Exceed The Righteousness

To enter the kingdom of heaven, our righteousness, said Jesus, must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 5.20).  What does this mean?      It doesn’t mean that if the Pharisees fasted twice each week (Lk. 18.12), we must fast at least three times each week. What it means is explained in what follows, beginning with v 21, which shows that exceeding righteousness is a life governed by love for God and your neighbor (22.36–40).

Love righteousness isn’t characterized by what it refrains from (legalists are only as good as trying not to be as bad can make them*) but has a superabundant spirit—a willingness to go above and beyond, a willingness that overflows its obligation in service and sacrifice. Love willingly takes two blows if two there must be; it ungrudgingly gives its cloak as well as coat; it happily goes twice as far as it is compelled to go.

Love righteousness has a redemptive quality to it—a lifting power—that persists despite ingratitude, misunderstanding, and persecution. Regardless of how it’s treated, love loves on for the good of the one loved. It’s in this way that men come in contact with the touch of God, by coming in contact with one who loves them as God does (5.16).

Apart from the exceeding righteousness that is love, a man cannot keep enough rules or do enough deeds to make himself a Christian (1 Cor. 13.1–3).  *“It was a hard thing as Christ taught it to be a Christian, and it was not so very difficult to be a creditable Pharisee; but it was better to die trying to be a Christian than to live having succeeded in becoming a perfect Pharisee” (John Watson, Respectable Sins, 117).

Kenny Chumbley