Matthew 5:48

Matthew 5:48

If we are to obey the injunction of the text it is necessary that we have faith in the fact.

I. It is implied in our text, it is taught throughout the New Testament, and it is confirmed by experience, that there is nothing so morally helpful as faith in God. We shall not be surprised at the practical value and the moral effects of faith, if we consider for a moment all that it implies. It implies, first of all, a conviction that the forces of nature are being made to work together for good, under the guidance and control of an intelligent and beneficent will. If so, it is worth our while to strive after perfection. On the Christian view the universe is rationally organized and morally governed, and therefore attempting to act morally and rationally is attempting to bring oneself into harmony with one's surroundings. Whereas, on the atheistic view, since there is no rationality or goodness outside of us, endeavouring to be wise or good is, in reality, going contrary to nature, acting in opposition to the laws of the universe.

II. Faith implies much more than conviction. Belief is not faith. Suppose a man believes in the righteousness and binding force of the Ten Commandments and breaks them all, his belief, so far from making him a good man, is the strongest proof of his unutterable degradation. The faith which St. James says cannot save is the faith of mere belief. The faith which St. Paul says can save is the faith that worketh by love. The proper synonym for faith is trust, and trust is an affection of the heart, not a faculty of the head. It is the acting out of belief. To have faith in God is to have had one's heart beating in sympathetic unison with God's heart; to have been inspired with the Divine enthusiasm for righteousness; to have felt one with Godin nature, in sympathy, in aim.

III. Once more, faith implies joy in the present life and hope for the future; and these are states of mind peculiarly conducive to right-doing. The man of faith may be happy amid external disasters, ay, too happy to do wrong.

A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil,p. 73.

I. The Sermon on the Mount is often regarded as merely a code of morality, which may be isolated with advantage from the metaphysics of the Christian creed. But if we regard the Sermon on the Mount as merely a moral code we are at once struck by its intense, its impracticable, idealism. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;" "Judge not;" "Be ye perfect," these and the like commandments, however much they may have been anticipated in India, or practised by Essene recluses, or thought out independently by Stoics here and there, are in too defiant contradiction of the apparent laws of social progress ever to have commanded the assent of the most practical portion of our race, except in the conscious assurance of a superhuman law under the human paradox, a Divine power under the human life. And it is to this assurance that the whole of the Sermon on the Mount appeals. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." It puts before us an absolutely perfect Being as the ultimate standard for our conduct, consecrating all our ideal aspirations, by assuring us that they are not the mere mental fringes of our experience as it fades into unknown space, but justifiable appropriations by anticipation of a reality now outside us, but in time destined to be ours.

II. Christianity not only provides us with an absolute end for conduct, which, as being real, makes our moral ideals speculatively justifiable, but it provides us with an adequate knowledge of that end in the teaching and character and life and death of Jesus Christ that is, with a standardfor conduct which, as having been realized in human history, makes our moral ideals practically possible. If the Sermon on the Mount had been and remained a code of ethics, written upon tables of stone, it might have been liable to the charges of inadequacy and exaggeration which have so often been brought against it. But in the face of the life of Jesus Christ it is wilful perversity to call the Sermon on the Mount exaggerated. In the face of the fruits of His death it is impossible to call it inadequate, or to deny that the gradual amelioration of our servile, our domestic, our social, our political, our intellectual, our moral life was all contained by implication in the precept, "Be ye perfect," and has been wrought out under the influence of the Christian faith in obedience to the Christian sanction.

J. R. Illingworth, Oxford Review and Journal,April 26th, 1883.

I. To whom are the words spoken? They are not meant for all. The words are for His disciples, and for them only.

II. Here is Christ's idea of His holy religion. This is what it is to do for us it is to make us like God.

III. Holiness is the healthy development of the Divine nature that is within us. It means that in all this round of life we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

M. G. Pearse, Thoughts on Holiness,p. 3, also p. 23.

I. Look at the raw material out of which Christ makes His saints. (1) Blessed are the poor in spirit. Begging of Jesus, taking from Jesus, depending on Jesus, that is the A B C of holiness. (2) Blessed are the meek. This is constantly associated with a willingness to learn. A quiet teachableness is the next mark of the disciple. (3) Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness. God's yearning to give met by my great longing to receive.

II. See where the disciple is found. "His disciples came unto Him." We separate the word from Him, and so we lose it. Let this truth sink down into the soul's depths; holiness is all in Jesus, and we can find it nowhere else.

III. The next great step in holiness. On our part it is thegreat step. He who takes this will at once find himself on the high level. Read carefully Matthew 5:13; Matthew 5:14. "Ye are the salt of the earth;... ye are the light of the world." "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." We are to surrender ourselves to Christ, that this great purpose of His coming shall claim and possess the whole life. We are to live like God, to bless others. "Ye are My disciples," saith the Master, but not for your own sakes, not that you may be safe and comfortable; but that I, through you, may glorify the Father in blessing and saving others.

M. G. Pearse, Thoughts on Holiness,p. 39.

References: Matthew 5:48. J. Keble, Sermons for Saints' Days,p. 434; C. Girdlestone, Twenty Parochial Sermons,2nd series, p. 309; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 116; F. W. Robertson, Sermons,3rd series, p. 143; G. Butler, Sermons in Cheltenham College,p. 215; W. Garrett Horder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., p. 300. Matthew 5; Matthew 7 Expositor,1st series, vol. 1., p. 196; S. Cox, Expository Essays and Discourses,p. 1; J. Martineau, Hours of Thought,vol. i., p. 72.