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10 SERMON ON THE MOUNT
SERMON ON THE MOUNT
which it is essential for all men to know. The religious facts and truths which He presented form the foundation of Christian theology, and His instruction concerning human conduct must lie at the root of any true system of ethics; but He did not teach these subjects in the manner of the ancient or modern schools. He put His ideas in such a way as to make His knowledge universal. He spoke with a simplicity, insight, and fervour which would appeal to all serious listeners.
It was a part of Jesus’ method to use all kinds of figurative language. That was natural to Him as an Oriental, and by no other means could He have reached the Orientals who formed His audi- ences. Similes, metaphors, all kinds of illustra- tions, parables, hyperbolical expressions, were constantly upon His lips.* We have constantly to be on our guard against interpreting literally what He has spoken figuratively.+ The Sermon presents the true righteousness, the ideal human life, popularly and practically portrayed and en- joined. To treat this teaching as scientific ethics is to produce confusion. But to draw from it the essential principles of ethics is to find light and peace for mankind. 3
Many of Jesus’ utterances, especially in this discourse, are of the gnomic type in poetic form— a style so effective in the Wisdom literature of the OT and Apocrypha. The wise men of Hebrew history, particularly after the Babylonian exile, put into this attractive literary dress their crystalli- zation of experience, their philosophy of life, their instruction for conduct and practical affairs. ‘This was a favourite style of teaching with the Jews— a fact that was at once the cause and the motive for Jesus’ adoption of it. As a literary mode of expression, Jesus used the gnome, as He used the parable, with consummate art.{ Even the translation of these sayings into a radically dif- ferent language has not destroyed their literary finish, rhythm, and symmetry, ¢.g. the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and many other passages in Mt 5-7. The simplicity, lucidity, and energy of Jesus’ utterances mask the art with which they were fashioned. Not that we are to conceive of Jesus as labouring over His literary productions to bring them to perfection, but that ideal thought intuitively found ideal expression. Jesus’ supreme interest was assuredly not in mere letters, but in the truth He taught. Yet this included the vital lodgment of the truth in the minds and hearts of men, and to this end the language in which He clothed His teaching was of great importance. The uniqueness of Jesus manifests itself in the ability to present His teaching acceptably and effectively, as well as in His perfect insight into the truth itself.
* Metaphorically, Jesus calls the disciples the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Mt 513.14), Symbolically, He com- mands the plucking out of the right eye (529), Figuratively, He speaks of the mote and beam (72-), of the pearls before swine (75), of the narrow way (713.14), of the false prophets (715), of the tree and its fruits (716-20), He gives the parable of the Two House-builders (724-27), And most difficult of all to interpret correctly, we have His hyperbolical utterances, in which He says more than He means, setting forth a principle rather than a rule of conduct, and leaving its application to the judgment of men. Such are the four famous ‘non-resistance’ injunctions (539-42), and the sayings concerning the secrecy of benevolence (63), prayer in the closet only (66), anxiety for the necessaries of life (625- 34), answers to prayer (77), and the ‘Golden Rule’ (712).
t See Wendt, Lehre Jesu, ii. 74-112; Tholuck, Bergrede5, p. 169 ff. [Eng. tr. p. 165f.].
tSee Heinrici, Bergpredigt, i. 19-26; Kent, Wise Men of Ancient Israel? (1899), pp. 176-201; Briggs, ‘The Wisdom of Jesus the Messiah’ in Hxpository Times, 1897, viii. 893-8, 452-5, 492-6, ix, 69-75. Dr. Briggs says: ‘Jesus put His wisdom in this poetic form for the reason that Wisdom had been given in the artistic form of gnomic poetry for centuries, and was so used in His time. If He was to use such Wisdom, He must use its forms. Jesus uses its stereotyped forms, and uses them with such extraordinary freshness, fertility, and vigour that His bg? transcends all others in its artistic expression’ (viii. 395,
But not only was Jesus the true successor of the OT sage. The Hebrew prophets also gave their messages in remarkably fine literary form, as in the Psalms, Isaiah, and Amos. And the propels utterances of Jesus, too, were clothed in language full of beauty, fire, and force. Indeed, Jesus was more a prophet thanasage.* He taughtnotsomuch as a philosopher of this life; rather, as a seer who has a vision of a higher life which is to be produced in men. Jesus’ earnestness and tempered zeal in His teaching were more persuasive and searching than the fervour of any preceding prophet of truth and righteousness. In the Sermon on the Mount He showed men the ideal life, but that was not all —He strenuously urged them to attain it. They must forthwith do the will of God which He had made plain to them (Mt 77-27), Active love, self- denial, and service He fixed as absolute require- ments for those who would be members of the kingdom of God. In these utterances the voice of the true prophet is heard proclaiming God’s will and demanding that ‘justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as an everflowing stream’ (Am 5%), Jesus was both wise man and prophet, but greater than either and greater than both; and never greater than in the Sermon on the Mount, where He immeasurably surpassed every lawgiver, seer, and sage. It is with this supreme apprecia- tion of Jesus and His teaching that one should enter upon the specific interpretation of His words in Mt 5-7 and the Lukan parallels.