What Difference Does It Make?

 What Difference Does It Make?

Matthew 5:13-20[1]

One of the challenges we face in our world is that there is a whole generation of people who have learned to thrive in life without any kind of real dependence on God. In some families, there are multiple generations. It’s not that they outright deny that God exists. They just don’t see what difference it makes whether you believe in God or not. And many of those people look at all the churches around them and they genuinely don’t get it. They don’t understand why anyone would bother spending their time participating in “organized religion.” They see those of us who are engaged in the practice of our faith as hypocrites at worst and out of date at best. Personally, I think this is at least to some extent because we who profess faith in Jesus Christ have not adequately shown them what difference it makes.

As we discussed last week, it’s important to recognize that, especially in the “Sermon on the Mount” where Jesus talks about fulfilling the law and the prophets, grace always comes first in our relationship with God. That’s not only foundational for our lives, but it’s also necessary for our understanding of Scripture. The balance between grace and demand can be found throughout Scripture. In the Bible, God’s grace, God’s gift of love and life and mercy, always precedes any demands. This is true from the Ten Commandments to Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” to the Apostles’ teachings. Grace always comes first. But grace also always brings demands. The Bible insists that we who have experienced God’s amazing grace are to demonstrate it in the way we relate to others.[2]

This balance is crucial for our understanding of Scripture because when we downplay one side or the other, it skews our whole viewpoint. When we overlook the fact that all the demands in “the law and the prophets” that Jesus said would be “fulfilled” are grounded in the grace and mercy and love of God, we turn those demands into rigid rules that are applied in a strict and severe way. That’s just as true for the New Testament as it is for the Old. And there are actual faith communities in our world who do just that: enforce a rigid set of rules lifted out of context from Scripture and expel those who don’t live up to them. I don’t think that’s a very accurate view of the God who throughout the ages has lovingly called the human family into relationship with himself.

The opposite is also true: it’s all too easy to focus only on grace and ignore the very real demands that are found not just in the Hebrew Bible, but also throughout the New Testament, especially in the “Sermon on the Mount.” When we make that mistake, we miss the whole point of God’s grace: to shape us into the people we we’re meant to be. In the words of the pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when we ignore the demand for heartfelt obedience to God’s commands, we turn all that God has done for us into “cheap grace.”[3] I think we can also call to mind those in our world who expect a loving God to be tolerant of any and all kinds of behavior, regardless of the consequences to others or ourselves! Again, I don’t think that’s a very accurate view of the God whose love has always called the human family to practice justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another.

We see this balance reflected when we look at Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” as a whole. As we saw last week, Jesus opens this “sermon” with the beatitudes, which are a declaration of the grace that God pours out on all people through Jesus Christ. It’s important for us to see that grace always comes first. But in our lesson for today, Jesus insists that “until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Mt 5:18). That may sound strange, but he’s just echoing what the Scripture teaches from start to finish: grace always comes first, but grace also always brings demands.

Immediately following our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus begins to teach his disciples what it means that he was calling them to a “greater” righteousness than what the “scribes and the Pharisees” practiced. In contrast to the way they spelled out in great detail the precise actions one could or could not do, Jesus called his disciples to obey God from the heart. That would mean not only not killing others, it would also meant avoiding anything that leads us to devalue the life of another. Jesus didn’t make it easier to obey God’s commands, he made it harder. He went back to God’s original intention: to produce a people who would practice God’s justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another. As Jesus would later teach in the “Sermon on the Mount,” when we “do unto others as we would have others do unto us,” we fulfill all that God expects of his people in the law and the prophets (Mt 7:12). And I would add that we fulfill all that Jesus and the Apostles taught as well. And we do it because God’s grace has changed our hearts. When God’s grace changes our hearts, we can’t help but live in a way that shows the difference grace makes.

I think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said, “you are the light of the world.”[4] I think he wants us to show the difference God’s grace makes in our lives every day. And if you’re wondering what that looks like, our lesson from Isaiah puts it this way: “Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless” (Isa 58:6-7). It sounds a lot like what Jesus said in Matthew 25:35-36, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”[5] God’s grace makes it possible for us to live our lives as light for the world. When we do so, we show the very real difference God’s grace makes.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/5/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Perry Yoder, “Liberated by Law,” Sojourners Magazine, September-October 1999  (Vol. 28, No. 5), 46; Patrick D. Miller, Deuteronomy, 113; O. Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics II:363.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4, 43.  For him, “cheap grace” meant that God’s grace “justifies sin” without making any difference in the sinner, so that “everything can stay in its old ways.”

[4] It is important to recognize that Jesus speaks of being light for the “world” not just for the few: Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 125-26; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.2:804-805.

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 127: “It is not that the wretched are the object of Christian love or the fulfilment of a moral duty; they are the latent presence of the coming Saviour and Judge in the world.”