A Righteousness of the Heart - Matthew 5:21-48

Sermons and Podcasts

In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus makes clear that the people of God’s kingdom are to be a people who live in righteousness. But Jesus knew that the people of His day had a very confused understanding of what it means to live in righteousness. The religious leaders of Jesus’s day (the scribes and the Pharisees) claimed to be teachers of the law of God, but what they taught wasn’t the true law of God. In Matthew 5:21-48 Jesus begins to show the contrast between the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees and the true law of God. Jesus is teaching that the law of the scribes and Pharisees wasn’t a pure teaching of the law of God, and in order to make His point Jesus uses six illustrations. The great preacher, Martin Lloyd Jones , said it this way: Our Lord knew the importance of illustrating a principle, so here He gives six illustrations of the one truth . . . Our Lord’s chief desire was to show the true meaning and intent of the law, and to correct the erroneous conclusions which had been drawn from it by the Pharisees and scribes and all the false notions which they had founded upon it.