Jesus Said that our righteousness must be greater than that of the Pharisees. These Pharisee guys prided themselves on being righteous, at least they had enough loop holes in the law to make them appear such, the truth is their hearts were and are far from righteous.
Then Jesus comes along and says our righteousness must be more than that. One righteousness is legal the other is heart or spirit righteous. When we do good because that is who we are, the law even with it’s loop holes has nothing to offer. If we try to find our righteousness in the law, we will become hard on ourselves, and hard on others. When we know the heart of a matter, the rules just don’t matter. Tell me I cannot have sex with anyone but my wife, and my response might be what are you talking about? I can’t find one good reason for going out on my wife. I love my wife not out of fear but out of unconditional love. Because the law that says an eye for an eye has been turned up side down by Jesus, I don’t need a rule to tell me to love my enemies. Because I have died with Jesus to the law of sin and death I can now walk in resurrection life. This life, eternal life, is centered on others with Jesus my Lord at the very center of all.
We can go beyond the do’s and don’ts when we have heart, when our priority is love, unconditional love, we don’t need ten commandments to understand how important our neighbor is. We realize that we must not hurt him but only love him. To consider his needs ahead of our own. To do to him what we want him to do for us.
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