“Therefore
whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do
the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them
and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:19
Sometimes
we give in to the view of people that believe that the individual Christian is
really two parts: you are the new creature and the old man. When you sin, it's
the old man. So you expect that if you have the old man, he's going to sin, so
sin is just the old man doing his thing. It doesn't do any good to discipline
the old man, he's rotten anyway, so don't worry about it. So there is no reason
to discipline sin, no reason to deal with sin, that's just the old man who will
be around, doing his thing anyway. This is nothing but a rebirth of philosophical
dualism and it is anti-biblical.
That's
not what the Bible teaches. The Bible never teaches that we are to be lawless,
to live against a divine standard, that grace frees us from responsibility to
obey God's laws, that God has altered any of His moral standards. That, in
effect, is what Jesus is saying in this passage.
This
verse poses the question, "What is the Christian's relation to the law of
God?" We've been saved by faith; the Bible talks about being free from the
law, but what does it mean when it says we are still obligated to obey? What is
the believer's relationship to the law? Are we free from it or are we not free
from it?
Jesus
says if this Book is the perfect, authoritative word, then we need to be
committed to it, and base our lives on it. We have to read and study it every
day, to be able to “keep and teach” it like Jesus says here. Once we have
studied it, our next responsibility is not to “teach” it, but to “keep” it; to
practice it ourselves. And when we are committed to “keep” it ourselves, then
we can be teachers of others.
The Old
Testament prophet Ezra had the right commitment to the word of God: Ezra 7:10
says “For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord and to practice
it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.” Ezra studied it first,
then was committed to practice it in his own life, and then “teach” it in
Israel. We need to have that same commitment: study God’s word daily; put it
into practice ourselves; and then teach it to others.
The moral
laws of the Old Testament have not changed. Moral right and wrong do not change
with the times: it is always wrong to steal; it is always wrong to commit
adultery. And what helps us to distinguish that is that we find that the moral
laws of the Old Testament are all repeated and reaffirmed in the New Testament,
which is just what you would expect if these laws were unchanging.
We find
in the New Testament that Jesus reaffirms that “for this cause a man shall
leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh”, and what God has joined together, let no man separate.
His
moral law regarding marriage did not change. It was the same, Old Testament and
New Testament.
We see
in the 10 Commandments in the Old Testament that God said “Thou shalt not
steal’, and we find that reaffirmed in the New Testament:
We may
want it change; we may wish it would change; we may try to explain it away and
change it; but God’s moral law does not change. We should not be carried away
with the tide of modern morality into compromising or explaining away the
unchanging truth of the word of God. Jesus gave us a stern warning here: “Therefore
whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do
the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them
and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Dear
friends this Lenten Season let us ask God to give us the power to tell people
what God says, and not change it because “our times are changing” or we like
some alternate truth better. As disciples of Jesus Christ, may we be committed
to keep and teach the word of God.
May the
Lord help us. God Bless you
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