As I am preparing to preach from Matthew 5:27-30 this coming Sunday, I ran across an excellent statement from Jonathan Pennington regarding the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. When people read Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon, there is a tendency among some to suggest that Jesus is equating all sins. Some people read Jesus’ words as teaching that anger and murder are essentially equal, but this cannot be sustained from the text or experience. While anger and murder will both render us guilty before a holy God, they are not essentially the same.
Consider Jonathan Pennington’s comments on Matthew 5:27-30 from his book, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing:
Even as we should not think of Jesus as raising the bar relative to the Old Testament ethics, so we must not err in the other direction and think that Jesus is now equating all sins. That is, in this saying, just as with his discussion of murder and anger above, Jesus is not creating a new sin syllogism that equates lust to adultery in a coextensive way. One will often hear interpreters suggest that Jesus is saying that being angry is just as bad as murder, or more commonly, that lust is just as bad as adultery (5:27-30). But this is to flatten out important distinctions and to miss the point of the teaching. Jesus is not making all sins equal; murder and adultery are indeed worse sins with greater social and personal consequences than hating and lusting. The point is not a great equalization of all sins – beating one’s spouse is indeed worse than a biting spousal remark; sexually abusing a child is truly worse than neglecting their need for affection, and so on. Not all sins are equal. Jesus’s point is not to bring murder down to the level of fallout from anger, not does he equate adultery with lust, thus removing all distinctions. Rather, these heart-focused interpretations in the Sermon on the Mount reveal the true depth of the matter. They are a strong push against the human tendency to focus on external actions and make godliness a matter of appropriate behavior regardless of the heart’s intent.
Unfortunately, I think that in our attempts to make people feel comfortable, we have downplayed sin by trying to equate all sins as roughly the same. Yet, there is no need to do such a thing! People do not need to be made to feel comfortable with their sins. Instead, they need to be made aware of Jesus’ intention to reconcile all sinners to God. Jesus is the only sufficient Savior for our sins against a holy God. And He will receive any and all who call upon Him in faith and repentance.
