“JESUS’ JUSTICE JUSTIFIES YOU”
Saint Matthew 5: 20-26
6th Sunday after Trinity: 19 July Anno Domini 2020
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
Righteousness can be defined many ways. The only true definition is that Righteousness is God. You are not God. You are not righteous.
“For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just [One] shall live by faith.” [Rom. 1.17] And again the Apostle says: “as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one.” [Rom. 3.10]
In this creative, ‘nuclear’ sub-atomic level of ontological and constitutive total truth—Righteousness is an inherent quality and essence of The Lord like omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, Unity in Trinity, and Love.
Except your righteousness, your perfectness with The Father, exceed the “perfectness” of the Scribe and Pharisee you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. The Kingdom is the King and vice-versa. Unless you are perfect with The Father you will not have Jesus—The Way, The Truth, and The Life—The Resurrection. You will be damned.
The Lord holds up His opponents and enemies of His truth in a mocking way. The Scribes were the so-called experts in Scripture. And while it was true that they did indeed know what the Sacred Hebrew canon said, they did not know what it meant. They were vain, empty, white-washed tombs. They perceived the surface without comprehending the depths. They apprehended only Moses (and The Torah too at only a surface level) but did not see Messias in their Bibles. The same with the party of Hypocrites, the Pharisees, who dominated the ruling council.
When one worships oneself, one worships unrighteousness. The heart of man (sinful old nature fallen man) is only filled with unrighteousness:
“for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” [Mt. 15.18]
You shouldn’t kill. You shouldn’t murder. Okay. Seems easy enough for you…if you’re a Scribe or Pharisee. But the God/Man speaks: “I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother…shall be in danger…” And yes, I left out from the AV’s translation “without a cause” so as not to inflate your already scrambling for cover, excuse-generating, brain and your defensively quick, self-justifying nature. You are to love your enemies Christ enjoins; your enemies! There are not many “causes” that a Christian encounters that would permit the anger that Jesus is referring to: hatred. And as lust IS fornication and adultery, as coveting IS theft, so too anger IS murder. God has capital punishment, so, you are on the death-row wing of Satan’s prison… … … but for Jesus, The Righteous One.
While your anger shows the absence of love, of loving God perfectly and loving the neighbor as self, Jesus’ Perfect Love/Righteousness “fears, loves, and trusts,” AND OBEYS, The Father perfectly. Jesus love His enemies and friends by loving you—His enemy when you sin and His friend when you are Repented/Turned by His Spirit through His Word—and when you receive His love; most especially in the Feast of Love, the Holy Eucharist.
So, whenever you are aware of a sin, that is, a rupture of love, a fracturing of Christ-like family peace, between you and your “brother” (who, by the way, is also Jesus’ brother) then go and be reconciled to that person before presuming to come to the Altar, to the Communion Rail. It matters not whether the sin is yours against him, or his sin against you—there is sin on and in “all parties” to this life. Be who Jesus has made you to be—a Christian—"forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
The whole point of Jesus is forgiveness. This is not forgiveness in a facile way of ignoring something so heinous that it ought not to be forgiven. This is not the doddering grandfather indolently brushing aside his grandchild’s naughtiness: “oh that’s okay that you murder, rape, steal, and try to kill God The Heavenly Father, no one’s perfect, it’s okay….” NO. It’s a forgiveness borne by a Holy Love which is will, action, movement; a Love that is sacrificial; Body giving; Blood shedding.
Yes, your adversary is Satan, of course. But in reality, your adversary is your own engrained spiritual DNA—your “old Adam.” You consciously don’t want to “agree” with the devil, but you love to agree with yourself. Your adversary, the adversary of every Scribe and Pharisee, is the Law. The Word of God as contained on the stone tablets is your adversary, your angel of death. And the self-righteous never sees it coming. Moses delivers death. Moses shows you, as a mirror, that you “as you” are dead to God.
But Jesus is God. Jesus is alive. Righteousness Lives. By being children of Father Abraham, you too are children of The Heavenly Father and children of The Righteous One—Christ Jesus. The Righteousness of His obedience, the Righteousness of His Atonement, are yours by Grace, His love, through faith. “But now [NOW, this very hour] the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe….being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” [Rom. 3. 21-26]
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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