Sermon on the Mount

Many issues ail the Charismatic church. Near the top of the list is a lack of appropriate appreciation for the Old Testament. Many Christians have been raised to believe the untruth that the New Testament is the Bible of the church, having moved past the age of the Old Testament. This is ridiculous on many levels, but the most important point is that the Old Testament was the Bible for Jesus and all the Apostles. To move past the Hebrew Bible is to miss out on the wisdom that Jesus and the early believers leaned on.

Some scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries argued that Jesus opposed or superseded the Torah in the Sermon on the Mount. This view shaped the term “antitheses,” still in use in Matthean scholarship. Now, we know Jesus did no such thing, and his sermon was misread. But the idea is still well and alive in many churches. For instance,

Matthew 5:21-22 ESV
[21] “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ [22] But I say to you that 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.

This portion of the Sermon is said to contain “antitheses” – a term that communicated that Jesus’s teaching or stance was somewhat in opposition to the Torah. The Torah says one thing, but Jesus sees fit to update or refine it in his authority. Modern scholarship has since abandoned the antithetical reading. It is not the case that Jesus pits himself against the Torah. In fact, he earlier states this point clearly:

Matthew 5:17 ESV
“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.

That Matthew clearly states this point before the “antitheses” should be a hermeneutical handle or lens for reading the text. Jesus is not opposed to the Torah in any way. He came to fulfill the hopes held out in the Torah for Israel and humanity at large, as we have shown elsewhere. He could not be opposed to the thing he came to fulfill. Indeed, he further states:

Matthew 5:19 ESV
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.

Whatever else Jesus’s ministry might be about, opposing the Torah is not one of them. What, then, are the antitheses about if Jesus is not opposing the Torah? A few clues point us in the right direction. First, consider this verse:

Matthew 5:43 ESV
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

The first half, “You shall love your neighbor,” is from the Torah. The second half, “You shall hate your enemy,” does not exist anywhere in the Torah. But the quotation lumps together loving your neighbor and hating your enemy. To insist that Jesus quoted the Torah is to imply that he did not know the Law well. A more plausible alternative is that Jesus was not here directly interacting with the Torah.

Second, Matthew earlier, in the temptation account, shows Jesus using a standard formula when he cites the Torah: “It is written” (4:4, 7, 10). But in 5:43, he says, “You have heard that it was said.” This implies that Jesus is addressing interpretive oral traditions circulating in Second Temple Judaism that the people were likely familiar with. If we assume that Jesus accurately represented the interpretations of his day, that further suggests that the Torah had already been distorted. And there were understandable reasons for such a development. The people were colonized by a brutal state in Rome that did not always allow them to live in accordance with their ancestral ways. It is not difficult to see how some preachers may begin to hate their oppressors. Such distortions misrepresented God, and Jesus sought to restore the way of God consistent with the Torah.

The antithetical hypothesis, however, was correct in recognizing that Jesus goes beyond the text of the Torah. But he remains within its spirit. I think, at minimum, what Jesus does here is not different in kind from what other Rabbis did: hedging the Torah. Jesus is here building a fence around the Torah by helping his audience recognize early when they were in danger of breaking the law. Hence, he formulates other rules that, if observed, would prevent the breaking of the Torah. But, unlike other Rabbis, Jesus’ hedges are not merely preventative fences; they are also kingdom‑forming internalizations of Torah, shaping disciples into the renewed Israel – themes the epistles will later flesh out. For instance,

Matthew 5:27-28 ESV
[27] “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ [28] But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Exodus 20:14 forbids adultery, and Matthew 5:28 hedges the Exodus command. Committing adultery with a woman in one’s heart is not the same thing as physical adultery – if in doubt, know that women who have suffered abuse would be happy if it only happened in the hearts of men. Jesus here teaches an obvious truth: noumenal adultery precedes physical adultery. Hence, if a person catches adultery in their heart before it is full-grown and addresses it, they will not end up breaking the Torah. So, Jesus is calling his disciples to a higher level that protects against breaking the Torah.

Here is another example:

Obviously, anger and murder are different things. But anger typically precedes murder. Again, if someone catches anger rising in them and addresses it, they will not murder. Jesus is not legally equating anger with murder, but he is morally intensifying the command by addressing the root that leads to murder.

Let us take another example:

Matthew 5:38-39 ESV
[38] “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ [39] But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

This rule predates the Torah, as it appears in the Hammurabi Code centuries earlier. It was an improvement for its time because it ensured that the offended party did not exact greater damage in retaliation. If someone accidentally killed a neighbor’s goat, this law ensured that the offended party would not kill a herd. In the Torah, this law – better known as the Lex Talionis – is a judicial principle, not a personal ethic, since it applies to court cases, not interpersonal conflict. However, Jesus extends the application of the law to interpersonal relations, implying that he believed the spirit of the Torah was not merely about damage control but also about loving one’s enemy. Indeed, he soon would explicitly say that in Matthew 5:44-48.

It is worth noting that the Hebrew Bible contains a cluster of themes that lead to Jesus’s teaching on loving an enemy. To begin with, Torah’s “eye for eye” rule is not a command to retaliate. It is a limit on retaliation, a justice – and loving – principle. Besides, the Torah explicitly teaches principles that together amount to loving people who have done wrong. Leviticus 19 contains many laws pointing in this loving direction. For instance, 19:18 says ancient Israelites shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against a neighbor. Indeed, 19:17 forbids hating a brother in one’s heart. Also, Exodus 23:4-5 teaches the Israelites to care for an enemy’s ox and donkey. This ensures that an enemy’s business does not suffer. Hence, no matter how mad one might be against an individual, it was still one’s responsibility to ensure that the enemy’s means of livelihood did not suffer in certain cases.

Furthermore, Proverbs contain explicit turn-the-cheek teachings:

Proverbs 20:22 ESV
Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.

Proverbs 24:29 ESV
Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

Proverbs 25:21 ESV
If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,

These texts essentially teach not to repay evil with evil and, in certain circumstances, to care for an enemy in need.

Moreover, and most strikingly, Isaiah’s suffering Servant offers his cheeks to those who strike him (Isaiah 50:6). Matthew identifies Jesus as this Servant (Matthew 12:18–21), making ‘turn the other cheek’ a direct extension of the Servant’s ethic. So, Jesus’s teaching to resist escalation and love the enemy is not a new ethic. Jesus massages Torah’s wisdom to the specific context in which he taught while also revealing its fulfilled, kingdom‑shaped form. He is not asking his disciples to do what he has not embodied, as he soon would show what loving one’s enemy ultimately looks like.

The notion that the New Testament superseded the Hebrew Bible is both historically misinformed and spiritually impoverishing. It blinds believers to the very Scriptures Jesus read, prayed, taught, and fulfilled. When we treat the Old Testament as obsolete, we cut ourselves off from the wisdom that shaped the Messiah and the entire apostolic movement. The Hebrew Bible is not a discarded relic; it remains the soil from which the gospel grows. Indeed, we cannot adequately understand the gospel without significantly upping our appreciation of the Hebrew Bible. To ignore it is to rob ourselves of the contexts and covenant story that make Jesus intelligible. Recovering the Old Testament is not optional because, to be provocative, it is the primary Bible. The New Testament is mostly an inspired commentary on the Hebrew Bible, and, on the evidence of a typical Sunday sermon these days, it is quite counterproductive to read a commentary without knowing the primary text well.

The Sermon on the Mount Hedges the Torah