I recently watched a YouTube “Bible teacher” (whose ministry is named “The Grace Message”) claim that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was “the Law of Moses on steroids.” He explained that Jesus’ goal in His famous sermon was not to persuade His audience to obey any of the commandments He enumerated, but rather to persuade them that they were hopeless sinners who could not possibly live up to God’s standards of holiness. The Mosaic Law, allegedly designed by God for that same purpose, had failed. So Jesus allegedly raised the standards even higher in His Sermon on the Mount. It was “the Mosaic Law on steroids.” Hopefully His audience would realize that the standards He was enumerating were absolutely impossible to attain. And that would then help them see their need to be “saved by grace,” which in that YouTube Bible teacher’s mind eliminated any requirement to actually obey the commandments Jesus enumerated in His Sermon on the Mount.
“Heretical” is not too strong of a word to describe that kind of teaching. Beyond the fact that there is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount, or anywhere else in the New Testament, that affirms such a bizarre idea, and beyond the fact that it makes Jesus a deceiver who misled His most devoted followers, the New Testament epistles flatly contradict it. For example, recall just one of the commandments Jesus gave during His Sermon on the Mount:
I say to you, make no oath at all…. But let your statement be, “Yes, yes” or “No, no”; anything beyond these is of evil (Matt. 5:34, 37).
Now, according to our YouTube Bible teacher, Jesus was establishing an unattainable standard. Even His most devoted followers would find it impossible to not swear by means of oaths in order to convince others to trust them!
That, of course, is utterly absurd. Millions of Christians, myself included, have been able to live up to Jesus’ standard. I haven’t said, “I swear to God” (or anything similar) in order to convince someone to trust me since I was born again almost 50 years ago. Yet before my new birth, countless times during my childhood—when I was trying to convince a friend that I was actually telling the truth—I would swear, “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle through my eye, and eat a cow pie!” (Interestingly, if I had my fingers crossed behind my back, that could somehow relieve me of any responsibility to keep my solemn oaths!)
Did the apostle James think that Jesus’ commandment to always tell the simple truth was impossible to obey? Apparently not, since he wrote, “But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment” (James 5:12). Sounds as if James believed his readers had the capacity to obey a commandment found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. (And by the way, that is not the only instance of James affirming something Jesus said in His most famous sermon.)
Speaking of James, he had a very solemn warning for Bible teachers like our YouTube teacher who pervert God’s Word by turning it into a license to sin. He wrote, “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment” (James 3:1).
It is astounding that so many modern teachers, like our YouTube guy, tell us that we have nothing to fear regarding our future judgment because “Jesus died for all our sins, past, present and future.” Jesus’ death is thus portrayed as a license to sin. Yet James believed that teachers will incur a stricter judgment, which indicates that we will all be measured against certain strict standards when we stand before the Lord. And those standards will be even higher for teachers. If you want a preview of some of the universal standards, see Matthew 25:31-46.
In any case, a better explanation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is that it was a correction of the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees regarding the Mosaic Law. Jesus’ followers had lived all their lives under that false teaching, so He felt it was valuable and necessary to help them understand what God actually expected of His people. He wants them to keep, not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of it. And He doesn’t want them deceiving themselves by employing pharisaic loopholes.
Finally, why does God allow false teachers like our YouTube Bible teacher to continue promulgating their heresies? One reason is because it reveals the hearts of their followers. Recall that God once said to the people of Israel:
If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,: you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut. 13:1-3, emphasis added).
People who are attracted to obvious gross perversions of God’s Word reveal that they don’t love God. Rather, they “love the darkness” (John 3:19). Don’t be one of them!
