dead and buried, and you are alive in Christ. He lives in you and you in him. Therefore, our righteousness does indeed exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, who are not disciples of Christ.
That means our Lord, who is our righteousness, has made you worthy to come to the feast of forgiveness, the Lord’s Supper. Jesus doesn’t give us this feast because we are saints. As catechism concludes, whoever believes these words ... given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins ... has exactly what they say, the forgiveness of sins. Therefore, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water (Hb 10:22) ... in his righteous name.