Click here to watch the video of the sermon only. 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When it comes to messing up God’s law, there are two different ways to get it wrong, both of which Jesus addresses in our Gospel lesson today from Matthew chapter 5. The first way is something called legalism, and the other one is called antinomianism.

Legalism, which maybe you’ve heard of before, is the idea that the way that a person gets to heaven is through their own keeping of the law. This is the belief that salvation comes not from Christ, and His atoning sacrifice for us on the cross, but by our obedience to God’s commandments. In its essence, legalism reduces Christianity simply to a list of “do’s and don’ts,” and then states that if a person wants be saved, he or she just needs to follow all the rules. But that, of course, is easier said than done. Because when a person actually reads the Bible, and takes what it says there seriously, very quickly they come to realize that keeping God’s law perfectly is a lot harder than it sounds. In fact, keeping it perfectly is impossible. As Saint Paul says in Galatians chapter 3, “For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scriptures imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” Yes, God’s law does tell us what a person needs to do in order to be saved, but that doesn’t mean that it gives us the power to do it. And so, those who try to gain heaven by their obedience, either end up giving up and despairing, or they try and change the standard so that its easier for them to meet.

And that’s what Jesus is speaking to in the second half of our text with His example of the fifth commandment. The fifth commandment is “you shall not murder.” Now, most people can actually claim that they’ve never killed someone before and broken that commandment in a literal way. But Jesus teaches us here that there are other ways to break it too. He says, “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” To keep the fifth commandment in its entirety doesn’t just mean that you don’t commit literal murder, it means not having any anger or animosity towards other people at all. It means always showing love to others, even including the people that don’t love you back. It means having patience and forgiveness with every friend, family member, and fellow neighbor that does you wrong. Keeping the fifth commandment, and all of God’s commandments for that matter, isn’t just about what goes on on the outside. It’s about everything that happens on the inside too. God sees the heart, and His law requires that every single desire of our heart, every thought, every feeling, every emotion, needs to be pure. 

And because legalists think that salvation can be achieved by keeping the law, you can see why they’re so quick to try and change it when it gets too hard. They always end up adding commandments that make it look like they’re actually keeping the real commandment, even though they aren’t.

But as the Bible teaches us over and over again, there is absolutely no hope for salvation through our obedience to the law. As Saint Paul tells us again in the book of Galatians, “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law.” And as Jesus also explains in our reading, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” In order to be saved, we need to have a righteousness that consists in more than just an outward show of good deeds. We need to do more than what the scribes and Pharisees could do. They were very good at putting on appearances. If you would have followed one of them around and watched them for a whole day, it would have been very hard to catch them in the act of doing something that looked sinful. But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t sin. And God’s law doesn’t just ask us to try, it tells us that we have to be perfect. If we want to be saved by keeping the commandments, we have to keep all of them in such a way where we fulfill them in every part. And there’s only One person who can and has done that.

The real reason why legalism is so bad, is not simply because it leads people to make up laws, and causes them to become self-righteous hypocrites, but because it robs Christ of His glory, and it takes away all the true comfort and certainty of salvation that we find in Him. If we’re saved by the things that we do, then what’s the point of what Jesus did? Why did Christ even come down from heaven at all? And why did He have to suffer and die on the cross? If all that matters is doing our best, and that’s good enough, then why do we even need a Savior? We don’t. As Saint Paul once said, “if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” Real Christians put their hope in Jesus and not in their works. They trust in what Christ did them, and not in what they do for others, because what we do is never enough. Jesus alone has the kind of righteousness that truly surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees. His righteousness is the only one that avails before God, and brings us the assurance of eternal life. 

So, that’s one way to get God’s law wrong, and that’s through legalism. But legalism isn’t the only way to do that, and it might not even be the one that we usually struggle the most with as Lutheran. If we know anything in the Lutheran Church it’s that salvation is not by our works. Faith alone is our constant cry. And that’s good. But there’s also a danger waiting for us on the other side too. 

Apart from legalism, the other great threat in misunderstanding and misapplying God’s law is something called antinomianism. The word antinomianism literally means, “anti-law.” It’s the idea that because Jesus died for our sins, and won complete and total salvation for us on the cross, now we can just ignore God’s law and do whatever we want instead. An antinomian operates under the false assumption that because its impossible even for Christians to keep the law perfectly, we don’t need even need to try. They act as if since God forgives us of our sin, now our sins don’t really matter. We can do sinful things on purpose and it won’t have any effect on our faith. In fact, antinomians believe that faith can still exist even without repentance. They give the impression that after conversion, we stay the same way that we were before, and still commit sin without remorse.

But that not what we read in the Bible. Here’s what Saint Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson today: “You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” When we get baptized into Christ, we are made new. We are joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus, so that we might walk in newness of life. Were set free from curse of law, not so that we can return to our old life of willful sin, but so that we can follow Jesus in a new life of true good works and love for our neighbor. A life that is not contrary to God’s law, but guided by what it says. 

The law always has a place in our life as Christians. Even though it’s not the thing that gives us salvation, it does shows us how we’re supposed to live as people who have been saved. As Jesus says in our gospel lesson, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

Jesus came to fulfill the law’s demands, not to get rid of them. He came to live and die for us not so that we would be freed to live in whatever way that we want, but so we might be free to live for Him. And, for that, the law still instructs us. Even and especially as Christians, it gives us encouragement and guidance. Yes, it continues to accuse us of our sins, because we still have a sinful nature and need ongoing forgivness, but it doesn’t only accuse us. When we hear Jesus speak in our text today about the fifth commandment, He isn’t just trying to show us the great depth of our sins, He’s also teaching us about forgiveness and reconciliation and how we’re supposed to do it. He's showing us what a life of faith and repentance actually looks like. As Jesus says, “if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

As Christians we are to be constantly forgiving of others just as God has forgiven us. We even pray that God would help us do that in the Lord’s Prayer. We don’t act as if just because we love God, and have faith in Him, that means that it’s okay for us hate our brother, and withhold forgiveness from people that we don’t like. That would be ignoring God’s law instead of learning from it. And if we live that way, we prove by our actions that the Holy Spirit doesn’t live within us, and we are not real Christians. As Saint John tells us in his first epistle, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar.” Our relationship with the Lord does not exist independent of our relationship to each other. To use Jesus’ example, we can’t give our money to the church, and think that God is pleased with us for that, while at the same time we despise and hate someone else that He’s put in our life. That’s antinomianism. It’s dangerous not because it says that the law saves us, but because it says that the law doesn’t need to be observed at all. Even worse, it uses the gospel, and the free forgiveness found in Christ, as an excuse to do sinful things. It turns the message of salvation into a message of rebellion.

Antinomianism will always be a threat to the Lutheran Church. That’s because we do have the pure gospel. We know that it’s Christ alone who saves us. We know that we’ve sinned against God by our thoughts, words, and deeds. We know that we’ve not kept His law perfectly in our lives and because of that we deserve nothing but wrath and punishment. And yet, we also know that God in His mercy sent His Son to be our Savior. We know that Christ came to the fulfill the law and kept every part of it in our place. We know that He alone is our righteousness and that we receive that righteousness through faith alone. We know that that God saves us not by our works, but by the work of Jesus. And we know that Jesus has already forgiven us for all of our sins. And because we know all those things, we can be sure that the devil will constantly try and use them against us. He will tempt us to see the gospel as an excuse to break the law, and pit those two things against each other, as if they’re enemies.

But those two things are not enemies. It’s not as if one of them is bad and the other one is good. They’re both good. They both come from God. Both of them are part of His message to us in the Scriptures and necessary for our salvation. It’s just that they have different purposes, and we need to use them correctly. As our hymn we sang today said, “the law of God is good and wise it sets His will before our eyes, shows us the way of righteousness and dooms to death when we transgress.” The chief purpose of the law is to show us our sins and the great need we have for Jesus. It’s to be a hammer like Jeremiah calls it that breaks rocks to pieces and crushes the proud thoughts of our heart. The law always accuses, always condemns, and never saves. But that’s not all that it does. Not for those who put their hope in Christ. For us Christians, the law is the way that God teaches us to conduct ourselves in this world. It shows us what kind of good works to do now that we know that our good works don’t save us, because Jesus saves us.

So may God guard and keep us from abusing His law. Whether that’s through legalism or antinomianism, may the Lord protect us from every false view of His commandments, so that we would continue to trust in Christ alone for salvation, and live the kind of life that He’s called us to. In Jesus Name. Amen.