Jesus insists that we should be careful not to advertise our good deeds, instead going out of our way to keep our devotion to God quiet and simple. In this passage, he issues a caution to us about our motives in even apparently selfless service becoming selfish, reorienting us to finding our value in being seen and known by God. He also redefines the nature of God’s kingdom, freeing us to quiet simplicity by affirming that the world-changing lifestyle that often impresses people is not what God is after.

When we face hardship and suffering, we naturally long for it to end. We look for God to step in when we’ve had enough and put a stop to it. But Paul says we “always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus.” This is tragic news unless we understand that we are carrying the very force that reverses the curse of sin and death. Just as the resurrected Jesus appeared to his followers with the marks of his suffering and death still visible, we will, in our own resurrection, bear the marks of our wounds as signs of victory.

Jesus wraps up the first part of the Sermon on the Mount by calling us to love our enemies. Through a series of provocative questions, Jesus challenges us to consider whether we are truly different from the predictable ways of the world – whether we’ve allowed our inner lives to be reordered by the way of the cross and have made declaring the message of the cross the essence of our outer lives.

With some additional teaching, plus helpful questions and thoughts from church members, we dive a bit deeper into the words of Jesus about retribution, violence, and generosity.

Jesus acknowledges that the way we know is defending ourselves and making sure those who hurt us experience some sort of penalty or retribution. But without any ambiguity in his words, he says he is bringing a new way of living into the world – a way that answers violence and harshness with peace and grace – and he calls us to join him in making that way a reality here and now. Did he really mean that?

After declaring that he will fulfill the law rather than abolish it, Jesus sets out to illustrate what this means for his followers. The relationship between murder and anger (last week’s sermon) is his first example of the law fulfilled in God’s people, then he continues by discussing lust and adultery, divorce, and the nature of vows and promises. In each case, Jesus is pointing his people toward the kind of life God created them to live, whole and restored to God’s image.

After insisting that he came to fulfill God’s law, Jesus launches into several examples, beginning with the law against murder. He goes a step further, telling his hearers that anger is just as destructive and consequential to the soul as murder is to the body, comparing anger to the smoldering trash fires of Gehenna. His goal, as always, is to invite us to be reshaped by grace into people who both bear God’s image and see His image in others.

When we say “Jesus Is Lord” we are saying that we intend to be his apprentices.  This is the fundamental meaning of discipleship. Jesus mentors us through the agency of other Christians, who teach us the art of living like Jesus.

A look at what Jesus taught about his relationship to scripture and what that means for us.

Jesus says we are the light of the world – that we are sent into the darkness and set on a hill for the world to see. Embracing that calling involves risk and vulnerability since we cannot be hidden from the darkness as the light both exposes brokenness and offer hope and shelter. But this is also the life empowered by Jesus himself, who is the true Light.