The Kingdom of God

Matthew 5-7  The Sermon on the Mount  

This sermon comes at the very beginning of Jesus' public ministry. He is presenting the rules and lifestyles of the Kingdom of God, and all the rest of His public ministry is based on this concept.

It begins with the Beatitudes, His Road to Recovery; then proceeds to outline what we perceive as very extreme righteousness: You've heard it said . . . but I say to you. It looks so extreme to us, because our culture has taught us that right is relative to how evil the wrong is around us.  He says to be angry with your brother is tantamount to murder, and to look lustfully at another is committing adultery in your heart. Why pay attention to the speck in another's eye when you have a two-by-four board in your own eye--it's all very extreme.  

But Jesus says we must strive to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.  That's absolute. 

As human beings it is impossible to be that perfect, however hard we try. That's why Jesus came: to die. That's why He died: to pay our debt of sin. He had to be God to be the eternal Person who could pay our eternal debt in time. He also had to be human to qualify to pay our debt, to be able to take on Himself our sin-infested human nature, including every sin, from the least to the greatest, on the cross. 

When we admit that He paid our debt (my own debt I owe God for my sins) and let Him take our place on the cross, then God causes us to be born into His own family, with a new nature alongside our human one, powered by His own Holy Spirit. Then we have the power to say "NO!" to sin, and "YES!" to the right choice that we didn't see before.