Matthew 5 – Being Good

I’ve read it a dozen times. I’ve heard sermons on it. Heck, I’ve even memorized it. So when I read it again this afternoon, it was definitely a surface level reading, as though I were so familiar with it’s depths that I didn’t even need to go down there.

So I began to pray about it. It was spoke by Jesus, who was sent here to reveal to us who God is. So what were these words saying about God? God said, “Do not murder,” but here Jesus was saying, “Do not be angry with your brother”.

I thought of Jesus, of the beauty and rightness of his character. I thought of the things he was saying directly about God in this sermon. About how God shows no favortism, how he fulfills his promises, how he has power like we could not even dream and so we better not imagine we have it. God has been revealing himself to us all along. How could we presume to think that when God said, “Do not murder” that this was all he wanted to happen. He didn’t say that we shouldn’t murder just because he didn’t want a whole bunch of dead bodies lying around. He didn’t want murder because he wanted us to love each other. Because he loves all of us. Same with adultery. Was it just the physical act of sex that he was trying to oppress? No, he wanted men to stop looking at women as pieces of meat. He wanted men to see them as a person, a friend, a companion.

God is good. We are not. But if we want to be like God, we must be.

January 5, 2010. Uncategorized.