Compare Mark 13:31; Luke 16:16-17
There are those, particularly among Evangelical Protestants, who sometimes seem (to me, at least) to come perilously close to teaching an antinomian view of Jesus — one for which rules of conduct are, in a sense, irrelevant.
Today’s reading provides little support for such a view. Which may be one reason why Martin Luther is reputed, amazingly, to have referred to the Sermon on the Mount as des Teufels Meisterstück (“the Devil’s masterpiece”). It can certainly be understood as clashing sharply with his notion of sola fidei (“faith alone”) or salvation by grace alone.
“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,” says Jesus in this famous sermon, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
I can imagine someone responding that Jesus intended that statement ironically, suggesting that, since the Pharisees in particular were the most righteous of the righteous, it will never be possible for our righteousness to exceed theirs. Thus, we need God’s grace.
Well, we obviously need divine grace. I’m not questioning that. But there’s nothing in this passage to suggest that Jesus was speaking ironically. Nor do his frequent criticisms of the “scribes and Pharisees,” which are on evidence at many points in the New Testament gospels, make it easy to maintain that he actually admitted the righteousness of these two groups. He really seems to have wanted his own disciples to be better. And he plainly appears to have believed that righteous behavior is required for salvation. In its absence, he says, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
A theologian trying to build a case for salvation by grace alone, without works, and limited for the task to the actual teachings of Jesus as recorded in the four gospels, would have a very difficult time of it. Which is putting the challenge mildly.
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