Sermon on the Mount – Good Question

Do we in the West need to worry that Jesus said, “Woe to the rich”?

Q. In the “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke, Jesus says,
“Woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.”
Do we in the West need to worry? I mean, we’re rich compared to a lot of the world, we’re well fed, we’re doing pretty ok, you know?

When we consider the full counsel of Scripture, I don’t think we are led to conclude that being wealthy, in and of itself, brings on God’s judgment. Many of the sayings in Proverbs, for example, teach that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing and a reward for living right, according to godly wisdom:

“The blessing of the LORD makes rich,
and he adds no sorrow with it.”

Wisdom is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.”

But we do need to have the proper attitude towards wealth. Paul writes to Timothy, “Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others.”

These are important warnings for us to hear in the West, where we get so many cultural messages that we can and should trust in wealth, and where we don’t always get this kind of encouragement to be generous and share.

I think the kind of wealth that brings judgment, according to the Bible, is wealth that has been acquired at the expense of others who have been reduced to destitution through oppression and exploitation. James, writing in the same wisdom tradition as Proverbs, warns about this:

“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.”

The book of Proverbs itself, while it generally regards wealth as the result of hard work and poverty as the result of laziness, also recognizes the reality of oppression:
A poor person’s farm may produce much food,
but injustice sweeps it all away.

I think this is the kind of wealth Jesus is warning about in the Sermon on the Mount: wealth that has been acquired through injustice and oppression. And so there are some implications for those of us who live in the West.

First of all, we must pay others fairly and not exploit them. (For example, we shouldn’t underpay recent immigrants who don’t have the means to ensure that they’re compensated fairly for their work.)

But we also need to do what we can to support equitable economic relations globally. It must be admitted that we currently enjoy many unfair advantages in global trade. To do what we can to counteract this, we need to be aware of sourcing, make an effort to purchase fair trade products, boycott companies until their overseas workers are treated properly, and so forth. This means an investment in awareness and a commitment to action in response to what we learn.

Hopefully in this way we can become people who are “rich in good works and generous to those in need,” as the Bible encourages us to be, and we will not be the subjects of any of the woes that Jesus pronounces in the Sermon on the Mount.

Can we truly love our enemies?

Q. Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” Forgiveness is one thing, but I think this is impossible.

Jesus would certainly be asking us to do something unreasonable, if not impossible, when he tells us to love our enemies–people who have hurt us, or violated our trust, or taken advantage of us, or who are out to get us–if love means a feeling, a warm and delighted attraction to another person that makes us want to be in a close relationship with them. A person who’s been badly hurt by someone else simply can’t force themselves to feel those things towards that other person. Our feelings and emotions aren’t under our control in that way.

But the kind of love for enemies that Jesus commands isn’t a feeling. It’s a commitment. It’s a decision of the will, which is under our control. Specifically, love is the commitment to act consistently in the best interests of another person.

This is clear from the way Jesus immediately elaborates on his statement: “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” He’s talking about actions, not feelings.

This is also how Jesus’ earliest followers understood his statement. Paul writes in Romans, for example, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but . . . if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink . . . do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The goal, in other words, beyond forgiving someone who has hurt us (which sets us free from bitterness and the hold that the other person’s action might otherwise have over us), is to choose to pursue their best interests in our actions towards them, so that good triumphs over evil. This also makes own our character more godly, as Jesus goes on to explain: “Love your enemies, do good, and . . . you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Doing loving actions as a commitment to another person’s good may mean, however, actually breaking off our relationship with them for a time, if they would only hurt us again if we stayed in relationship. We aren’t called to enable other people’s destructive behavior. There need to be positive signs of change on their part before it’s safe for us to pursue reconciliation, beyond forgiveness. But we can still pray for them and hope for the best for their lives.

In other cases, we may be able to do something practical to help them, and when we do this, it might even enable them to recognize that they were acting wrongly and that they need to change. But we need to be led carefully by God’s Spirit to do, in any given case, what is healthy and appropriate for us and the other person.

So, to sum up, the kind of love Jesus commands us to have for our enemies isn’t a feeling. It’s a commitment to act consistently in the best interests of another person. And I believe, God helping us, we can do that even for our enemies.

Couldn’t “turning the other cheek” get someone seriously hurt?

Q. Jesus said we should “turn the other cheek” if someone hits us. But couldn’t we be seriously hurt if we don’t defend ourselves against an attacker?

Jesus’ teaching about “turning the other cheek” comes at a point in the Sermon on the Mount where he’s contrasting later interpretations of the law of Moses with the true spirit of that law.

In this case, he’s talking about a law that specified that the community should mete out proportionate justice for offenses: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This law was designed to prevent individuals from taking vengeance, and also to prevent disproportionate punishments (whether too lenient or too severe).

However, by the time of Jesus, people were taking the idea of “an eye for an eye” to mean that they should “keep score” personally. Whatever someone does to you, you do back to them. In other words, they were appealing to Scripture to justify grudges and feuds!

So Jesus basically tells them, “Don’t keep score.” Let the other person get “one up on you,” without trying to even the score, in the interests of pursuing reconciliation and peace.

Jesus gives several examples of how not to keep score. Lend or give money without expecting repayment. If someone sues you, settle with them generously. If one of the occupying Roman soldiers exercises his right to force you to carry his load for a mile, carry it an extra mile. (As it has been observed, you go the first mile as a conscripted laborer, but you go the second mile as a potential friend.)

As for “turning the other cheek,” it’s important to recognize that Jesus says specifically to do this if someone slaps you, not if they punch or strike you. (See this thread for a discussion of the translation.) In the time of Jesus, slapping was intended as an insult, not to cause injury. So the idea is that you don’t return insult for insult; instead, you say with your actions, “Insult me again if you want, but I’m still interested in reconciliation and friendship with you.”

Jesus’ early followers “got it” and they present the same idea in their writings. Peter says, “Do not repay evil for evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing.” Paul says similarly, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil . . . as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

It must be emphasized that Jesus is not saying here that we should allow ourselves to be beaten up and injured without trying to defend ourselves or escape. There’s no imperative for followers of Jesus to suffer bullying, domestic violence, and the like without protest or resistance. If we really want to live out the spirit of this teaching and pursue what’s best for the other person, we need to take the necessary measures to stop them from being violent and help them understand how to relate to others in a proper and healthy way.

How can a man “commit adultery in his heart” with a woman if they’re both single?

Q. Jesus said that “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” But what if neither one is married? How could that be adultery? And I don’t think many married couples would be together if there weren’t some lust involved.

The saying of Jesus that you’re asking about comes from the part of the Sermon on the Mount where he’s showing that legalistic interpretations of the law of Moses are contrary to its true spirit and intentions. The Pharisees taught that so long as you didn’t literally break a commandment, you were still law-abiding if you did anything just short of it. For example, you could lose your temper and beat somebody up terribly, but so long as you didn’t kill them, you wouldn’t have broken the commandment that says, “You shall not murder.”

Jesus teaches, by contrast, that the desire, intention, and attempt to commit an action are all of one piece with the action itself. The commandment against murder is actually meant to warn us away from hatred, bitterness, and assault, not just actual murder. Jesus taught an inward righteousness whose goal was to be “perfect . . . as your heavenly Father is perfect,” in thought, word, and deed.

The first two examples that Jesus chooses to illustrate this teaching come from the Ten Commandments: “You shall not murder” and “you shall not commit adultery.” The Ten Commandments themselves were not meant to be interpreted legalistically. That is, their meaning was not supposed to be limited to a strict literal reading, as if they were forbidding only the specific named practices. Rather, they were all provided as examples of the kinds of things that God does and doesn’t want us to do. We are supposed to determine from them, by inference and analogy, many other kinds of things that we should and shouldn’t do.

This principle is illustrated right within the Ten Commandments themselves, when the last one says not to covet your neighbor’s wife, or his house or land, or any of his servants, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. In other words, specific examples are given to illustrate a principle that is meant to be applied generally. As I write in my Deuteronomy-Hebrews study guide, “The Ten Commandments are a brief but powerful moral code because they teach general principles through specific rules that can be applied to a wide range of contexts. The literal application of these rules is narrow, but they all provoke reflection on their underlying principles, and these can speak to a broad variety of situations.”

The commandment against adultery, therefore, is not meant to show just that a person who is married shouldn’t have sexual relations with someone else they’re not married to. Rather, it shows more generally that sexual relations should take place only between a husband and wife within marriage. This general application would also rule out sexual activity between two people who aren’t married. And Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount shows that there should also not be the desire, intention, or attempt on their part to have sexual relations—even through that long, lingering look. This teaching also shows that any use of pornography is not in keeping with God’s intentions.

But how, then, would anyone get married “if there weren’t some lust involved”? I think it’s important to distinguish between sexual attraction and lust. I believe that people can experience a pure sexual attraction for another person that is actually expressing a deep admiration for everything about them—their body, yes, but also their character, personality, passions, abilities, and even the depth of their Christian commitment. Feeling this kind of attraction can be a sign that perhaps you should think and pray carefully about marrying this person.

Lust, on the other hand, is a shallow, self-indulgent desire. It wants simply to consume something of another person based on their most superficial characteristics. Someone who’s attracted to you in that way isn’t paying you much of a compliment (they hardly know you) and it’s not time to think about marrying them.

Put simply, without that sexual spark in a marriage, it’s going to be a long 50 years. But that spark is supposed to be ignited when everything about one person finds companionship, challenge, help, and mystery in everything about another person. If it’s simply a mating instinct, there’s a whole lot more both people could discover about themselves, each other, and God’s purposes for their lives by waiting before mating.

Why did Jesus tell us to do good works for others to see and then say to do them secretly?

Q. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” But just a little earlier, Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Which is it? Are we supposed to do our good deeds secretly, so that only God can see, or publicly, so that others will see and praise God?

In these two teachings Jesus is actually addressing two different problems.

The problem he addresses first is people who have a sincere faith but who aren’t living it out through generosity and service to others. They are like “salt that has lost its saltiness” and a “lamp hidden under a bowl.” In other words, they’re supposed to be having a preserving influence on their community and setting the right example, but they’re not. So Jesus tells them to live out their faith through “good works” (not religious performance, but kindness and generosity), and this will lead others to recognize God’s compassionate character and praise Him for it.

The problem Jesus addresses next is people who are doing good works, but with bad motives. They’re giving to the poor just “to be honored by others.” Jesus says that if our sincere desire is to help those in need, we should do so discreetly and quietly, not to be praised by others, but to be part of God’s work of compassion in the world. When we do this, God will be pleased and will bless our efforts. (“Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” is an example of hyperbole or exaggeration, a technique Jesus often used to make a point. It’s impossible to do literally, but it actually means not calling attention to what you’re doing.)

So we do “good works,” on the one hand, in a way that others can see, not so that we will be praised, but so that God will be glorified for His compassion. But on the other hand we carefully avoid any self-promotion, because it’s not about us being honored, it’s about God’s purposes being advanced and God’s ways becoming known.

There’s a fine line to walk here. A donor might want to make a gift public, and even agree to have their name on a building, for example, to encourage others to give. That would be letting their light shine. But they’d always have to keep a watchful eye on their true motives.

Former President Jimmy Carter volunteers publicly with Habitat for Humanity to encourage others to take part in charitable work.

“Take no thought for tomorrow”—don’t we have to plan for the future?

Q. Jesus told us to “take no thought for tomorrow.” But don’t we have to plan for the future?

When Matthew records Jesus’ teaching about what our attitude toward tomorrow should be, he uses a Greek word that can, in many contexts, mean to give careful consideration to something.

Paul uses the same word, for example, when he tells the Philippians that Timothy is genuinely concerned for their welfare, and when he writes in 1 Corinthians that all parts of Christ’s body should have equal concern for each other. The King James Version reflects this common meaning of the word in its translation of Jesus’ teaching, “Take no thought for tomorrow.”

This translation, however, can suggest to modern readers that we can and should take a spontaneous, impromptu approach to life, making no provision for the future. People can even spiritualize such an attitude, as I discuss in this post. Unfortunately, this can lead to many mistakes and misfortunes that could have been avoided with a little forethought. Even though these mistakes actually reflect a lack of due diligence, people can excuse them by saying they were following Jesus’ teaching. They might even judge others who do plan for the future.

This is all really a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what Jesus was saying. The same Greek term can also mean—in fact, it more commonly means—to be unduly anxious or worried about something. The context in the Sermon on the Mount, where this saying of Jesus appears, shows that that is his intended meaning there.

Jesus assures us that our heavenly Father cares for us and will provide for us, so we don’t need to wonder, “What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?” If we seek his kingdom and righteousness, all these things will be provided as well. And so, Jesus concludes, “do not worry about tomorrow” (NIV, NRSV) or “do not be anxious about tomorrow” (ESV).

Other passages in Scripture teach positively that we should plan carefully for the future. Proverbs, for example, teaches:

Be sure you know the condition of your flocks,
give careful attention to your herds;
for riches do not endure forever,
and a crown is not secure for all generations.
When the hay is removed and new growth appears
and the grass from the hills is gathered in,
the lambs will provide you with clothing,
and the goats with the price of a field.
You will have plenty of goats’ milk to feed your family
and to nourish your female servants.

Even though this teaching is offered in an ancient agricultural context, its implications are clear for us today. We can’t assume that things will always go well, so we need to make careful provisions for the future. But “careful” shouldn’t mean “full of care.” We shouldn’t be anxious or worried, but trust in our heavenly Father’s love. That’s what Jesus is telling us in the Sermon on the Mount.