The One True Redpill
Sermon on the Mount Appendix 1
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ depicts Himself fulfilling the Law by gift to those who are unworthy and excluded.
He shows the Law being fulfilled, not by accomplishing fidelity to the written statutes but as a single whole fulfillment when we believe in the goodness of God-that is, He and our neighbors are lovable and actually loved when we believe that God is our Good Father, a belief that is of course only possible in the light of Calvary. Which leaves us with one gigantic question, what then is the purpose of the written Law?
(Moses recounting the events at Horeb to the Israelites:) “Then the Lord heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me: ‘I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever! Go and say to them, “Return to your tents.” But as for you, stand here by Me, and I will speak to you all the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which you shall teach them, that they may observe them in the land which I am giving them to possess.’
“Therefore you shall be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess. Deuteronomy 5:28-33
If righteousness and salvation come as a single gift, by grace through faith apart from the works of the law1, why then does He give commandments and hold men accountable for keeping them, promising life for obedience and death for failure?
Now behold, one came and said to Him(Jesus), “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”
So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Matthew 19:16-17
Our story is about a young man who had kept the Law and found it unsatisfying. I know that most commentators insist that he must not, could not have kept the law2 but Our Lord doesn’t take up this point and so neither will I. If convicting this young man of failure to keep the Law was necessary to give him what he needed, was important to understanding what Christ had to teach, then surely Christ would have done it. But he does not call out the man’s (presumed)failure, not at all. And so, rather than coming to this text importing our theological system and manufacturing our own epiphany I want for us to try and receive what the Lord gave to this young man. The young man then had kept the Law, as far as he knew and he was not contradicted when he brought the matter up with the Lord. The Law promised to give life when you kept it but he was aware that he had not received the promised life. He came to Jesus because he didn’t understand why his lawkeeping had not given him eternal life. He couldn’t rest in, couldn’t be confident in what self and Law were accomplishing. I can’t say for certain that he was unsatisfied with himself or his procedure but he was unsatisfied with the result, and while that may not be sufficient for our excessive fastidiousness it brought him to Christ seeking what he could not find elsewhere.
To those who say that this young man did not have a sufficiently spiritual or inward view of the law, I respond in his defense that he had perceived its promise at least in a spiritual way. Where Moses says only that ‘the man who keeps the Law shall live by it’, this young man had meditated on the nature of the lawgiver and the nature of the law and realised that this promise must be in reference to a spiritual and eternal life, if not then why did he come trying to obtain eternal life, as if it had been promised, when it is never plainly mentioned in the Law?3 The young man I suspect also realised that ‘eternal life’ was not simply the endless extension of his current existence, or how would he have known that he lacked it? The only test for possessing such a life would be its end. No, he realised that the life that the Law promises to those who are right with God was qualitatively different from his (then)present existence.
Let’s look then at how Jesus deals with him. Jesus does not treat the young man as he does the hypocrites or lawyers and neither does he tell him that the law can not deliver the promise that he seeks from it4. Rather, he tells him ‘if you want to enter into life’, that is the promised eternal life, then ‘keep the commandments’. He does somewhat subtly correct him though. The young man imagined that he had got much right and had missed some key item, some capstone that was needed to reach a higher level of life. Jesus, and Moses, tell us that our search is not merely for some higher life but for life itself, ‘if you want to enter into life keep the commandments’ unmistakably implies that the young man and all those to whom the Law speaks are currently lifeless. Keeping the commandments then is some part of the journey toward life.
18 (The young man said to Christ), “Which ones?”
Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?”Matthew 19:18-20
I want to suggest that the Law was doing its proper work in this young man. Whatever else Christ’s first words to the man meant, they plainly state that keeping the Law, even a perfect keeping, will never give us a claim on God or his goodness as ‘there is only one who is good’. But the only way to learn this is by…actually keeping the commandments. Which is what the young man had tried to do. I only have in front of me the words that you have in front of you. I can’t tell you about this man’s life on the inside or the out. I don’t know his history or his adventures in law keeping, can’t tell you about his skin of the teeth victories or falling on his face failures, but I do know what it is like to be unsatisfied, to go hungry and thirsty and that is what I feel from this man. He put enough of himself into keeping the commandments to find them unsatisfying, pursued them enough to feel in his soul that they left him with a hunger and a thirst for life and a right standing with God which obedience to the Law can never satisfy.
He took seriously the Lord’s promises; did not make excuses or allow the traditions of men to make the Scriptures of no effect and thus the Law did its great work in him: It brought him unsatisfied, a beggar to the feet of Jesus. He says to the Lord in effect, ‘I don’t understand what I am still missing. I don’t see my own lack but I know good and damn well that I haven’t obtained the promised life. You are sending me back to these same commandments again? Me and these commandments have a long history together and keeping them is not making me alive. What I was hoping you could tell me is, Why am I still dead? I’m still dead. Despite all of my worldly success my spirit is still poor. My righteousness leaves me cold, empty, and alone. After all of my law keeping, I’m still in the House of Mourning. The commandment which I had hoped would bring life has left me lifeless, dead.' When will the God of Jacob’s promises be yes and amen to me?’ The young man should have grabbed Jesus by His robe, should have wrestled with him and refused to let go until He received a blessing. He didn’t though, at least not on that day. But he wasn’t the last one to wrestle with these questions.
Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Galatians 3:21-25
What even is the Law and how do the commandments lead us to life? The Law says, ‘You shall not murder.’ not simply to preserve life but to hold up a mirror to us so we see that we are murderous. ‘I would not have known covetousness, if the Law had not said, “Thou shalt not covet.”’5, not that I never would have desired other men’s things but I wouldn’t have understood who I am and what I am doing. We are the kind of people who would like, by force or by fraud, to have our neighbors land, his house, his wife, his whatever. The Law shows us ourselves and our desires and restrains us from fulfilling them. The Law is, to us, a fence, a barrier separating us from our ambitions and foiling our plans and if we struggle then it is armed to compel obedience. Keeping the Commandments will not make you good or free, will not make you fat and happy. The Law was sent to drag our badness and our slavery out into the light of day, to make them manifest as John puts it. It was sent to make us lean and hungry. The law is the North Wind, freezing, starving, uprooting, tearing down, smashing, and strangling our illusions about ourselves. It is bitter adversity. It is the Law that makes us mourners, the Law that bereaves us; teaches us to cry out for mercy. With ice-cold and razor-sharp law Christ shaves us down small enough to enter the Narrow Gate with no goodness left in ourselves, no contribution that we are able to make. The Law makes us dead while yet alive.
Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. Romans 7:13-14
The Law is Realism. It doesn’t care how you feel, or about your ‘lived experience’. It always, only cares for what is True. I said that the Law is adversity, that it is the deadly North Wind. That’s only true because the great task of the Law is to make the circumstances of our lives match up with their spiritual, essential reality. The Law makes wicked acts disgusting, selfishness bitter, pride a punchline, makes our spiritual deadness toxic to us and our surroundings, accordingly nothing so thoroughly deserves the name of antinomianism or lawlessness as that which makes wickedness pleasant, murder as ‘health care’, that which makes selfishness seem altruistic and praiseworthy ‘Greed is good’, that which celebrates Pride(examples not needed).6 The Law serves to make us dissatisfied with our righteousness as the young man became, make us despair of obtaining the promise by our efforts. The Law leads us into eternal life by making this life and our own souls bitter to us. Until we feel in our bones that it is not some extraneous good that we are excluded from but life itself, then we have desperate need for the Law.
21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.Matthew 19:16-22
The Law serves to make us small, to make our opinion of ourselves match the reality. And Jesus isn’t here offering the man some alternate commandments. This isn’t some advanced lesson or a way to go ‘beyond the law’7. And so, Christ didn’t advise the young man to give what he had to the poor as if their was merit in giving, as if giving would make him a better or holier guy. He wasn’t advising him to ‘build the kingdom’, but rather to cast aside those parts of himself that were weighing him down. This shouldn’t at all be interpreted as becoming ‘more like Christ’ because there is nothing in Christ that weighs Him down or needs to be left behind. He left true riches at home while He was traveling. We, and the young man, are called to leave behind imaginary riches so that we will be a bit less fake. We imagine that riches will make it easier to enter life, but on our pilgrimage they are just more luggage, luggage that is on a whole different flight than we are and would be useless where we are going anyway8.
I can’t help but see this interaction as a failure for the young man because he went away sad. And much of what the church has done has been focused on preventing people from going away sad. We blame ourselves for not being wise enough, or caring enough, or having the right coffee in the lobby or the right fog machine for worship or the right jokes for the message9. We won’t come right out and say it but we see this as a failure for Jesus too. I don’t think that He saw it that way though. Christ stripped the young man of his imagined righteousness but the man couldn’t believe yet in the goodness and gift of God. The Law, wielded by Christ, revealed the man’s true character and nature to him, but the Law doesn’t, can’t ever, reveal the true character of God to us. Christ would have to do something far more dramatic and shocking to accomplish that. Fortunately, He did. When the Law has brought a man to Christ, its work is done. It can do no more. We see it as a failure because we are asking it to do what it was never intended to do. ‘By the law is the knowledge of sin.’10, never the knowledge of righteousness of the only One who is good.
23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
25 When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?”
26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19: 23-26
How narrow is that gate! How hard is that way! We see, that this passage closes as the Sermon on the Mount closed, but what we haven’t noticed yet is that it opens the same way too. As in the Sermon, we find ourselves held up to a standard that we cannot meet. We find that the things in which we hope: our religion, our righteousness, our riches whether we think of them as spiritual or material are actually the obstacles, the burdens that are holding us back. But to see this passage in the sharp relief that we need to see it we must see the graphic answer to the disciples question, “Who then can be saved?”, by looking back to verse 13:
13 Then little children were brought to Him that He might put His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 19: 13-14
The kingdom of Heaven is made of the little. It is made of the ignorant, the presumptuously entitled. It is made of the unproductive, the parasites, those who neither deserve nor receive respect. It is made of those who not only have no possessions but are not eligible to own even if they were given possessions. It is made of charity cases, like me. The rich, young ruler’s works and knowledge, his zeal and passion couldn’t obtain for him what the Lord’s ragamuffin children got for nothing.
In that way the youth had kept the commandments. He had for years been putting forth something of his life-energy to keep them. Nor, however he had failed of perfection, had he missed the end for which they were given him to keep. For the immediate end of the commandments never was that men should succeed in obeying them, but that, finding they could not do that which yet must be done, finding the more they tried the more was required of them, they should be driven to the source of life and law—of their life and his law—to seek from him such reinforcement of life as should make the fulfilment of the law as possible, yea, as natural, as necessary. This result had been wrought in the youth. His observance had given him no satisfaction; he was not at rest; but he desired eternal life—of which there was no word in the law: the keeping of the law had served to develop a hunger which no law or its keeping could fill. Must not the imperfection of his keeping of the commandments, even in the lower sense in which he read them, have helped to reveal how far they were beyond any keeping of his, how their implicit demands rose into the infinitude of God's perfection?
MacDonald, George. Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and II. . Kindle Edition. (first sermon of second series, the Kindle generated citation is not very specific)
Romans 3:28
and with reasons that are not easily dismissed
I don’t say that he came to this conclusion alone or with no guidance at all. Certainly some rabbis taught thus. But the knowledge of the Law’s spiritual nature was not and is not so common that we should ever discount this insight as insignificant.
Believe me, I looked. It would be awfully convenient for me if He said it, but He doesn’t.
Romans 7:7
Theoretically, it also exalts the humble and makes virtue sweet but that feature set hasn’t gotten a lot of mileage so far. Every dog, however, will have his day.
which may or may not be what the young man was seeking
According to reports, either the sun is 7 times brighter or the Lamb Himself is their light. In either case, I suspect, to the dismay of most of us for differing reasons, that it is a bit like a nudist colony. The heavenly airport is stuffed with unclaimed suitcases full of fig leaves.
Obviously I always have the right jokes. Must be that lousy music guy.
Romans 3:20