Part One     Part Two

Jesus Is Scriptural

Everything that Jesus said in His sermon from Matthew 5:1 to 5:16 was a scriptural concept.  Nothing Jesus taught contradicted God’s Word.  Jesus is God.  On the other hand, the religious leaders in Israel were “making the word of God of none effect through [their] tradition” (Mark 7:13).  If anyone was destroying the belief and practice of the Old Testament, that is, the fulfilling of the Old Testament, it was them, not Jesus.

Believing and practicing the Old Testament was letting light shine before men.  Jesus did that and He called upon kingdom citizens of His to do the same.  Proof that He didn’t arrive to earth to destroy the scripture He inspired, Jesus promised perfect preservation of every letter of it.

If Jesus would preserve every letter of written scripture, surely He also expected His people to do all of it too.  His teachers would also teach men to do everything scripture said.  One could say at this point:  in other words, you’ve got to be better than the Pharisees.  The righteousness of the Pharisees is not saving righteousness.  It is their own version of righteousness that comes from human effort.  They couldn’t produce the righteousness that would get them into heaven.  That righteousness comes from above.

Righteousness and Saving Faith

Righteousness, which is from above and by the grace of the Lord, exceeds the faux righteousness arising only from man’s works.  It doesn’t rank scripture into majors and minors, because it can’t keep everything that He said.  Like Jesus, it fulfills written scripture.  James in his epistle later says the same.  True believers are both hearers and doers of what God said.

Saving faith comes by hearing the Word of God.  Someone is begotten by the Word of Truth.  It would follow that He would also be a keeper of scripture, like Jesus said.  That supernatural righteousness of God produces obedience to scripture.  You can detect the unrighteous servant of unrighteousness by His diminishing of scripture.

Here is a professing teacher of God.  Someone disobeys scripture.  He doesn’t want to offend that person by saying something.  He lets it go.  This is not doing the least of the commandments and teaching men so.

Ranking Doctrines or the Triage Approach

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day ranked doctrines.  Their unity revolved around a triage approach.  Instead of following the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, they pervert into just the opposite of what He taught.  Unity on the least commandments, what they call, non-essentials or minors.  These teachings are not a “hill you want to die on.”

Left-Winged Legalism

Professing Christians especially today practice a left-winged legalism more often than the more commonly highlighted right-winged type.  The left wing calls its legalism, “grace.”  It is turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.  Since you can’t keep everything scripture says on your own, reduce its teachings to what you can keep.  This is left-winged legalism.

Those practicing left-winged legalism relish pointing out more consistent practice of scripture than theirs as legalism.  They do it all the time.  How you know they aren’t legalists in their estimation is by their inconsistent practice of scripture.  People who try to follow everything like Jesus taught and teach others to do likewise, they aren’t the greatest in the kingdom to left-winged legalists.  Instead, they’re “legalists.”  Again, it’s in reality just the opposite.

As Jesus moves on in His illustrations in chapter five, you can see how much a truly righteous person strives to love God and His neighbor.  It’s not the get-by-ism of the Pharisees and modern evangelicalism, so they can keep their crowds.  They’ve dumbed down scripture so that it is unrecognizable as Christianity.  This follows the same tack of the Pharisees.  There is nothing new under the sun.