Matthew 7:1-6 Do Not Judge
Just as we have seen other places in the Sermon on the Mount where
Jesus makes how we treat others as the standard by which God will
treat us, so here we find judging other people prohibited, on
the basis that judging others will lead us to be judged by God
ourselves. Our ability to see the minor faults of others more
easily than our own major ones is illustrated with the humor and
hyperbole characteristic of Jesus' teaching and parables. The
image is of someone who gets a speck of sawdust in his eye. As
he is struggling to do something about it, he hears a voice say
"Brother, let me help you". He gratefully turns, only
to find a man standing there who has a telephone pole stuck in
his eye! The image is ridiculous, and it is intended to be, to
show how ridiculous we are when we are intolerant of the faults
of others: it is only because we refuse to acknowledge that we
have just as many faults as they do, if not more! A similar image
is found in the Babylonian Talmud (b. 'Arak.16b; b. B.Bat.15b),
but it may well have been influenced by Jesus' saying rather than
being an independent use of the same imagery or an indication
of an underlying well-known proverb [see Davies & Allison,
vol.1, p.671].
Judging here does not mean objectively evaluating, but condemning.
Jesus also quotes from a well-known folk proverb which is attested
in the Rabbinic literature and other ancient Jewish sources as
well: they will measure you with the measure with which you yourself
measured. In a sense, it is perhaps not going too far to say that
we ourselves will provide the standard against which God will
evaluate our own lives in the final judgment. He will not condemn
us because we were frail, because we failed, because we were imperfect.
He will condemn us because, although we were imperfect, we judged,
condemned, and persecuted others because they were as frail and
as imperfect as we are! Romans 2:1 probably shows Paul's knowledge
of Jesus' teaching on this topic.
[Note: There is an interesting agrapha (i.e. a saying of Jesus
not written in any of the canonical Gospels) mentioned in the
writings of at least one of the Apostolic Fathers, which basically
says "In whatever I have surpassed you, therein shall I judge
you". At first glance, this saying seems to not fit well
with this better attested saying of Jesus which seems to preclude
judging. On the other hand, the parable of the speck and the log
does seem to envision that a person should first reform oneself,
and then be able to help others with the specks in their own eyes.
And so perhaps the reason this saying was not included by any
of the Evangelists (if they knew it) was because it does not clearly
differentiate Jesus from everyone else as one who is presumed
to surpass us in all things. The unwritten sayings are a difficult
topic, and lie beyond the scope of our present study of Matthew's
Gospel. The most famous 'unwritten saying' is found in Acts, where
Paul is depicted as quoting Jesus as having said 'It is more blessed
to give than to receive' (Acts 20:35).]
In v6, Matthew inserts a saying which is not found in Mark or
Luke. In view of the apparently imperfect parallelism between
'that which is holy' and 'pearls', it has been suggested that
the word 'holy' is in fact a mistranslation of an underlying Aramaic
word that has exactly the same consonants as the word translated
'that which is holy' (qudshâ'), namely qedâshâ',
which means 'the ring'. The idea would then be similar to Proverbs
11:22, which refers to a ring in a pig's snout. This is an interesting
suggestion, but at any rate, the overall meaning is clear: do
not give what is holy and/or valuable to those who are incapable
of appreciating it. The saying has a chiastic structure:
A Do not give dogs what is holy
B and do not throw your pearls before swine
B' or else they (the swine) will trample them (the pearls) under foot
A' and (the dogs) turn to attack you.
So why did Matthew include this saying here? Perhaps he is placing a limit (one of common sense) on what has just been said. To not judge others does not necessarily mean that one waste one's time and effort bringing the Gospel to those who are persistently resistant to it. Obviously the saying has a broader meaning and implication, but since Matthew has 'that which is holy' and since the pearl elsewhere symbolizes the kingdom, it is perhaps not unjustified for some scholars to see it as being applied to this specific point here. 'The swine' as unclean animals could easily refer to Gentiles, but in the context of Matthew's Gospel it is unlikely that Matthew thought of this as an admonition 'Don't waste your time bringing the Gospel of the kingdom to the Gentiles'. And so one must either accept that the saying is not limited to Gentiles, and/or that the saying is not specifically about the Kingdom or the Gospel but more generally about that which is holy or valuable. In the present context, it seems best to take it to mean something like "Do not judge others, but that doesn't mean you entrust things that are valuable and important to those who consistently show themselves to be untrustworthy." This interpretation would fit well with Matthew's pragmatism: Do not judge and condemn, but don't be a sucker either! Once again, then, the Church is encouraged to find a balance between seeking to provide opportunities for those who have failed in the past to try again and succeed, but without allowing those who have no real interest in doing better to make a mess of things.
Matthew 7:7-11 Asking, Seeking, Knocking
This saying may well have followed immediately after the Lord's
Prayer in Q (compare Matthew with Luke 11). And so this saying
should not be regarded as continuing the theme of judging and
forgiving others, but as returning to the more general theme of
prayer, and to another theme important in the Lord's Prayer, namely
asking for bread. It may be that Matthew changed a saying involving
an egg and a scorpion to one about bread and a stone precisely
to highlight this connection. The two elements of Luke's version
have a better parallelism, by asking whether one would give something
deadly and dangerous to one's children who are asking rather for
something to eat.
At any rate, this saying is not about persistence, a sort of 'beggar's
wisdom' as it has been called, that if one keeps asking eventually
one will get something. This is certainly true, but the point
here is not about persistence, but about the goodness of the giver.
To illustrate this point, Jesus asks his hearers to think of their
own situation: What father would mock his hungry children? What
father would cruelly give something that kills when his children
have asked for something that makes alive? The response that is
expected is that no one would do such a thing. Jesus points out
that 'you (the emphatic pronoun indicating those fathers present,
a category into which Jesus could not include himself) who are
evil know how to give good gifts to your children'. The point
is presumably that even the nastiest person usually has a soft
spot for his children. This being so, it would be difficult to
imagine that God will not have a 'soft spot' for his children
and fulfill their requests. This saying does not tackle the problem
of unanswered prayer, nor of what it might or might not be appropriate
to ask for. In Jesus' cultural context, one key assumption was
what Bruce Malina called 'limited good' - that is, they assumed
that there was only so much wealth to go around, and thus one
could not increase one's own wealth without effectively stealing
it from someone else. And so in this context, and in one of relative
poverty compared to our own setting, and in a setting in which
they were expecting the imminent arrival of the Kingdom, it is
hard to imagine anyone in Matthew's community praying "Lord
won't you give me a Mercedes Benz" or whatever one thinks
its ancient equivalent might be.
Matthew 7:12 - The Golden Rule
As we've already seen, the 'Golden Rule' is extremely important
in Matthew's understanding of Jesus' teaching. It is a universal
principle that applies not only to the way human beings and in
particular Christians interact with one another, but also can
be taken as the basis for God's final evaluation of our lives.
The same principle was expressed in a negative form in the generation
before Jesus by Rabbi Hillel, as attributed to him in the following
famous story (from the Babylonian Talmud, Shab. 31a):
A certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him: "Make me a proselyte, on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot." Thereupon he chased him away with the builder's measuring stick that was in his hand. When he went before Hillel [and presented him with the same challenge], he said to him: "What is hateful to you, do not do it to him [i.e. your neighbor]. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary thereon. Go and learn it."
Of course, the principle of doing to others as one would have
them do to you is a universal religious principle, and is by no
means unique to Christianity or even to the Judeo-Christian tradition.
However, Jesus' presentation of it in positive rather than negative
terms (i.e. in terms of what to do to others rather than merely
what not to do to others) is less common. The positive form is
found, for example, in 2 Enoch 61:2, which is a Jewish work from
the late first century C.E. and which thus could conceivably show
the influence of Jesus' teaching. A form that encompasses both
positive and negative is found in a much less memorable form in
the Letter of Aristeas 207, which almost certainly predates the
Christian era: "Insofar as you do not wish evils to come
upon you, but to partake of every blessing, [it would be wisdom]
if you put this into practice with your subjects, including the
wrongdoers, and if you admonished the good and upright also mercifully.
For God guides all men in mercy." But at any rate truth is
truth, and much that is true is universally recognized as such
by humankind. The truthfulness of Jesus' teaching does not depend
on its novelty, and in fact the 'Golden Rule' may be said to be
implicit already in the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself
(on these topics see further Davies and Allison, vol.1, p.688)
This Golden Rule is said not just to summarize the Law and the
Prophets, but to be the Law and the Prophets. This forms an inclusio
of sorts with the earlier mention of the Law and the Prophets
in 5:17. This saying could indicate that Matthew understood Jesus'
prioritization of commandments in a more radical way than we have
suggested up to this point: if treating others as one wishes to
be treated is the Law and the Prophets, then things like circumcision
and food laws could be not just relegated to lesser importance,
but perhaps even ignored entirely. Yet this is surely not how
Hillel or any other Jews who identified Torah with some form of
the Golden Rule understood it, and so there is no reason to think
that such implications were intended here. What is clear is that
for Matthew, the Golden Rule sums up the meaning of the entire
preceding collection of Jesus' teaching concerning the Law. The
initial 'Therefore' indicates this, and the function of the saying
(which has been moved to its present position in Matthew to serve
this purpose) is sometimes obscured in modern translations. In
a sense, the use of this saying as a bracket here indicates that
everything in 5:17-7:12 is connected thematically and is understood
to have to do with the Law. And so the Sermon on the Mount really
is the teaching of a 'new Moses'. The initial beatitudes and saying
about being salt and light form a kind of introductory preamble
or prologue, and 7:13-27 will be a concluding postscript. By arranging
the material in the Sermon on the Mount in this way and placing
it here at the start of his Gospel, Matthew indicates what he
understands Jesus and his teaching to be about: the Law and its
fulfillment.
[On the fulfillment of the Law see also Romans 13:9-10; Galatians
5:13-14; James 2:8]
Matthew 7:13-28 - Two Ways
This 'epilogue' to the Sermon on the Mount contains three contrasts:
- Two ways
- Two trees
- Two builders
The idea that one must choose between two alternative paths through
life or ways of life is a common one in early Judaism as in early
Christianity. Ulrich Luz notes that a similar choice is placed
before the reader already in the books of Leviticus (ch.26) and
Deuteronomy (30:15-20). But here the contrast is not between those
who obey or disobey the Law of Moses given by God on Mount Sinai,
but those who do or not obey the teaching of Jesus. It is no wonder
that Matthew concludes in v28 with a reaction by the listening
crowds to the authority of Jesus' teaching. Yet this is not to
be understood as simply the giving of a new, more rigorous Law
to replace the older one. Rather, Jesus' teaching is a response
to, and calls for the lifestyle appropriate for, the coming Kingdom
of God. As history continued the Law did its job, but this decisive
moment in history calls for a greater righteousness. Jesus is
specifically contrasted with 'their Torah scholars', a jibe at
the rabbinic teachers not just of Jesus' time, but also of Matthew's.
Note also the eschatological emphasis here in the conclusion as
well: responding correctly to Jesus' teaching has to do not just
with living a better life or what will happen in the (hopefully)
distant future when one dies, but with whether one will stand
or fall in the imminent judgment of the dawning Kingdom.
So much for the overall theme of this passage. But there are
important details that need to be observed. First, Matthew inserts
into the Q material contrasting two ways a mention of false prophets,
which is not found in the parallel material in Luke 6:43-44. Its
relevance to the issue of fruit is clear, even if it breaks the
theme of reader-oriented challenge slightly. The attempt to identify
exactly who the false prophets may have been is unlikely to be
successful. The issue of itinerant prophets and their evaluation
was an important one in the early Church: it is mentioned in the
Didache as well, where it is given a fair bit of attention. At
any rate, the point Matthew is making seems to be less about a
particular group and primarily about a particular view of the
relative importance of 'spiritual gifts' over against 'spiritual
fruit'. I am intentionally bringing in Paul's terminology here,
since in 1 Corinthians Paul deals with a similar issue. The ability
to prophesy, to cast out demons, to work miracles, does not in
any way indicate that one is righteous, or even a true Christian,
and says nothing about one's salvation or inclusion in the coming
Kingdom. This was shocking news for both Matthew's and Paul's
readers. Spiritual gifts are precisely that: free gifts, freely
given by God because God is generous. They have nothing to do
with the worthiness of the receiver. Spiritual fruit, on the other
hand, is what is produced by a life that is righteous, and it
emphatically does indicate something about a person's righteousness,
and relationship to God, and ultimately about a person's salvation
and inclusion in the Kingdom. It is possible to dress, act, and
speak like a 'sheep', but a close examination of a person's life
will normally give some indication of where their true devotion
lies. Unfortunately a number of Christian traditions have created
a culture wherein we are impressed by powerful, eloquent speaking
and miraculous gifts rather than with spiritual fruit. In the
present passage, we are told that the different types of tree
cannot produce types of fruit other than their own. In a similar
way, it is unlikely that even the most gifted actor and charlatan
will be able to keep up an act of goodness, humility, and reverence
towards God consistently, because their underlying motives and
values run completely contrary to the values of the Kingdom. Yet
unfortunately, experience shows how often Christians have been
taken in and duped. [For a good contemporary illustration of the
relationship between motives, spiritual fruit, and miracles etc.,
see Steve Martin's movie Leap of Faith].
A second point to mention is that some have suggested that the
criticism in this passage has one particular individual and his
teaching in mind, namely the apostle Paul! This is because of
the emphasis on the enduring validity of the Law in the immediate
context, and the fact that Paul emphasized the confession of Jesus
as Lord as determinative in salvation (cf. e.g. Romans 10:9).
Yet surely this involves a misunderstanding of Paul's teaching!
The caricature of Paul that is being knocked down here is a straw
man, one who has been created by Protestant exegesis that has
never successfully integrated into their understanding of Paul's
thought passages like Romans 2. And so perhaps we should say that
these sayings may be arranged and placed in their present form
so as to address the problem of certain extreme interpretations
of Paul's teaching. But the whole question of the relationship
between early Jewish Christianity and the writings attributed
to Matthew and James on the one hand, and those written by Paul
on the other, is a complex one that we cannot solve in the present
context.
A third point, however, follows naturally from the previous one.
The concluding parable is often interpreted in light of the traditional
Lutheran understanding of Paul's Gospel, and so the children's
chorus concludes "So build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ."
But the parable is not used here to illustrate the metaphor of
the Church as built on the foundation of Christ. The specific
application of Jesus' words here is clear and unambiguous: it
is not about faith, but about putting Jesus' teaching into practice.
The greater righteousness that he has taught is the bedrock on
which those who wish to stand in the face of the coming judgment
and Kingdom must build. Those who ignore his teachings and simply
carry on living as before will be swept away by the arrival of
the Kingdom. Again, this does not fit well with much traditional
Protestant exegesis that understands 'works of the Law' in Paul's
writings as 'good works'. And so those who understand Paul's letters
in this way may in fact feel as though Matthew is taking them
to task. But we must ask again whether the problem is with Paul's
own thinking and teaching, or with subsequent interpretation of
his writings.
[There is a brief outline sketch of the issues relating to
the New Perspective on Paul in my NT Theology notes at the following
address:
http://www.oocities.org/jamesfrankmcgrath/alliance_nt_theology/NTT02.htm
You may also want to look for the article by Brendan Byrne, "Interpreting
Romans Theologically from a Post New-Perspective Perspective",
from Harvard Theological Review, at the following address: http://www.findarticles.com
You can also try the following addresses for additional articles
and materials:
http://www.angelfire.com/mi2/paulpage/,
http://www.hivolda.no/asf/kkf/rel-stud.html,
and http://www.ntgateway.org/
]
CONCLUSION
So what general conclusions do we need to draw about the Sermon
on the Mount as a whole? Perhaps the most obvious point, in view
of the similarities and points of contact with the Torah that
we have seen, and in particular the emphases in the concluding
section, there can be no doubt that Matthew understood Jesus'
teaching here to be intended to be put into practice, and not
simply a presentation of a too-high standard that will make us
feel bad and drive us to repentance. Our failures to reach this
standard should of course drive us to repent. But the whole nature
of repentance is not a recognition of how bad we are, but a turning
from the wrong to embrace and live the right.
An important question is how Matthew's emphases and perspective
relate to those of (1) his source, Q, and (2) Jesus himself. There
is a great deal of debate about the historical Jesus and his eschatology
and teaching. Many scholars take Jesus as having been more like
a philosopher than an eschatological prophet of the end times.
Matthew might not have seen a dichotomy between the two, but be
that as it may, Albert Schweitzer's famous reconstruction of the
historical Jesus focused uncritically on Matthew's Gospel, and
so it is of real interest today to see how the emphases in Matthew's
Sermon on the Mount relate to the meaning of the teachings compiled
here in the setting and context of Jesus' own ministry.
An interesting point of comparison could be made by looking at
the relation between Matthew 5:39-42 and Luke 6:29-31. We see
that Matthew has taken the 'Golden Rule' and moved it to a place
of prominence, and has added the comment (similar to that of Hillel)
that 'this is the Law and the Prophets.' Yet this is not to lead
us to view these ideas as entirely Matthew's creation. Paul, our
earliest Christian source, is aware of authoritative teaching
along similar lines, and so Matthew is making explicit in this
context something that Jesus himself taught on this and other
occasions. Also interesting is the question of non-violent resistance.
The aim of social protest and transformation is clear in Matthew's
version, but it is not in Luke's. Luke does not specify the cheek
that is hit, he does not mention the court setting of the taken
cloak, and he does not mention the need to 'go the extra mile'
with a Roman soldier. Which is more original? It would be easy
to jump to the conclusion that Luke's shorter version is (as usual)
more authentic and closer to Q. However, Luke had things he wanted
to emphasize too, and one of them is the good relations between
Christians and the Roman authorities. He would thus have reason
to play down the way to protest against the abuses of Roman soldiers.
Luke's version strongly supports the 'doormat' approach to the
Christian life that Matthew's version seems to not have room for.
Yet based on Luke's shorter version, we would conclude that in
Q the teaching moved directly from 'blessed are the persecuted'
to the sayings about loving enemies. And so even though in Luke
the sayings of Jesus are applied to being charitable and generous,
the context would just as easily if not better fit advice on how
to respond to mistreatment. And so, while as a rule Luke preserves
the order of Q better and Matthew has a stronger tendency to supplement
the Q material, there are not hard and fast rules, and the present
instance might well be one example of the opposite being the case.
Walter Wink argues this to be the case in the article cited earlier.
Others, however, would disagree.
When we ask which version is more likely to stem from the historical
Jesus, we do not find hard and fast answers any easier to come
by. Neither radical passivity not creative, courageous non-violent
resistance was something familiar. However, within Judaism there
was the concept of the martyr for the sake of the Law being willing
to die rather than disobey the Law. Here, the follower of Jesus
must be willing to suffer rather than disobey Jesus' greater righteousness.
But is he to suffer simply for its own sake, or with the aim of
challenging the system and bringing about social transformation?
Here one's answer depends on how clearly one believes the historical
Jesus' understanding of his own coming death to have been. It
is beyond doubt that his followers used the Jewish martyr theology
to interpret his death in the post-Easter period; it is hotly
debated whether Jesus himself gave such an interpretation. Ultimately,
Matthew's version does fit well with the way early Christians
understood the meaning of Jesus' life and death, and so even if
Matthew does not present us with the exact words of the historical
Jesus here, he certainly gives a legitimate reinterpretation of
Jesus' teaching in light of Jesus' actions and willingness to
die in obedience to the Father. And certainly we see in the Sermon
on the Mount as a whole the basis for Christians asserting that
the inspired text, and not just the voice of the historical Jesus
that lies behind them, is authoritative. Matthew has clearly compiled,
edited, and reworked the teaching of Jesus in an inspired way,
relating Jesus' person and teaching to the situation in which
Matthew lived. Remember that Jesus lived in Galilee prior to it
being directly ruled by Rome. Jesus and his earliest Galilean
followers would not have faced the problem of how to deal with
Roman soldiers who pressed them into service. And so ultimately,
it seems more likely that here we find Matthew applying Jesus'
teaching to a new context.
All of these points must be taken into consideration by those
who wish to do precisely what the concluding words of the Sermon
on the Mount and the 'Sermon on the Plain' tell us to: to put
the words of Jesus into practice. But recognizing that there are
two versions and two accounts of Jesus' teaching with at least
slightly different emphases leaves us confronted with a dilemma:
do we just allow ourselves to be victimized by violence, or do
we respond to it in a non-violent but nonetheless challenging
way? In Luke-Acts, the followers of Jesus are presented as living
(and particularly eating) in strikingly counter-cultural ways
that challenged society's values and norms, 'turning the world
upside down'. [see my notes on the subject of the mission of the
Church as presented in Luke-Acts at: http://www.oocities.org/jamesfrankmcgrath/biblical_missions/Mission03.htm
and http://www.oocities.org/jamesfrankmcgrath/alliance_nt_theology/NTT05.htm
] And so the need for Christians to live in a manner that offers
a counter-cultural challenge is emphasized by both Matthew and
Luke; surely behind the somewhat confusing state of our canonical
sources we still clearly discern the Master's voice! This counter-cultural
emphasis certainly did not appear out of nowhere, and did not
make its way into these various streams of Christianity without
being very early indeed. The obvious person to whom we should
therefore attribute these emphases, if perhaps not specific words
with 100% certainty, is Jesus himself. As we shall see in Matthew
9, Jesus' own example of challenging the values and presuppositions
of his contemporaries by eating and having fellowship with 'sinners'
is a sound historical datum at the root of the application of
Jesus' teaching offered in Matthew's Gospel, in Luke-Acts, and
elsewhere.
The Sermon on the Mount thus illustrates yet again the reason
why we have focused primarily on the literary level of Matthew's
Gospel. As a literary unity, the Sermon on the Mount is inspired
and inspiring. As a source of knowledge of the historical Jesus,
the Sermon becomes an archaeological site, wherein the historian
must dig, shelve, categorize, discard, and reconstruct. Both tasks
are valuable, but surely the former is more important in terms
of our desire to understand Matthew's Gospel. Historical study
of Jesus is a rather different subject, and requires a course
of its own to even begin to scratch the surface.