Sayings of Jesus: “You have heard it said . . .”

In Matthew chapters 5 through 7, we find a collection of Jesus’ most famous teachings that we know collectively as “The Sermon on the Mount.” These include some simple, straightforward statements; the famous Lord’s Prayer; and teachings through picture language in metaphors, parables, and pithy, enigmatic sayings—all designed to get people thinking: “What does Jesus mean by that…?” 

Whether these teachings were delivered all at one time, in one “sermon”—one discourse, in that order—or Matthew simply collated and presented them that way for literary purposes matters not from an authenticity perspective; Jesus would undoubtedly have said the same things, in slightly different ways, on more than one occasion.  

As the teachings move from subject to subject, they read more like bullet point notes than a verbatim transcript. It would have been fascinating to hear Jesus’ fuller exposition of some of the headline sayings and, if there were some, the Q&A sessions.

Jesus’ teachings are invariably challenging, but some seem relatively straightforward (“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you”). Some, though, are more enigmatic, if not shocking (“Love your enemies”). But pretty much everything requires pausing for reflection—there’s too much deep content to just breeze through it.

The Sermon comes very early on in Matthew’s Gospel. Chapter 3 has Jesus’ baptism, by John. Chapter 4 then has the temptation in the wilderness and the calling of the first disciples; it closes with this comprehensive summary of Jesus’ ministry:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and illness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralysed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.  

Chapter 5 begins with a large crowd once again following Jesus, so he ascends a hillside (an elevated position) to speak to them—obviously, there was no PA in those days, so natural acoustics had to be relied upon.

In this article, I want to focus on a phrase that appears six times in the second half of that chapter: “You have heard it said . . . But I say to you . . .” What did Jesus mean by that? What was it saying? 

Evangelical sermons today invariably assume Jesus to have been contrasting bad old “Jewish teaching” with good and right “Christian teaching.” The assumption has its roots in the Reformation and has been passed down ever since. The Reformers assumed that first-century Judaism was characterized by legalism, externalism, petty rules and regulations, hypocrisy, and “works-righteousness” (the idea that you could get to heaven through your own religious observance, or “works”). Judaism, they thought, was not a religion of grace through faith; the Christianity of Jesus and Paul had come to free people from it.

Modern scholarship now realizes this was a caricature, rather than the reality. However, it continues to feature in everyday evangelicalism (or “popular” Christianity, as academics call it). The typical sermon includes at least a whiff of that, if not something more explicit.

Faithful Jews in first-century Judaism never believed in “good works” getting you to heaven. They always understood that their relationship with God was by grace through faith (summed up in Habakkuk 2:4—which is quoted three times in the New Testament). Righteousness before God was always his gracious gift; it was never understood as something that could be earned.

Inevitably, some Jewish religious leaders of the day—the ones that Jesus clashed with—got stuff wrong, and undoubtedly some were hypocrites, too. But could we not say the same about contemporary Christianity (its evangelical wing included)? Surely only the most starry-eyed evangelical would think otherwise. Hypocrisy is a feature of human nature in religion in general, rather than something particular to one. Recent scandals in the evangelical church have made that patently obvious. 

Scholarly awareness of the true nature of first-century Judaism has been a fairly recent development, in the past seventy or so years, although Jewish scholars had long complained that the view evangelicalism had unquestioningly imbibed from the Reformers was completely wrong. Tragically, its consequences were not limited to the theological minutiae of religious beliefs. This distorted caricature became a “Christian” justification for the rise of antisemitism in twentieth-century Germany, ultimately leading to the Holocaust.      

The Reformers’ assumptions came about because they wrongly assumed their own circumstances vis-à-vis a corrupt mediaeval Catholicism to be synonymous with Jesus’ and Paul’s circumstances vis-à-vis a corrupt first-century Judaism. They presumed that Jesus and Paul had been fighting against hypocritical, legalistic religious practices in their day just as they were. They felt this was confirmed by their reading of Galatians and Romans (see https://www.steveburnhope.com/blog/reading-galatians).               

So if the “contrast” statements—“You have heard it said . . . But I say to you . . .”—were not about a “good, new Christianity” versus a “bad old Judaism,” what were they about?     

As always, to be reading the Bible well, we have to be reading it context. Here the scene is set by Jesus in Matthew 5:17–20, immediately preceding those statements:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets . . . Until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished . . . Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven . . .”

The context, therefore, is Jesus wanting to clearly affirm the ongoing validity of Torah—the commandments given to Israel as they left Egypt to become a self-governing nation under God—and especially, the headline Ten Commandments. He’s saying, “Let’s be clear that nothing I’m going to say to you should be read as undermining that.” But, there’s a “however” coming—reflected in the “contrast” statements that follow. Jesus IS affirming Torah, but he’s NOT affirming some of the interpretations and applications of Torah by some of the religious leaders of his day—those of the Pharisees, in particular.

This difference of interpretation and application was at the centre of Jesus’ disputes with religious leaders. We’re all aware (or we certainly should be aware) that there is no such thing as an uninterpreted text. Texts don’t interpret and apply themselves. If they did, we wouldn’t need sermons, books, and blogs. It’s why denominations feel the need to pronounce on correct beliefs and required behaviours.

Torah was no exception. According to the traditional count, there were 613 commandments. Which sounds like a lot. But even 613 could not cover all of the everyday life situations that people encountered, so guidance was needed as to which commandments were to be applied in what way to what situations.

Living faithfully to Torah was especially interpretation-dependent. And unsurprisingly, different religious leaders had different interpretations; different perspectives. Not unlike what we see today in the Christian world, but all the more important for a Jewish faith that was more directly based on a “written constitution.” Modern Christianity has tended to downplay “doing the right things” (emphasizing “believing the right things”), but Jewish faith starts from that.  

Christians today have to deal with biblical interpretation and application, which we know isn’t always clear and obvious; first-century Jews were no different concerning Torah interpretation and application. Jesus had become a well-known, respected rabbi, and people inevitably wanted to hear his take on that.

In short, the six “contrast” statements in Matthew 5 are all to do with the interpretation of commandments. Jesus is saying, “You have typically heard it explained and applied in this way,” by other rabbis, “I am saying you need to understand and apply it this way.”

A key part of Jesus’ approach was to focus not so much on the “what” of a commandment in the first instance. (For evangelicals today, the equivalent would be “the Bible says . . .”). Jesus was concerned for the “why” of a commandment—why it said it; which is the question that we should more often be asking, too. Failing to enquire about the “why”—as much or more than the “what”—is what leads to legalistic interpretations and applications (along with the classic error of ignoring the context).        

Jesus was forever concerned that the way people read and applied the commandments should be consistent with (a) the heart of God, (b) the overarching ethical framework and teaching of Torah as a whole, and (c) what he knew to be the reason for Torah having been given by God in the first place (but which others in their zeal for “the word” seemed to have forgotten—namely, people’s well-being—summed up in Mark 2:27, “The sabbath was made for people, not people for the sabbath”). Indeed, for their thriving—per John 10:10. Jesus’ arguments with Pharisees could be summed up as them zealously prioritizing doctrines—specifically, their take on doctrines—but Jesus prioritizing people.

So, when we read the “contrast” statements, the way to understand them is, “You’ve no doubt heard some religious leaders say [such-and-such], as their interpretation of something in the Bible, but I say this to you, as my interpretation.”

In some cases, what Jesus was coming against was less interpretations than additions (generally, behavioural expectations based on “tradition” or “traditional beliefs” rather than self-evidently on Scripture per se—something else that evangelical Christianity is not immune from).

The recurring error of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day was to understand “loving God” as synonymous with loving the commandments that he was presumed to love and especially, the interpretations and applications that he was presumed to love. Jesus, in contrast, was saying that loving God is fulfilled through loving the people God loves; he says the same today.  

And if that sounds a bit “wet”—a bit “touchy-feely” or “lovey-dovey”—then just be aware: that was the perspective of the Pharisees, too . . .