You Can’t Impress God. Jesus Set the Bar Too High

Actually, in a very real sense, it was Moses who set the bar too high.  Even to be more precise, it was God, through Moses who set the bar too high.

Do you remember those ten Commandments which the Bible says were written in stone by the finger of God?” Remember that seventh commandment?  You shall not commit adultery?  Jesus said that you not only commit adultery by messing around with someone else’ wife, you commit adultery when you even look with lust at another woman.  Moses really said the same thing.  That tenth commandment the one that says, “you shall not covet”, it basically says “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”  Put another way, “you’re not to want anything that belongs to anyone else, including another man’s wife”.  So, I rhetorically ask “Men: how many times a day have you coveted”?  The same goes for women… “how many times a day have you coveted”?

Jesus also equated murder to mere hate.  He said, “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’” But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” (Mt. 5:17-18).  God, through Moses, similarly said “‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” (Lev. 19:17-18)

The above Leviticus reference is particularly difficult for most people.  The text points out that, to avoid ‘hating’, the offended individual must communicate to the offending individual what it was that was offensive.  Obviously, the offending person can respond to the criticism in one of two ways.  He can, in turn, be offended by having been corrected, likely causing the honest person to recoil, or he can receive the criticism graciously using it as a learning experience by which he can improve his character.  Either way, the offended person is required to be honest whatever the outcome.  If he is not honest, and internalizes his grievance, he loses the opportunity to aid in improving the character of his ‘neighbor’, thus leaving his neighbor in a state of sin and he, by internalizing the offense, causes himself to ‘stew’ over the issue, carrying bitterness around with him which, also is sin.

I would posit that Jesus not only taught these principles but practiced them to perfection.  I would also suggest that Jesus, being perfectly honest, offended a lot of the ‘offenders’ whom He corrected and He corrected them precisely because He loved them, love being the ultimate basis for this law.  Consequently, those who were offended by Him harbored hate for Him and ultimately sought His demise which He, in contrast to any other person who ever set foot on the world stage, accepted graciously and with an air of total love and forgiveness towards His accusers.

I would also argue that this one Mosaic law is just one example in which Jesus perfectly practiced every aspect of the Torah, the Torah outlining what was required of the truly righteous man.  For that reason, I like to call him THE Tsaddik... THE righteous man.  In a world, devoid of tsaddikim (righteous men) because as ye ole’ adage goes ‘nobody’s perfect’, There’s one man that stands out as an ensign to the nations (goyim).  As Isaiah said…

“It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also make You a light of the nations
So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

                                                                                                     (Isaiah 49:6)                 

Even as DNA takes random chemicals and elements and, like a template, uses them to replicate itself, so Jesus takes sinful, depraved, proud and self-willed human beings with selfish motives and by, metaphorically speaking, attaching them to Himself, makes them, over time, into a duplicate of His righteousness.  The only caveat to this is that being attached to Jesus must not be superficial but genuine.

In the world we live in today, where people are offended easily, the consequence of all these people being slighted is nothing but anger and strife.  Imagine, if you will however, a world where people know that the bar for righteousness is too high for them to attain God’s acceptance on their own.  What we would have is a world filled with humble people who, if corrected, do not retort with belligerence but respond with thankfulness for having been corrected because it makes them better people.  Relationships between people would be devoid of jealousy and bitterness and filled with acceptance and mutual appreciation.  That is the world that God ultimately wants and will ultimately achieve one day.  And those who throughout history have acquiesced to the knowledge that precisely because the bar is too high, they know that their self-effort at striving after righteousness is therefore futile.  Hence, if they’ve recognized that trusting only in the atoning death of Jesus for His righteousness to be imputed to them, they can be rescued from the wrath of God to one-day experience that world.