Matthew 5 and the Adultery of the Heart: A Prophetic Think Tank

The Adultery of the Heart

I did an earlier article on the SOTM, found here. It’s another approach to dealing with this, taking the passage in Matthew and that in Luke together. This is a casual walk through the introduction to the Sermon and how I read the rest of it.

The Adultery of the Heart is an apt title because unlike what you will read in just about every other commentary, I don’t think that this has anything to do primarily with right and wrong religious expression unless about moral action in a deep place of the spirit in which fundamental belief and expression are its only function. And no, I’m not talking about “moral” or “spirit” in the traditional sense.

Personal Note

Because I am a layman and not academe, I have to resist the urge to draw on any resources and skills acquired that would give the impression that I am intruding into a discipline in which I am not qualified or welcome. People should act a little more according to what they are instead of who they would like to be, at least for the intent of avoiding the appearance of pretension and wasting from the start the chance to earn any confidence of the reader in the truth of one’s argument. This is frustrating at times, perhaps because of the want to bring every gun to bear, perhaps a from a sinful need to show off and be something, but the more I think about it the more I think that the way of Christ and the apostles in the original version of scholarship was the right one, splitting the difference between data and sensibility,  in sound thinking plus scripture, and nothing more.

I still get frustrated, and I guess I always will at times. I could add to this that my communication skills are often not up to the task and that few people listen, but I’m going to press on. I know there is someone out there.

Operating Instructions

Ok, the Sermon on the Mount. Wow, this is our credo. This is our operating instructions. This is our marching orders. This is about how we are supposed to respond to the world, which is operating on a very different wavelength. A world where their and bodies and little lives and imaginations are the most important things they can think of. This fact is obvious when you read it, and why the SOTM is by far the most oft-repeated and studied and prayed over a piece of scripture that Christ uttered.

But imagine if all this time, for nearly 2000 years, we’ve had it all wrong. What if we have been interpreting this in the very way and with the very priorities that the world does, with the carnal compulsion, with a self-serving and implacably intolerant one, and against Christ?

Impossible, you might say? We are taught here to turn the other cheek when faced with unregenerate people, and its fulfilled every day by, well, people turning their head and offering their other cheek to the smiter, and by the millions. We are taught to not care about what clothes we will wear and what we will eat, and millions obey, thinking about what God did for us to secure our release from sin and what awaits us in Heaven. We are told not to judge others before looking at our own sin. On this, we fall down a lot, but think about how many times apologies came to someone who was criticized while after remembering that we did the same thing? But let me ask you this. What if this sermon is not principally about one body doing one thing or another, but one religious priority doing one thing or another? Even more fundamentally, about one kind of corrupt and opaque kind of scriptural interpretation against another which is only about a revelation of the Messiah Jesus?

Adultery of the Heart Question

After all, is not Christianity supposed to be a revelation of a Heavenly, supreme being choosing to descend from his perfect place into a world hostile to him, that will kill him, in order to deliver otherwise hidden and inaccessible information about what kind of moral state God accepts and what kind he condemns? One that leads to death and one to life? A moral state which is of the same perfection as that of God, and another one that is of man?

Well, the SOTM is only a guide on how those who are saved are to behave to demonstrate their saving faith of Jesus, who are already imputed His righteousness, not to be saved. Still, if our faith is in a supernatural person and the same power of revelation as Christ’s person, is not our demonstration of that faith in our actions not itself supposed to primarily be in a kind of action which is not by bodies, speech, gestures, rites, giving food and clothing, tending the sick and anything which is not supernatural? Should it not be a kind of action in the same medium in which that revelation is found? A revelation that is meant to impact that same medium, to first necessitate actions there, motivated exclusively by the same supernatural truth thought alone capable of disclosing God? Given that what Jesus externally describes in the SOTM is no different than a thousand other religions have proposed for millennia, can we really call this the revelation man waited millennia until the Son of God came? What is the SOTM all about, really, if we claim to be led by a divine Person and revelation that this Sermon is supposed to objectively evince?

I have spent a lot of time trying to bring home that Jesus was not interested in confronting and going against any atheist. There are no atheists in the NT that were so bold to say openly that there is no God. There were however a lot who believed in God with all their heart, or so it would seem, who rejected with ferocity and tenacity that Jesus was the realization of the Oracle’s of Messiah. Jesus’s problem was with the religious intelligentsia, who knew the Torah, who by spiritual language lead the flocks who are under their charge, but who lead them away to the slaughter. The leaders in the Church, the ones that prevent their sheep from the prophetic faith in Christ, who emphasize their own interpretative traditions, philosophy, theological statements, rites, and holy objects, and a generalized view of scripture and physical action as the main expressions a genuine faith. Here is Christ’s magnum opus on these people and how we are to deal with them and project their faith outward.

Physical action, spiritual action

But this dealing is not at its most fundamental one by physical actions and reactions, but first by our spiritual understanding and reactions, without which no physical action has any transcendent meaning that goes to any kind of claim of righteousness, and certainly not the claim that you have been imputed that of Christ’s.

But by “spiritual action,” are we not then forced to know, in a very exacting way, a precise body of spiritual knowledge for motivation?

Physical action, when animated by a belief, is a belief that need not be obligated to any particular compulsion of authority except that which addresses physical action and justifies it. This kind of belief need appeal only to a calculation competent to justify a particular choice. It appeals to a written instruction, a textbook, confidence in a human expert, culture, ideas, memory of the success or failure of similar action, other people’s opinions.  Those authorities are, however, useless for a belief in something which is entirely foreign to matter and the natural mind.

A spiritual action, when animated by a belief,  on the other hand, is a belief that can have no such authorities. Spiritual action, such the determination from evidence a truth leading to a belief, holding and maintaining faith, thinking about God and placing trust in realities beyond matter,  and especially acts of disembodied morality in thought, have to draw on its own spiritual authorities. You have no means of gauging spiritual success or failure, or the belief in a reality that is not physical unless it is beholden to a reality that can only establish real in the exclusive domain of thought, emotion, conscience, spirit, and the laws of the operation of reason.

A new kind of authority

The problem with the world before Christ is that it never really had those spiritual actions which result in spiritual beliefs. Our ideas on metaphysics were always held to account only by a “rational augment, a written instruction, confidence in a human  expert, and the success or failure of similar past action.” Opinions and theories. Admired people who made proclamations about things. Good intentions. The Library of Alexandria. Whatever. But it never had any other reason to believe in God until about 2000 years ago.

In the new one, acts of real spiritual righteousness and authority over the spirit would occupy physical reality but does not need it. It would reign over the exclusive sphere of the spirit by the positive, objective demonstration of Transcednecne, not opinion. It would replace those that can only direct themselves to a spirit which could otherwise be only self-serving. It would establish itself in physical reality and be able to take it into abstract reality, making claim as God over both spiritual and physical dimensions and give that person a chance to become a unified interdimensional being as Himself. Escaping the certain death in store for both bodies and spirits who have no other means than their own.

This is why the very heart of Christianity is not doing but beveling. If so, morality is first being honest and acknowledge beyond who to what this authority is in the Christian revelation. If you don’t and use the flat side of the blade and not a sharply defined revelational subject, you leave the whole at the mercy of historical whim,  in which physical action of any kind will be re-interpreted by cultures, as has, for example, the conception of sex and gender.  

So what is this overarching Truth the SOTM is all about?

Whatever this Truth that Christ gave to motivate spiritual belief, you can be sure that it will deceive you but is not a deceiver. It will be hated, but have the indispensability of life itself. It will be fiercely ignored as much as ardently sought. It will be found by a small quality of spirits as much as distributed openly to a very large quantity of them. That kind of God is told you here, that spiritual authority, and that spiritual revelation, in the Sermon on the Mount, and it’s not what your church is telling you it is.

Ok, I tend to be cryptic. Sometimes I think I should not even be doing this, to state openly what Christ insisted on leaving in a parable and opened only by a conscience. But the day is far spent, in my opinion, and it may be time.

Let me let you in on it as much as I can before we more frontally address this issue. You can be guaranteed that as you read this portion of scripture you are being given a message that is closed to minds and hearts of one group and only open to another who know what they are looking for and don’t find it in the world, science, mere logic, the history of our horrible exegesis, Billy Graham or the Pope, your emotions with its wish-casting, your precious tradition or any other reason that this dimension can give for its acceptance of God, because God is not of this dimension. The cheek here you are to turn is not primarily a physical cheek, nor a spiritual one represented by an un-meditated, talismanically held statement of faith about Jesus. Its a cheek of a entity of yours that knows that if the SOTM is not about our relationship to a certain kind of deliberately hidden revelation, it’s not a revelation, its a cookbook for just another kind of religion that looks more like what came before it than anything that is involved in a salvation far beyond matter.

Introduction

As with any serious written work or speech with a planned and unified message from beginning to end, there is a preface to all this…an introduction, which serves as a kind of summary or interpretive key for what follows. Our first clue that the church has this all wrong is found in their failure or refusal to consider this preface as having interpretative authority on what follows. But we will not fall down on the job.

Matthew 5:3-13 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his saviour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

These commands pertain to those who would be faithful in Christ.

There is another prefatory remark that addresses exactly, precisely what kind of revelation Christ and these his people are motivated by in this:

Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

If Christ gives these commands to those that believe in him, the Messiah, likening this obedience as teh only kind of mortal fulfillment of the Prophets, upon what is this faith in him predicated which motivates this obedience? If you don’t see how I get this question from the text, I think you soon will and share my answer

Salt?

First, this thing about salt seems like a tough nut to crack, but it’s really not. Most take the tack compares the believer to the preservative power of salt or its function in making bland food palatable.  But this does not tell us exactly what salt is, what the spiritual meaning, only hints at its spiritual effect.  We know its something in those with faith in Messiah, a moral quality.

Here is the parallel passage in Mark.

Mark 9:49-50 For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.

It’s in the believer; it can lose saltiness; its effect can be diminished and cast out and trampled; when lost it can be replaced only by itself; the sacrifice is prepared by it; “fire” or persecution is a form of salting the individual;  it promotes real peace, preventing division and strife; it can consciously or unconsciously be relegated to nothing.

Now, having said that, I’m not going to tell you what the answer is. After reading this article, just think about it. But here’s another hint.

Matthew 5:14-16 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

What is “light?” Is it a statement like “I believe in Jesus, he is so kind and righteous and he perfectly fulfilled the Law, and he is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world?” Well, “light” is of course Truth. Is truth just a statement, a claim, a proclamation of a fact, or is it most fundamentally the underlying reasons for the truth those things symbolize?

So, people are likened to light. What kind of people of light? What kind of light? Where does it come from? Are you light if you robotically and un-meditatively go spouting off spiritual claims without knowing why they are supposed to be true, or caring if they are or not, and expecting that these are true indications of something good about you calling yourself and what you do “light?” 

I know, this is about to be the positive indications of Messiah’s faithful by what they do, not not the negatives by what they do not. But a species is known not only by itself but against what it’s not.

What are “good works?” Not in a general context, which can only make them about your body moving in some way, but in this prophetic context? Its being “light?” What, again, kind of light?

Prophetic persecution

But back to these two prefatory statements about the persecution of prophets and fulfilling the Law and the Prophets.

By Jesus’s statements, we know that the people of Christ are considered like the prophets. Matthew 5:17 states that Christ, and therefore his people by their obedience to Him, are to fulfill the revelation, which Jesus puts as the Law and the Prophets, or the entire corpus.  Prophets receive, believe and utter prophecy. What is established is that the SOTM is about a kind of person and a kind of scripture that is to motivate a kind of a professed believer in Jesus.

What does “fulfill” mean?

“Fulfill” means that the Law and the Prophets will be obeyed the way God intends, but no Law can be or should be taken as worthy of fulfillment unless Jesus is worthy of being called the Messiah who fulfills the Word that was written specifically for him. Jesus fulfills the moral Law, but the NT does not make a great effort in showing how Jesus fulfilled the stricture of the moral Law. It does go through great detail talking about how the “Law” is a means of education for Messiah’s law before he came. That it’s not something that can even be fulfilled by mortals and not a means of faith. It does talk a lot about showing how Jesus fulfilled messianic prophecy, however. This is because “Law,” or “commandment,” is to Christ fulfilling a moral law, but the greatest morality for him to obey is obeying the ministry set out for him to initiate, work in and bring to fruition in the Old Testament. Only he can do it. The greatest kind of morality for us it to know it, judge it fairly and believe it. In fact, Christ on the Cross is the image of Jesus being “bound” to fulfill such passages as Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9, et al., and simultaneously an image of the world rejection of this kind of revelation, which is the rejection of its personal entity, Jesus Christ. 

A new paradigm

This sets forth the paradigm in which morality post-cross is to be demonstrated. The Law is the old way to the extent that it is going to be taken as a kind of morality to be set as a symbol of a higher, spiritual one, in being only a possible indicator of righteousness, it’s also a dead-end. This is because any kind of physical action, as I said, is capable of giving the impression that a revelation of righteousness can be produced by drawing on physical resources. But this is why our corrupt idea of obedience is most perfectly displayed only by the body. Christ is correcting this, stating parabolically that the new kind is obedience is to the words of the Prophets, which is the Word of the Father. Christ his being voluntarily bound to fulfilling it, and for his believers showing their morality in knowing it and believing it by moral meditation.

Real morality is then not doing something, it’s believing a what and a how of something. If you believed Jesus is God, for example, this is true, but believing it without warrant by its justifying credentials is an expression of your desire to take opaque physical obedience and force that pattern into spirituality.  Like believing obedience to the Law will save you. To physically obey can be as much a fakeout as much as a true image of what is going on inside you. But establishing a moral faith on messianic prophecy through an honest and careful handling of the Scriptures is a true spiritual decision that can come only from you allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you, and is to Christ, as is to all real moral decisions and action, one that can be represented in a way that proves, not just proclaims, that God is a God of Truth.

Drilling down a little

Everything that follows in the SOTM is a drill-down, an explanation of more detailed operating instructions for what just went before about what is true righteousness. This is presented as a counter to the anti-revelational religious faith of the religious leaders of Jerusalem.

Just look closely, very closely. See the line in bold above, in 5:12? This is the only place where the people of Christ are compared to another group of people written about in the Torah, and its hardly an insignificant group. Its the group of the Prophets. 

Now, it’s obvious that the prophets were meek, persecuted, poor in spirit, merciful, and were peacemakers. What seems not obvious to us is what kind of faith that was animating them. Why? Are we to emulate their bodies but not their hearts? And did the prophets believe what they did, that God’s prophetic word would come to pass, just because someone that they admired said it and they came to believe it? Did they believe it only because they chose to? That their feelings told them to? No, it was because God spoke to them.

Numbers 12:6 And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.

It’s not coming from their force of personal will, their emotions or their imaginations. It’s a demonstrable, proven and objective revelation. It’s not just some claim from subjectivity. God himself spoke to them.

Blessed are…

Now, I want you to look at each line like Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. These are like the strophe/antistrophe of the Greek play, where one side of the chorus says a line and turns toward the other side who then answers. Like a kind of echo. Since Jesus already said his people are are to be like the prophets, is it any wonder why the right-side of these antistrophes is a fulfilled prophecy, the kind of thing that is supposed to be motivating them and which they are each effectively? No, not an end-time prophecy of which the church world is obsessed unless it’s about Christ and his people’s final disposition. “The Kingdom of Heaven” is eschatological, that is, prophetic. Then, they shall be filled, they shall be called children of God, they shall be comforted, great is their reward, they shall obtain mercy. This is Jehovah, the great prophet, speaking as he always did to the prophets…to prophets of prophecy concerning them and their future home.

Jesus is speaking about a moral faith by the belief in the fulfillment of the prophets by him by giving prophecy.

Is faith possible without Truth?

It is more than obvious that any talk of an eschatological kingdom and its outworking in this is first and primarily about Jesus and the word of the prophets about him, and the eschatology of his supernatural ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection, which includes his people. There is an end-time eschatology and there is an eschatology that occurs between Christ’s advent and his resurrection. No form of eschatology is more important than this.

Jesus cant be Messiah, he can’t be Savior, he can’t be God to faith, he has no authority for anything and the Kingdom becoming a reality without it. It’s without the slightest doubt the most important kind of scripture that we can read, the impeller of faith, the source of every theological subject or calculus, the ground of any orthodox creed, the basis of hope in the future under Jesus Messiah. It’s not even close. I think we tend to forget this when reading the SOTM.

Matthew 5:21-26 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

Without a Cause

The word here is the εἰκῆ, that interprets the pathway between the man and the sin. In the KJV “vainly” is used, or “for nothing.” So, “without a cause” here is about right on. Ok, why is this anything remarkable? Its meaning affects all of what follows.

Whosoever will murder is in danger of judgment regardless of his state of mind, but he is angry, a mental/spiritual state, with his brother, his fellow believer in Christ, without a good reason (see Eph 4:26). He has committed a sin in the place, the spirit,  where real, not only indicative things, exist. It’s in the heart, the seat of morality, not in the body. Both fundamental motivation and action lie there in the spirit.

As an aside, this corrupt and self-serving spiritual state before action also has a fundamental physical action of expression: speech, because language is the most passive form of physical activity before the prior spiritual activity to which it is expressing goes forth to your lips. First, language is a specific, identifiable, discrete mental phenomena, unlike “action” in the sense of physical action. Words and meanings are primarily abstract and of the spirit,  where they are physically only written on a paper or carried on the air by the sound of speech. It’s closer to the spirit because it is in the realm of the spirit.

Now, because it is not stated here what your brother said to provoke you to anger there is usually no speculation about it in our commentaries. But it’s important, identifying what something is by what its not. I venture that insulting someone without a cause here is implied immoral because your insulting for a non-messianic reason. All reasons for such a thing are allowed only in calling out people failure with that object and knowledge which represents only an ultimate kind. Did Jesus call the Pharisees vipers without a cause? Ok, he had a cause? What cause?

Raca, and diving deeper

That seems to be an insult only for a mistake. But if you say “Raca,”¹ to your brother without a cause, its hypocrisy, because you are also speaking “without a cause.” Why? It’s not only character assassination, character murder, so to speak, but anyone making a claim pertaining to the sin of another (especially about an OT claim to be Messiah) without aforethought, on the compulsion of tradition, or emotion, or without giving it the time it’s due, is instantly condemning oneself before the claim is known to be true or false. Charge your brother with being a fool and this implies that you can judge the moral soundness of the mind of another person without real spiritual evidence.  Is this not the perfect illustration of Pharisaical religion that sees Jesus fulfilling the supernatural ministry that the prophets predicted for the Messiah and openly reviling him as being demon inspired instead, without a cause?

It seems that Jesus might be saying that there is an unforgivable sin and a one that can be forgiven. One and you are in danger of judgment yourself. Tow, and you risk Hell.

Premeditation

The following example does not translate perfectly into an act of pure physical action, but I’ll try. If you kill someone browsing around the isles of your convenience store just because he looks suspicious and you think he is about to rob you, but you are unsure, and just feel that he will, it’s bad enough. You acted impetuously. But do it when you are triple sure by a host of false reasons that he is going to rob you and its worse. Its called premeditation. Then, it’s not just a sin of passion but a sin of engaged thought. Remember, not that Adam is more guilty than Eve, but that the sin of having superior knowledge and failing to act upon it is first in line for guilt before the sin of succumbing to your human weakness in acting impulsively (Hosea 6:7,  in Gen 3:7, both of their eyes were opened after Adam ate the fruit, and in 1 Tim 2:14 Paul gives men authority in the church because of a lesser tendency to be deceived)?

Jesus is saying “don’t be like the Pharisees, whose filthiness extends deep into the ground of their spirits. They are not ignorant. They know the Bible, they say their believe the prophets, they think over it and give it a lot of time, they pride themselves on their knowledge of it and their lives that follow it, but then with all this spiritual wealth, when it comes time to prove that the righteousness inside them is reflected by the righteousness they pretend, they use their resources to slander the Truth openly, myself.” 

Temple premeditation

Now, further down in this passage, Christ brings in the Temple, the ceremonial Law. He does this since he is obliquely addressing the Sadducees and the Pharisees who are the first persecutors of Messiah’s people and their form of religious faith specifically. But he is angling closer toward the real spiritual problem If you have any disagreement with your brother which is badly motivated, through a failure to apply knowledge or acting though emotion, don’t pretend to have faith in God by going to the Temple and going through the motions.

As obvious as this seems, are we to stop there knowing what is supposed to be pushing his feet along to the Temple and leaving his gift? You can choose to make the oracles a kind of voluntary thing as we do today when we speak of faith, but do you really believe Christ is behind our actions? The “salt” mentioned before is supposed to make peace between believers. The “salt” here is also supposed to be the additive that makes corrupt faith effective. this is for ensuring that we regard secondary the motions of the body to express it, such as Temple worship. Secondary to what is spiritually demanding such expression. Again, the emphasis is not on “be in peace with your brother” but “be in peace for this reason,” that being your faith that Jesus has fulfilled the OT revelation of him by the prophets, specifically messianic prophecy.

Jesus is not saying “be nice because of your faith in me,” or “worship at the Temple only before you are at peace with your brother.” This leaves “faith”  noun-normed, prosaic, common, flattened and open to your own supply of meaning by tradition, emotion or self-benefit. “Worship” would be left the same, and “peace” as well. He is saying that “you are to compose yourself according to your faith not only in my person but in the informed truth of my Word that I fulfill.” I am authoritative, Supreme Being to faith because of that Word, not the other way around.” Here we have the rest of the discourse: not about certain physical actions but certain faith motivations, those which have been lost, cast out and trampled today.

In closing on this passage, it is only necessary for me to make the remark that Jesus is not saying that you are to place a priority on peace rather than being right because if you don’t you can suffer in jail after your adversary wins his case against you. It means not to believe in Jesus in vain, or like the Pharisees believe in Messiah in vain, for the wrong reasons, or else you will find yourself judged or in Hell. But the threat of judgment is not the main motivator, its the threat of the possible truth that your reason for faith, despite all your efforts to be religious and all your feelings about Jesus,  may be poorly grounded or even entirely false. This is the same idea which Paul speaks of starting in 1 Cor 15:2:

2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: 6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

The gospel is fulfilled predictive prophecy, which is “good news,” once hidden but now revealed and understood. “According to the scriptures” is the Old Testament oracles of Messiah. I remind you that at the time of writing, Paul could not have been referring to his own writings or those of the other apostles as the scriptures. It’s way too early. If you don’t know the prophets, and either effectively or explicitly deny their place in Messiah’s faith, you have believed in vain, and it is not reasonable for you not to expect a warm welcome from Christ after you die, and I say that as the ultimate understatement.

Matthew 5:27-28 Ye have heard that it was said by them of  old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

This one has been very badly translated and continues today. The reason we like the church take is that it makes the sin of which it speaks apply only to those who fail at the same pedestrian conception of “righteousness” of which I speak. Yes, that is Jesus’s concern, but not even close to what he is most concerned about. This verse is not about doing this or not doing that, how you handle money,  not telling the truth, being impatient and violent, and, of course, about sex, and it’s sure not about having sexy thoughts and imagining something being done that this sinful.

Did you know that actions that can only be performed by the body cannot be emblematic of sin when they are imaged in the mind? Nor can those actions which are perfectly performed only in the spirit, and are spiritual, be the first representations of sins of physical performance? Religious action, or action in respect to a truth claim,  is a spiritual thing, and its outer reflections in going to the Temple, giving alms, reading scripture, praying, saying “I believe in God,” are not your main concern, but what is are the religious actions inside your head that motivates them and moves you to them.

Conversely, a particular carnal action is primarily a physical thing, and your thinking about it is an action out of its jurisdiction. Your not really walking if you imagine you walking in your spirit/mind, and not really murdering someone if you just imagine that you are in your spirit/mind. Your problem and the real murder is a murder of truth because the truth is in the exclusive domain of the Spirit, where the physical world only gives it objective expression as a symbol.

If you any take a truth claim, but especially one bearing on a metaphysical question that has the potential to be an ultimate life and death decision, and handle it roughly, dismissively, despicably, carelessly and without honest meditation, casing it aside for something else or for nothing, now that is real murder, regardless of how you act in your body to show it, like physically crucifying Jesus. Physically doing it is not a fait accompli. Do that in your spirit and you’re a goner, whether yo carry it out physically or not.  It cant be forgiven, not because its a more severe sin but because it can in your spiritual state be used by God as a physical symbol of you, and what you physically do you don’t want that to be a symbol of you, trust me. This is what Jesus calls a sin against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:28–29, Matthew 12:31–32, and Luke 12:10, 1 John 5:16).

That is the one executed in a place of true freedom, hidden from view, and where you are disinhibited from doing exactly what you want. What happens there is what it is. But anything you can do in your body, like crucifying Jesus in ignorance, can be forgiven if you repent because physical action before it is motivated by active engagement is still a potentiality and incomplete and imperfect reflection of your final spiritual state. You have a space to decide, but, of course, not deciding is, in the end, a decision as well.

I’ll handle more this more in a separate article. The difference is just the difference between a symbol and a signification. Signification, or meaning, is spiritual, and can only be imperfectly represented by a physical object. Signification or meaning or “truth,” is abstract, and if you don’t need a machine or a ruler to see it perfectly or know its there in the spirit.

True religion is spiritual, and any physical action does not necessarily describe a spiritual action. That is why imagining yourself having sex with a woman is a mere image and not the same as you physically doing it. Not that it’s not a problem, that it cant be a precursor, but it’s not held to the standard in respect to what shows sin, where what Jesus is concerned with are those sins that are known to be genuine, unapologetic and willful spiritual apostasy when there was a Holy choice.

The Bad Son

Look at it this way. If you have a son, and he has problems, and he’s into drugs, and keeps promising to get a job but keeps losing the jobs he finds, and messes up, and argues with you violently, even if he insults you in doing so, and forgets your birthday, but says he wants to get better and he still loves you. Neither you or anyone he is dealing with has the right to condemn him and cut him off because it is determined that he is a fundamentally and forever damaged person. This is because we can’t know who he really is deep inside by what he does or does not do. What you do is, again, a possible gauge of what’s going on inside you, but its not the final authority. You can still can put your body in alignment with yourself as time goes on.

But if you found a diary he wrote, privately, knowing that no one would ever read it but him, and it speaks of how much he hates you and indulges in speaking of all kinds of desires to kill and maim people, you are then permitted to think of him as a sociopath and a narcissist and nonredeemable,  and it is better to get him help and get him out of your life. You’re not going to entertain his actions as genuine expressions any longer, and you’re not going to deal with him, as only God can do this directly. This is why Jesus is not addressing physical action, but spiritual action. That is the killer, or else its what is going to, with God’s help, push through the carnal darkness and opacity as it struggles to see the light that is presented to it.

To lust after…

This portion of scripture is about, again, not about the adultery of bodies, but of spirits, and the adultery of spirits is not you just imagining you physically having sex with someone, but planning, determining, to do it secretly. The operational phrase here is “to lust after her,” the infinitive ἐπιθυμέω.

• Matthew 5:29-30 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Our first clue here is that the “body” can’t be cast into Hell. “Body” is a figure for your spirit body, which can be cast into Hell. Remember that anything your body does is not the perfect symbol of what your spirit is, but spiritual action is a symbol of your moral-spiritual state and motivations to God? And Jesus’s choice of the eye and the hand is not accidental. These are the two tools used to carry the truth of Jesus to the world. The eye is the eye of the one who reads the Old Testament, the exegete, the scribe, the one who is not ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. The one who sees the truth, The hand is the instrument of teaching it in the world, of carrying it to other people and doing things with it and for it. If you have something wrong in your ability to see the truth, don’t keep it, get rid of it. If the way you teach it has a defect, and you damage people by it, get rid of it. This may diminish you, but you will still live. Knowing about them and keeping them is a sign that you don’t really want to keep yourself from sinning.

• Matthew 5:31-32 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

“Man,”  the idea, has this been around the bend and the subject of endless catfights. Look, this is about the reasons, again, for faith, and about how we influence the world in a corrupt way to the truth that is clearly laid out but we refuse.

The man is the evangelist and the teacher and religious leader. The woman is the one under his authority, the sheep of his fold, his spiritual charge.  Adultery is the engagement of apostasy by teaching a messiah that is not a suffering servant, not Savior, not Jesus, but one come to fulfill your political and personal wishes. This is the adultery against God’s people you married as a scriptural and moral teacher when that relationship is a promise to God that you would honor and keep faithfully until death. Breaking that promise by false teaching exposes your “wife,” your “little ones,” to the influences of base carnal desire for another kind of religious truth and teacher, and another truth that is not Jesus, and leading her into entering into a spiritually adulterous relationship.  You cause her to commit adultery. You are also then an adulterer if you marry another in her place, and ultimately to God,  as this is a symbol of not practicing within the covenantal religious paradigm of Jesus as Messiah of the prophets, but have replaced it with one of your own desire. You have to have a good reason to put your wife away, to disassociate yourself from her. “Fornication” is her having already left you for another god, another truth. Divorce her then. But, if not, and you don’t a good reason (read: reason from the prophetic scriptures), your an adulterer and so you make her. If anyone marries her and becomes her new religious leader after you cast her out, this denotes a leader of another religious truth, not Jesus from the prophets, and she is then in a spiritually adulterous relationship.

• Matthew 5:33-37 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

This is interesting. Think of the man’s oath as a kind of prophecy that he gives for himself to fulfill, which Christ intended for him to pattern after that of God’s prophecy of Messiah Jesus. One type of oath/prophecy is an attempt to add a religious trope onto it to give it more power and assurance that it will be fulfilled. The other is “it will be done” or “I decline to make an oath.” When God promises Messiah he can’t swear by anything greater, and he promises “yea,” that he will send him. Mans evil alternative is not to plainly state a prophetic truth for himself and commit himself only to his word but to guarantee it by a religious trope, which all resolve to God. This means that your religion, your tradition, the Temple, your creeds, your theology, are all only pointers to and not in themselves what they are in the world to accomplish: signify Messiah Jesus and his fulfillments of the prophets, which is the heat of God and true religion. Again, this is Jesus telling the people to act like God did in promising Him and fulfilling His Word, and not putting anything in its place to try to impossibly make it greater than it already is.

• Matthew 5:38-42 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

Because this is how God has blessed the world (see 5:45) by Messiah, so you reflect what you have come to believe by the prophets. The carnal religious compulsion is a body mindlessly reacting to protect itself when threatened, and the Messiah of scripture is in no need of a defense from anything that comes against it that is motivated by mere mindless reflex.  The truth of Messiah from the oracles cant be threatened, it can only bless. Besides, the antagonists against Christ, and you, should be assumed capable of receiving redemption unless they willfully sin against the Holy Spirit by consciously, willfully, meditatively ascribing the revelation of God’s Truth to its antithesis in Satanic thought.

• Matthew 5:43-48 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

In conclusion, Jesus makes a symbol of corrupt interpretational tradition. The Torah never says that anyone is to hate their enemies. It’s a calculus that comes from a badly motivated explanation of the prophets in the scriptures about Messiah. Loving your neighbor as yourself is to give them what you have received of yourself from God, and that is Jesus found there in the Torah. But, if you love your neighbor, you hate your enemies? Simple? No.   It is not then a logical action to hate those who are antagonistic to your faith with the same energy you give to the love of Christ’s Truth, because the love of that truth sets your heart on Heaven and the Spirit, not this world or your body. Your neighbor is to be dealt with patience, compassion, and equity, because patience, compassion, and equity are already ultimately expressed by the gift of God to the world of Messiah, and as is your faith so is your life in a world that hates it.

Please see Christ and the Norming of Transcendence: Passing by Nehushtan

 

 

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1. Not a Greek word. Probably from the Aramaic “reka,”  meaning “empty.” ↩