Building on the previous chapter, let’s consider Jesus’ fifth “You have said … but I say to you” statement:
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you (Matt. 5:38–42).
Did Jesus accurately cite the Mosaic Law?
Yes, the words “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” are found three times in the Mosaic Law (Ex. 21:24; Lev. 24:20; Deut. 19:21).
Was Jesus’ counterpoint a moral upgrade?
At first glance, one might think so. Note, however, that in each instance where the phrase “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is found in the Mosaic Law, it is contained within instructions related to Israel’s civil law. More specifically, they are found within instructions that regulated Israel’s court system. God expected Israel’s judges to administer justice.
The most obvious example of this is found in Deuteronomy 19. In the passage quoted below, I have italicized sections that verify the judicatory context:
A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed. If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing, then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days. The judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you. The rest will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such an evil thing among you. Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot (Deut. 19:15–21, emphasis added).
In none of the three places when “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is found in the Mosaic Law could it be rightly interpreted as a command for individual Israelites to take personal revenge for offenses committed against them. In fact, the Mosaic Law clearly forbade taking any personal revenge (which is one reason God established a court system in Israel):
You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord (Lev. 19:18).
Vengeance is Mine, and retribution (Deut. 32:35).
To recap, Jesus first quoted a civil statute from the Mosaic Law that charged court judges to administer justice, a statute that specifically referenced non-trivial offenses (“life for life, eye for eye”). Within that same Mosaic Law was a prohibition against individual Israelites taking personal revenge, so there is no way that the “eye for an eye” passages could be viewed as instructions for individual Israelites to take personal revenge. Then Jesus told His followers not to take revenge for offenses that were trivial by comparison to those listed in the “eye for an eye” passages. Moreover, He told them to offer their petty offenders an opportunity to do twice the harm they intended.
So we have a choice of interpretations. First, we could conclude that Jesus did not know that the “eye for an eye” instructions in the Mosaic Law had no application to His followers outside of Israel’s civil law, and that He was unaware that the same Law forbade His followers from taking personal revenge. We could assume that because of His ignorance regarding these matters, He thought it was time to correct the low moral standard of the Mosaic Law (of which He was the divine author). So, in a grand, divine moral flip-flop, He abolished the alleged law that required individual Israelites to take personal revenge for major offenses, and from the Sermon on the Mount onward, He would expect His followers never to do what the Mosaic Law allegedly required them to do, taking no revenge not even for petty offenses.
Or we can conclude that Jesus was alluding to the perverse teaching of the scribes and Pharisees—just as He had done in his previous four statements, in which he corrected their twisted teaching—in that they misapplied the “eye for an eye” passages in the Mosaic Law to justify revenge even for petty offenses. We might also conclude that Jesus was affirming that whereas Israel’s divinely established court system was designed for non-trivial offenses (such as murder and maiming), God expected trivial offenses such as cheek-slapping to be met with mercy that shames the offender.
The second of those two interpretations would seem most plausible, especially in light of the fact that the concept of mercy-shaming one’s offenders is an Old Testament ethic:
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink;
You will heap burning coals on his head,
And the Lord will reward you (Prov. 25:21–22).
Mercy-shaming one’s enemies is also contained in the Mosaic Law:
If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him; you shall surely release it with him (Ex. 23:4–5).
Honest readers of this passage who lived under the Mosaic Law would extrapolate the moral principle there and find application to other situations where they might “overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). Pity the pathetic Israelite who saw his enemy’s horse lying helpless under its load and said to himself, “I’m glad that isn’t a donkey, or I’d have to do something.”
In summary, the claim that Jesus was introducing, in His fifth statement, a moral upgrade to the Mosaic Law is simply not true. Jesus was only correcting the perverse twisting of the Mosaic Law by the scribes and Pharisees while affirming the ethic found in the Law.
By the way, Paul would agree that the ethics of not taking revenge and mercy-shaming one’s offenders have not changed from the old to the new covenant. Here are his own words to new covenant believers:
Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. But “if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink, for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:19–21).
In that passage, Paul quoted twice from the Old Testament (Deut. 32:35; Prov. 25:21–22), showing that he believed that the new covenant ethic was identical to the old covenant ethic. There was no upgrade. In His fifth statement, Jesus was not introducing a higher ethic.
The Sixth Statement
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:43–48).
Did Jesus accurately cite the Law of Moses?
Yes and no. If your New Testament translation capitalizes Old Testament quotations, Matthew 5:43 looks like this: “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.” The Mosaic Law certainly instructed the Israelites to love their neighbors, but it did not instruct them to hate their enemies. In fact, as we have already seen, it instructed them to love their enemies in certain situations, shaming their enemies by showing them underserved mercy and returning good for evil.
So once again, Jesus was citing not the Mosaic Law but what His audience had heard from their teachers, the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus’ counterpoint seems to indicate not only that the scribes and Pharisees taught their students to hate their enemies, but that their “neighbors” whom the Law commanded them to love were only those people who loved them.
Clearly, Jesus was not establishing a higher moral standard but affirming the old standard—a standard that God not only revealed in the Mosaic Law but has always been teaching all the earth’s inhabitants through His own example. Long before the giving of the Mosaic Law, God had been causing His sun to rise on the evil and good and sending crop-growing rain on the righteous and unrighteous, two examples of loving His enemies. This natural revelation is yet another reason why it is absurd to claim that loving one’s enemies is a new, higher moral standard introduced by Jesus. God has expected people to love their enemies from the very beginning, and He included that standard in the Mosaic Law.
New Covenant Sins That Were Not Old Covenant Sins?
To claim that Jesus was introducing new, higher moral standards in these six statements is to claim that prior to the Sermon on the Mount, all of the following were acceptable to God: (1) spewing venomous, hateful words against one’s brothers; (2) elevating ceremonial laws above moral laws, as exemplified by the act of presenting a sacrifice at the altar even when one knew he had a broken relationship; (3) lustfully looking at another man’s wife; (4) divorce for any reason, as long as one gave his wife a divorce certificate; (5) lying; (6) taking personal revenge for even minor offenses; and (7) hating those who have caused offense.
A cursory reading of the Mosaic Law should show the grave error of such a conclusion. All seven items in my list above would be violations of God’s commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself, an old covenant law. Thus, none of them would have been acceptable to God even prior to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In other words, Jesus could not have been introducing new, higher moral standards.
Beyond this, one would expect—if Jesus did morally upgrade the Mosaic Law—that the apostolic authors of the New Testament epistles would have mentioned such an important theological and moral fact. However, not only do they never mention it, but they actually refute it, affirming old covenant ethic premises—just as they were originally written—as binding upon their new covenant readers.
For example, I’ve already cited Romans 12:19-21, in which Paul quoted two Old Testament passages to support his prohibition of revenge and his admonition to love one’s enemies. Paul indisputably believed both ethics predated the Sermon on the Mount, and for good reason: because they did!
Another example is the Old Testament commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18), a commandment Jesus referred to as one of the two greatest. It is also the single greatest social commandment (law regarding relationships with others) of the old covenant. It was carried over from the Law of Moses to the Law of Christ, as shown by its endorsement by Christ (who told His disciples to teach their disciples all that He commanded them), as well as by its endorsement by the apostles Paul and James in their epistles to new covenant believers. The Old Testament commandment that Jesus said is the second-greatest in the Mosaic Law is superseded by no higher ethic in the new covenant, again conclusively proving that there has been no moral upgrade.
James wrote:
If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well (Jas. 2:8).
Here, James referred to the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself as the “royal law,” clearly elevating it above all other laws, and he informed his new covenant readers that they were “doing well” if they were fulfilling it. He did not call on them to keep a higher social or moral standard than what was found in the Mosaic Law.
The apostle Paul similarly believed the new covenant believer who loves his neighbor as himself “does well,” as he fulfills all the other social commandments of the Mosaic Law. Paul, like James, did not hold his readers to any higher social or moral standard than what was found in the Mosaic Law. To the Roman Christians he wrote:
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8–10).
To the Galatian Christians, Paul similarly wrote:
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:13–14).
If Paul or James believed God had radically altered or upgraded the moral ethics revealed in the Mosaic Law (as Anabaptists like Weaver and Zimmerman want us to believe), why did both of them hold up these summary statements contained in the Mosaic Law as the standard their readers should strive to attain? Why did they, along with all the other authors of the New Testament epistles, never mention that the moral standards of the new covenant were higher than those of the old covenant?
To buttress their argument regarding the alleged higher standards of the Sermon on the Mount, some Anabaptists appeal to passages in the New Testament epistles that speak of the passing of the Mosaic Law with the demise of the old covenant and the inauguration of the new covenant. As we have just seen, however, although it can rightly be said that the ceremonial aspects of the Law of Moses are no longer binding, it cannot rightly be said that the moral and social ethics found in the Law of Moses have ceased to be binding, as those ethics predate the Law of Moses (being found in every human conscience) and were clearly carried over into the Law of Christ.
Thus, when we read Anabaptist prooftexts such as Hebrews 7:12, “For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also,” we can be sure that the author is speaking of changes in the laws regarding the Levitical priesthood, not laws of fundamental ethics and morality. Under the new covenant, none of the laws that regulated the Levitical priests are relevant, as the Levitical priesthood has ceased. We have a new High Priest after the order of Melchizedek (see Heb. 7).
One Final Argument
But what about the “new commandment” that Christ gave to His apostles, a commandment to love one another, even as He loved them (John 13:34–35)? Was Jesus not establishing a higher ethic with a higher standard than what was found in the Mosaic Law?
“New,” of course, does not necessarily mean “superior,” “higher,” or even “different.” It just means “new” as in “not existing before.” Up to that point, Jesus had not told any of His followers to love each other as He loved them. He had only told them (through the Mosaic Law) to love their neighbors as themselves and to love their enemies.
But how did Jesus love His disciples? He loved them perfectly according to the standard He had given in the Mosaic Law, loving them as He loved Himself. So Jesus’ new commandment was just a rephrasing of an old commandment. Instead of stating, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” or “Treat others just as you want to be treated,” Jesus said, “Imitate Me.” That new commandment was slightly different in that it specifically addressed whom His followers should love: not their “neighbors” or “others” but one another.
Jesus repeated the same new commandment to His apostles a short time after He first spoke it, further elucidating His meaning:
This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends (John 15:12–13).
John referenced this statement in his first epistle:
We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? (1 John 3:16–17).
We can see that “laying down our lives for the brethren” does not necessarily refer to literally dying on their behalf, but rather to making sacrifices on their behalf, an ethic that certainly existed prior to Jesus’ words in John 13 and 15. The Mosaic Law was full of requirements for the people of Israel to make sacrifices on behalf of their fellow Israelites, particularly on behalf of the poor, whom John also highlighted.
The Irony
What is perhaps most ironic about those who believe Jesus upgraded moral standards in His six statements in the Sermon on the Mount is that their interpretations of those allegedly higher moral standards sometimes require the transgression of what allegedly must be “lower standards.” For example, Anabaptism’s unique theology regarding nonresistance, based on Jesus’ words about not resisting an evil person, requires Anabaptists not to use any force to stop evil people from harming others. But this “act of love” toward perpetrators entails an act of hatred for the victims, in that it violates the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
Similarly, the unique theology of some Anabaptists regarding divorce and remarriage, based on their interpretation of Jesus’ words in which He equated divorce and remarriage to adultery, requires new Anabaptist converts to divorce their spouses and break up their families if they have previously been married and divorced—hardly an act of love toward their current spouses and common children, and one that requires them to break their marriage vows, repeating their previous sin. But Anabaptist theology about divorce and remarriage is all based on the premise that Jesus upgraded the related standards, and that therefore the old covenant standards can be ignored. On the contrary, they should not be ignored, because Jesus was not upgrading them.
Jesus delivered His Sermon on the Mount during the time when the old covenant was still in force, several years prior to the inauguration of the new covenant at His death and resurrection. If His most famous sermon was a revelation of new laws for the new covenant, laws that reflect a higher moral standard than what was found in the Mosaic Law, did Jesus actually not expect His audience to obey those commandments until after His death and resurrection? Or was He expecting them to live up to standards that are unique to the new covenant while still living under the old covenant? Did people in His audience who were living up to the old covenant standards and thus were righteous before God suddenly become unrighteous when the standards were upgraded that day? Were people who had been on the path to heaven suddenly transferred to the path to destruction? Anabaptists and their spiritual counterparts have no answer to these questions.
In conclusion, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was not an abrupt upending of the morality and ethics God had been teaching every person since Adam, strangely making unacceptable what had been acceptable to Him for millennia. It was not the New Testament equivalent of King Rehoboam’s ratcheting up of Solomon’s standards when he told the people of Israel, “Whereas my father loaded you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions!” (1 Kings 12:11).
In contrast, Jesus placed on His disciples a yoke that is easy (alternatively translated “comfortable” or “pleasant”) and a burden that is light (Matt. 11:30) by focusing their energies on simply loving God and neighbor, and by empowering them through His indwelling Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was a renewal and restatement of what God had already revealed from the beginning through every rain shower and sunrise (Matt. 5:44–45), through the voice of every person’s conscience (Rom. 2:14–16), and through what Jesus referred to as “the weightier provisions” of the Mosaic Law, namely “justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23). Any interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount that contradicts God’s revelation through creation, conscience, and the crucial moral elements of the Mosaic Law should be rejected.
Once we grasp that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was not the introduction of a moral upgrade but, rather, a recovery of fundamental moral principles found in the Mosaic Law, then we can interpret it properly within its biblical context. It must be interpreted as harmonious with the Mosaic Law.
