Many Christians struggle with what to do with the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. The temptation is to treat it as an interesting curiosity filled with stories, laws, prophecy, and poetry, to be cherry-picked for useful bits that confirm whatever one desires to confirm. Jesus disagreed. He did not, he said, come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Later he said that the two greatest commandments were to love God and love your neighbor. On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets. This means the law and prophets are to be interpreted by the greater commandments of love. The law and prophets remain and they are to be understood through the lens of Jesus
He demonstrated what the higher standard of love looks like when he interpreted familiar commandments. For instance, “You shall not murder” means more than killing; it means using anger to kill, in a sense, bits and pieces of someone’s soul, to kill some portion of their wholeness as a person. Even a well-aimed insult can be an instrument of murder, as Jesus explained it.
He said that “Do not commit adultery” is more than cheating on a spouse; it is any form of lust that demeans the integrity of marriage. Was he speaking only of marriage? What about the betrayal of relationships with other family, friends, oaths of office, and the like? Divorce happens, but let us be honest, it means a relationship has been betrayed. It is the betrayal that is sinful, not the divorce itself.
He said, “Do not swear by anything. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Leave it at that. Anything else is temptation to evil.
Ancient law meant to prevent escalation of violence by dictating that retaliation for an injury could not be a greater injury: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But Jesus amended it by prohibiting retaliation in any form. Consider his example. He never cowered before threats and violence; he never surrendered. He confronted injustice with what John Lewis called “good trouble.”
“Love your enemy,” he said. What can that possibly mean? How on earth can it be done? The way of love, it seems, sets impossibly high standards. How on earth can anyone be expected to live up to them? As Jesus said, unless you can do better than the most observant Pharisee, you can’t. Perhaps they are not standards to live up to, but to live into. They are a reminders that what is impossible for us is made possible by God’s redeeming grace.
Lent is the way to the cross where Jesus will show us what that means. We will learn more as we travel with him to Jerusalem.