Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Matthew 5:21-37
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  February 12, 2023

How would you react if someone called you a “radical Christian”? Or how would you respond to someone who called Jesus a radical?  If you’re anything like me then your first reaction is not positive. Radicals throw Molotov cocktails, spread incendiary messages online, or carry offensive signs at rallies. But that’s not me! And that’s not Jesus or his teachings, right? Consider the Sermon on the Mount that we’ve been looking at. It’s kind of gentle and soothing, right?. The Beatitudes are so lovely. The Lord’s Prayer is beloved and how comforting is the passage about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air? None of these teachings strike us as radical. But the section we look at today really is quite radical. You see, the origin of the word “radical” is the Latin radix, the Latin word for “root”. (This meaning of radical still exists in mathematics today.) The radix is what is at the bottom of something, at the foundation, at the roots of something. If you visit the 9/11 Museum in New York City, you can go underground and see the foundations of the World Trade Center.  There you see a giant retaining wall with huge tie-backs anchoring into concrete, holding back the nearby Hudson River.  Those deep walls and foundations were the radix of the Twin Towers. They were never seen above ground but they are the only surviving pieces of those decimated skyscrapers today. That is what Jesus shows us today when it comes to God’s law. In this section of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is radical because he forces our attention away from external things and back to the root and foundation of God’s commands. Jesus is radical because he takes us underground, beneath the surface of our actions.

Consider, for example, Jesus’ teaching in verses 21-26 on murder. He says, in essence, You haven’t stabbed anyone through the chest or pushed somebody off a cliff?  Good for you! But when in your anger you insulted someone last week or let that irritating person have it on social media, in God’s eyes, his command, ‘Do not murder’, snapped quite cleanly in two. Jesus even goes on to say that if you are harboring a grudge against someone, don’t come to worship with an offering to God. The Lord values an undivided heart and the reconciliation of your relationships more than your money.  Or take Jesus’ teaching about adultery in verses 27-30. You haven’t slept with a person who isn’t your spouse? Good for you. But when you looked at your co-worker and thought about it, you lusted. That ‘Do not commit adultery’ command is shattered as far as God is concerned.” Marital faithfulness, like brotherly love, goes much deeper than surface actions. Jesus condemns us to hell over lingering eyes and lusting thoughts! Or his words about taking oaths in 33-37. Jesus says, don’t take any oaths. He teaches that our words should always be truthful because God is a witness to everything we say, whether or not we call on his name. He takes God’s Law and he says that its foundation and its root is kept in the thoughts and deep motivations of our hearts.

You see, God’s Law is not about human psychology or some me-focused morality-improvement program. I often remind people about this when it comes to our school. We aren’t here to reform your kids. We want to foster a love for Jesus in their hearts that will last forever. We could just curb outward behavior, but that only leads to hypocrisy. And hypocrisy is not only bad in God’s sight, but sooner or later it has a way of brutalizing the hypocrite, too. In Dante’s classic, The Inferno, he depicts a clever punishment for hypocrites in hell: they are clothed with elaborate golden garments but those garments are lined with lead. They look great but they are weighed down, filled with an inescapable weariness and sense of heaviness.  And that is what unremitting anger, or lust, or deception, or whatever sin we struggle with, does to us on the inside: it weighs us down, saps our joy, and sooner or later it will show up on the outside in how we treat others and how we worship God. A merely above-ground Christian has no urgency in prayer, no desire to hear the Word, and struggles to truly see or realize their sin, they have so blinded themselves. And eternally, as Jesus mentions three times in our text, this type of outward righteousness, this type of well-intended hypocrisy, will earn us a place in hell separated from God forever. 

So what is the point of Jesus intensifying the commandments of God? Why is Jesus making God’s Law so hard? Is he changing it? No, he is radicalizing it, he is bringing everyone back to the origin of why God gave us his Law in the first place. The greater function of Jesus’ teachings on the Law shows us our sin and brings us to the conclusion that we desperately need the grace of God. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans: “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” (Romans 5:20) Yes, God’s law has multiple functions, it is meant to guide our relationship with him and other people on earth. But when we understand the radical nature of the Law, it’s just shameful and embarrassing how frequently we sin and just how far from holy we are. 

Sometimes you hear people say things like, “Well, no one’s perfect.” But that’s really like saying, “Well, no one can  jump up and touch the moon.” We are not even close! It’s not like we’re almost perfect except for a handful of sins. No! Jesus’ words show just how thoroughly mired we are in sin and selfishness. We don’t have a few red marks on our test, our entire life is shaded red! Even at our best our motives and thoughts are compromised by sin, not to say of the unimaginable sins of omission we commit. As the Scriptures teach, “All have fallen short of the glory of God.” Or “There is no one who does good, not even one.” This, however, brings us to humility before God and others, doesn’t it? It levels the playing field and allows you to view others without looking down on them, when you know that the sin in your mind is just as ugly as the outward sin of your neighbor. That delusional pride in your own piety is as offensive to God as the petty divorce of the couple next door, or the pornography addiction of a friend. 

I ask you this in love: When was the last time you peeled off that protective layer of self-justification and allowed God’s Law to pierce your heart?  When was the last time that you prayerfully listened to your conscience? When was the last time you confessed your sins thoughtfully and specifically outside of a worship service? Jesus is shaking our foundations today. He’s digging underneath the ground; he’s scraping off the calluses. He is radical!

But, as radically as he preaches the Law of God in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus isn’t leading us to despair. Isn’t it interesting that he preaches this radical Law to those whom he has already called “blessed”? Isn’t it so interesting that he reveals the sinful hearts of those whom he just called the “pure in heart”!  Isn’t it intriguing that Jesus talks about the fires of hell with those whom he says belong to the Kingdom of God!? Jesus preaches about the darkness of sin and dullness of hypocrisy to those he calls “the salt of the earth”  and “the light of the world”! He preaches the Law, ultimately, to forgiven people whom he would—and truly did—die for! Jesus is a surgeon with God’s law. He cuts us open in order to heal, to replace our hearts of stone with one of flesh. Jesus shows us the radix of God’s Law so that we long for the Savior he became for us!

Many people think God’s Law and God’s Gospel is like a teeter-totter—as in, more Gospel understanding = less focus on God’s Law or more Law = a lack of appreciation for the Gospel. The truth is the opposite. Our understanding of God’s Law and our appreciation of the Gospel actually rises and falls together. The wrath and the mercy of God are not at odds with one another.  The more you understand the height of God’s holiness—his just condemnation of all that is evil both around us and within us—the more you appreciate his grace to forgive all that sin, to take it upon himself for us! The further you realize you’ve fallen short of the glory of God, the larger the cross of Christ grows to bridge the chasm.

You see, Jesus is the only one who can explain God’s law so radically, because he himself is the center of God’s radical grace! And that grace includes the fact that Jesus kept God’s Law perfectly. He was truly sinless! Never a wasted moment, never a careless word, not a single compromised motive or impure thought. It’s almost impossible to imagine, isn’t it? And Jesus lived like that for you! He was “born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption….” It’s what theologians call his active obedience in our place. His 33 years of holiness are credited to you through faith. He doesn’t just declare you forgiven, he declares you holy in God’s sight and perfect. Do you understand the totality of your forgiveness? Do you realize that your best deed on its own is less pleasing to God than your worst sin which has been covered in the righteousness of Christ? God’s grace is that radical.

You know, I’m still not sure I’d like to be called a “radical Christian” because it would be misunderstood. But between you and me, if being a radical Christian actually means allowing the Lord to dig down beneath the surface and renew my thoughts and motives through his Spirit, then I wish for nothing more than to be a radical. If being a “radical Christian” means continually growing in my appreciation for the love of Christ, who bore the enormity of my sin, then I’ll gladly own that label. If it means loving God and people with inner integrity because I love to follow God’s good commands, then I’d be proud to be called a radical. Yes, in Christ, we are radical Christians, in the best sense of the word. 

Amen.