Matt 5:19–20 — The Higher Righteousness

Jesus makes an arresting statement in Matthew 5:20: unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The claim sounds extreme until we read it in the context of verses 17–19.

Christ did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. He fulfills the law through his perfect obedience, his atoning death, and the realities to which its ceremonies pointed. He also fulfills it as the final prophet, greater than Moses, who reveals its full moral depth. Murder includes anger in the heart; adultery includes lust; and love extends even to enemies.

The word “therefore” in verse 19 joins Christian obedience to that gospel accomplishment. We will consider the heart attitude of this higher righteousness, its contrast with Pharisaic righteousness, and its gospel logic.

The Heart Attitude of the Higher Righteousness

Verse 19 expresses the heart attitude of this higher righteousness: total commitment to the will of God. And we can see that in our text by looking at this phrase, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments. Now what is he referring to here when he says these commandments? The word these is somewhat ambiguous? When you say these, are you referring to something right in front of you, something behind you? What is he referring to? These commandments. Which commandments is he talking about? Which ones is he pointing to here?

Is it referring backward to what he’d just been talking about in verses 17 and 18? A reference to the Mosaic law in exhaustive detail, not an iota, not a dot. So if that’s the meaning, if he’s saying whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments, not even iota, not even a dot of the Mosaic law, That sounds somewhat extreme, because would that be saying then that even the ceremonial laws are still binding today, and that Jesus is saying, you disciples of mine, you have to keep every single commandment in the Mosaic law, every one, there’s like 613 of them according to the rabbis, every single one, including the ones about you can’t mix different fabrics from different sources together, and You can’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk. Not a child, but a kid meaning like a goat? And so are all of these commands? You have to separate between clean and unclean food. You can’t eat pork and shellfish and so on. Every single one, not an iota, not a dot. Is that what he’s referring to? I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. So maybe it’s a forward reference.

Maybe when he says, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments that I’m about to give you, as he goes into the rest of the Sermon on the Mount you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, and understanding the heart aspect of those commands, maybe it’s a forward reference to the commandments that Jesus is about to give. The problem with that one is that Jesus doesn’t actually really give new commandments. What he’s doing in the Sermon on the Mount here, in the second half of chapter 5, verses 21 to the end of the chapter, is explaining the meaning of the old commandments that we already know about. He’s not giving new ones. He’s not saying, those 10 commandments that Moses gave you, Check those aside. Here’s some new ones for you.” He’s not doing that? He’s simply quoting the same old commandments that Moses gave us and simply interpreting them and explaining the meaning of them and showing us the depth of them.

That it’s not simply, you shall not murder in the literal sense, but also the heart aspect of anger that gives rise to murder. That’s also forbidden in that commandment. So there’s somewhat of a trouble here about trying to figure out what these commandments is. Is it backwards, back to the entire Mosaic law, all 613 commands including the ceremonial? Or is it forward to the commandments of Jesus? Neither interpretation really seems to fit exactly.

I think that it’s actually somewhat of both. So I think Jesus teaches that he’s referring to the moral law as summarized in the Ten Commandments and as interpreted and deepened by Jesus. And I think you can see that’s what he’s getting at here because of a couple of things. Number one, notice, and I mentioned this when I preached on verse 17 a couple of weeks ago, notice that Jesus says, do not think I have come, this is back in verse 17, do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. That’s interesting that he adds that phrase, or the prophets. So he’s not just referring here to the literal rabbinic view of the Mosaic law as all 613 commandments, including the ceremonial law. He’s referring to the law and the prophets together.

We read in the Revelation of God’s Will, that passage where one of the experts in the law asked Jesus, what is the great commandment? And Jesus mentioned two commandments, love God with all your heart, but then also love your neighbor as yourself. And then what does he say after that? On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

once again, you have this addition of the phrase and the prophets to the law. And that’s significant because it already shows that Jesus here is not referring to the Mosaic law in that rabbinic sense of just all of the detailed minutiae of the law, including all the ceremonies and every detail, but he’s already focusing it down to the moral dimension of the Mosaic law.

Because what was the primary thing that the prophets did? When the prophets were bringing the covenant lawsuit against God’s people, remember God’s people had broken the covenant, they had worshipped false gods, and they were in danger of the curses of the covenant coming upon them, leading ultimately to their exile. But what were the prophets primarily doing when they came to Israel with that covenant lawsuit? They weren’t saying to Israel, you haven’t kept the Passover exactly right with every detail of how to do the Passover lamb, and you didn’t keep the clean and unclean correctly. In fact, the prophets tended to say, what is this trampling of my courts?

I don’t need all these sacrifices and offering of blood of bulls and goats. I want your hearts. I want you to love me. I want you to stop worshiping false gods. I want you to love your neighbor. I want you to be obedient to the core moral precepts of the moral law. As summarized in the Ten Commandments.

The prophets have already narrowed down the law to the core of it, which is summarized in the Ten Commandments. And that’s what Jesus is getting at then. He’s saying, don’t think I’ve come to abolish the law and the prophets. I’ve not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, Not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished, including all the ceremonial laws, but they’ll be fulfilled through Christ.

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments, that is the moral commandment summarized in the Ten Commandments, as I am about to explain them to you in their fullness and depth, and whoever teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

This is language that the Jewish rabbis and the Pharisees used. They talked about ranking commandments. Story we just mentioned about the expert in the law asked Jesus to do a ranking. Tell me, Jesus, which commandment is the greatest of all the commandments? I want to see a ranking. And that was how they practiced law. They were lawyers? They were attorneys, and they were looking at the law and trying to rank them and say, this law is more important than that law. They even used the term light and heavy.

Some commandments are heavy because they’re really hard to keep. There are other commandments that are light and pretty easy to keep. For example, if you remember in Deuteronomy 22, there is a law that talks about if you encounter a bird’s nest, It says, you can take the mother bird for yourself, but you shall let the eggs or the baby birds live. So it’s like this interesting commandment that they said was an easy command? That’s not an important heavy one, that’s an easy one.

They would rank the commands based on these ideas of this legalistic approach to the law. And so when Jesus uses this language here of least commandments and greatest commandments, he’s using their own way of speaking against them. In the reality, according to Jesus’ understanding of the moral law, there are no lesser commandments. There are no commandments that are lesser or easier to keep or commandments that are okay to break occasionally? The moral law is the moral law. And Jesus made that very clear in his answer to that lawyer. Which is, there is no ranking?

The great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and the second commandment is next to it. It’s just as important, which is to love your neighbor as yourself, and on these two commandments hang all of the law and the prophets. And so what Jesus is getting at here in verse 19 is our attitude toward the law, our attitude toward the law of Christ.

There’s this bad attitude that says, I can rank commandments and I can relax the easy ones. I could say that certain ones are not as important to keep. And Jesus is saying that if you have that attitude, you have the wrong approach. You don’t have the right heart attitude towards the commandments of God. Of course, it’s bad enough if you do that for yourself personally and say, well, this commandment over here I can get by with. I don’t need to be so concerned about that one.

It’s much worse, he says, if you teach others the same thing. If you teach others that they don’t need to keep certain commandments. That’s what we call antinomianism. Antinomianism is teaching against the law. It’s teaching that the law can be broken with no consequence, that it doesn’t matter to God. In contrast with that bad attitude to the law, Jesus says that he encourages his disciples to be those that do and teach these commandments.

Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now what does he mean by being great or being least in the kingdom of heaven? Is he referring to degrees of rewards? Like there are some Christians who are really obedient to the commandments and so they’ll be great in the kingdom because of that. And then there are other Christians who are somewhat more lax and they’re not going to be as great. They’ll have less rewards in heaven. I don’t think so because we’ve already seen that the very language of the least of these commandments is using the language of the rabbis against themselves, against them. So also then I would say that saying that they will be least in the kingdom is also not to be taken literally.

In fact, whenever the issue arose among the disciples of who is the greatest in the kingdom, discussion came up several times, right, among the disciples. Whenever that question arose of great and ranking of who’s great and who’s less in the kingdom, what did Jesus do? He didn’t say, I’ll tell you who’s the greatest. No, he did the opposite. He just completely turned the question on its head and said, you’re thinking all the wrong way.

It has nothing to do with being great or least in the kingdom. In Matthew 18, at that time, the disciples came to Jesus saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. In effect, he’s saying there are no rankings.

It’s not important to think that way. And if you think that way, you’ve got the whole wrong idea of what the kingdom is about. The important thing is to receive the kingdom like a child, that is to receive it as a gift. So Jesus here in verse 19, verse 19 is a very difficult verse to understand, but if you take it all literally in terms of least and greatest and all that, you’re going to end up spinning around and trying to figure out what this means. I don’t think Jesus is doing that.

I think what he’s doing is he is calling us to have a heart attitude of total commitment to God’s moral will in all of its depth, reaching even to the motives and thoughts of the heart. He’s not trying to set up a ranking of commandments or a ranking of people based on how they keep the commandments. He’s simply saying he’s calling us to be those that are committed to God’s will. And the key is commitment? He’s not even so much focusing on how well you do in keeping the commandments.

Because that’s not really the issue. Yes, he is concerned about that. But he’s saying it’s your heart. It’s where your heart is at. And when you do break a commandment, you honor that commandment nevertheless by repenting of your sin and striving all the more to seek that righteousness, hungering and thirsting after righteousness. So that’s the first point. The higher righteousness, the first point is its heart attitude.

The Pharisaic Foil

That brings us then to verse 20, the Pharisaic foil. Foil just means like the opposite of something that you can compare it with? So there’s the righteousness of the Pharisees, and then there’s the righteousness of the disciples that Jesus is calling his disciples to have. He’s putting these things in contrast with each other. The Pharisaic foil.

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now what does this refer to? This is hard to understand as well. Is Jesus saying that he’s calling the disciples to have more righteousness? Like, quantitatively better righteousness?

Like, they’re more faithful to keep God’s commands and more zealous to all of the minutiae and details of the law. The Pharisees were known for that. They were experts in the law and they tithed on all the even like little just spices and things like that. They were just so detail-oriented and so concerned for holiness and for keeping the law.

Is Jesus calling the disciples, his disciples who are members of his kingdom, to say you should be even more committed to the minutiae of the law? I don’t think so because how would that exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees? Just being more committed to the minutiae of the law that wouldn’t work. That wouldn’t be a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

maybe another possibility would be, and I’ve heard this interpretation too, maybe he’s talking about the imputed righteousness of Christ. Unless your righteousness, which is the righteousness that God gives us as a gift, a gift of grace received by faith alone. Paul talks about that a lot, right, in Romans and so on. Maybe that’s the righteousness that he’s referring to here, the righteousness of Christ. That would indeed be a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees because it’s a perfect righteousness and it’s reckoned to our account by grace, by faith alone. But again, I don’t think that’s quite what Jesus is getting at here in this text. Now, it is true that Jesus himself and Matthew, as the author of this gospel in explaining the work of Jesus, does talk about imputed righteousness. There are two references to it. One is in verse 18, which we already saw, until all is accomplished?

That’s the righteousness of Christ. And also back earlier in Matthew 3, at the baptism of Jesus, when John the Baptist was somewhat scratching his head and saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? And what did Jesus say? He said, let it be so for now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. So there are places in Matthew’s gospel where he talks about this imputed righteousness that is a gift of grace. And that we are reckoned as righteous in God’s sight because of what Christ has done.

I’m not saying that it’s an impossible thought for interpreting this verse here in verse 20. But nevertheless, it still doesn’t quite fit, does it? Because he says, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so I think what Jesus is getting at here is something qualitatively exceeding, not quantitatively exceeding, not imputed righteousness, even though he does affirm that, but that’s not what he’s getting at here in this verse. He’s getting at this qualitatively greater righteousness, a higher righteousness, which is what?

It is a transformed heart. And that’s why Jesus is going to go on to talk about the heart aspect of each of the commandments. Don’t think that you’ve kept the law or the commandment not to murder just because you haven’t physically murdered somebody yet. Don’t you realize that you have had murderous thoughts in your heart? You’ve had anger in your heart? That’s what Jesus is getting at here. He’s getting at the heart aspect of the commandments. And that’s how the righteousness of the disciples can exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. Think about the Pharisees and their righteousness. And this is why we’re talking about the Pharisaic foil. Think about their righteousness that they thought that they had. Think about how they viewed the law and how they thought that they had kept it.

They did a lot of things to the law that skirted around the law, that added man-made traditions to the law, and they were always trying to avoid the heart aspect. They’re trying to get around the heart. They’re trying to just do the external behavior. For example, they added man-made traditions to the law that had the effect of actually setting aside God’s commandments.

One example of that Jesus gives in Matthew 15, where he’s having this argument with them over whether you have to wash your hands, and it’s not referring to hygiene, it’s referring to ceremonial washing, so that you can be in a state of ceremonial purity before you have a meal. And that was a man-made tradition? The Mosaic law never said you had to do that. It was a man-made tradition. And so in that context of that debate over ceremonial hand-washing before eating a meal, Jesus brings up another topic that’s related, but it illustrates the point.

He shows them that they have a way of doing this, of making man-made traditions that have the effect of nullifying God’s commands. He says, God commanded, honor your father and your mother. That’s the fifth commandment. It’s right there in the 10 commandments. And whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if anyone tells his father or mother, what you would have gained from me is given to God. In other words, a gift that I would have given to mom and dad, I’m going to give it to God and place it in the temple. He need not honor his father.

You’re taking this money? Let’s say you got an inheritance or you got some money, and instead of giving it to your parents, you give it to God and, oh, see, now I don’t have to give it to my parents. So he says, Jesus says, so for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God, you hypocrites. Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, this people honors me with their lips.

They claim to be keeping all the commands. They claim to be so zealous for all the commandments, but their heart is far from me. Their heart is missing. That’s the thing that’s missing in their view of the law. Another thing that they did was they focused on keeping the commandments in order to simply be outwardly righteous before men. Matthew 23, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs. Which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. And so you also are outwardly, you outwardly appear righteous to others, but within in your heart, you’re full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. See what Jesus is getting at there?

They’ve missed the heart and they’ve gone only to the external. Or again in Matthew 23, he says, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe on all these little spices like mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law like justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

What do all these errors have in common? Adding to the law in effect and nullifying the law, focusing on the outward righteousness before men. What do all these errors in their approach to the law have in common? It’s one fundamental error, which is that they separated the law from God himself. They separated the law from God himself.

They didn’t view these commandments as the commandments of God, as God’s will. They just viewed these commandments as an external structure, a game that they could play in order to get brownie points in their community before men. They did not view the law as the law of God, as God’s will for their lives, as something that they ought to want to obey out of love for God. They did not draw near to God with their hearts, as Jesus said.

This people draws near to me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And so the way that the righteousness of the disciples can exceed, can go beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees is in this way, this exact way of focusing on the commandments as the commandments of God, as God’s will. Seeking righteousness at the heart level. Not simply abstaining from outright murder, but also thinking about the ways in which I have murdered my brother in my heart with my anger. Not simply refraining from committing an act of physical adultery, but thinking about the ways in which my heart has been led astray in seeking that which is not pleasing to the Lord.

Honoring God’s commandments is what God wants. What Jesus is teaching his disciples is he wants us to honor God’s commandments because they reflect the will of God himself. Because they reflect God’s own holiness and God’s own character and God’s own will.

think of it like this, just to use an illustration. So in all kinds of legends and stories and stuff, there’s this mythology of the common story of a good king versus a bad king? When there’s a good king, who’s really a great king, he’s faithful, he’s loyal, he’s just a good person, he cares for his subjects, The whole kingdom is flourishing. Even the birds in the trees seem to be happy? Like in the mythology. The whole realm is just happy that there’s a good, gracious king, a godly king, a king who loves his people. Everything is great. And all the people then, in that scenario, when they hear that there’s a new command, a new law from the king, they don’t go, oh, this king is terrible, and we’re going to find some way to skirt this command. No, they want to honor that command because it’s the law of their king, and they love their king.

Conversely, if you have a bad king, right, then all the birds in the trees are withering and everything is in chaos and darkness and the land is just like encroached with this pall of darkness? And the bad king is like abusing his people and he’s not loving them and caring for them. He’s just mistreating them and overtaxing them and all this terrible stuff. And so when the king issues a law, usually it’s an unjust law, and the people rebel against it, and they seek to find ways to escape from it, or ways to get around it, or they might even outright revolt against the king.

The peasants come with their pitchforks, because they hate the king, and so they hate his laws. That’s what Jesus is getting at here, is this idea, is that if you love the king, if you love God, then you’ll love his laws because his laws, his commands, reflect his perfect, holy, and good will.

therefore, we desire to obey. We desire to keep all of his commands. And we’re not going to engage in this casuistry of deciding, well, this commandment is somewhat less important, so that one you can break occasionally, but this one’s more important. No, we’re going to desire to keep all of God’s commands out of love for God. So that brings us then to the third point, the gospel logic of the higher righteousness. And the obvious question is in verse 20 when Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The obvious question is, at first that sounds somewhat wrong. It sounds like he’s saying that we enter the kingdom, we go to heaven, by being obedient, by keeping all of God’s laws, by keeping the laws that Jesus is explaining and teaching here. So is Jesus teaching salvation by law-keeping? That is the first thing that jumps at you, especially if you’re steeped in Paul and you’re steeped in Romans and Galatians and Paul’s teaching that we’re justified by faith alone, not by the works of the law. It sounds like Jesus is going against that, doesn’t it, somewhat, at least at first. You’re like, ah, I’m somewhat uncomfortable with this here. What are you saying, Jesus? So we have to see the gospel logic of what Jesus is saying. Notice that the gospel logic is very clear in the transition from verses 18 to verse 19. Remember in verse 18 he talks about all being accomplished.

The Gospel Logic of the Higher Righteousness

The whole law is accomplished in his own person and work. He is the fulfillment of the law. Through his own perfect obedience to it, through his death on the cross, he fulfills the law. And then notice the gospel logic of verse 19, which begins with that key word, therefore. Therefore, because Christ has accomplished the law in our place, therefore this ought to be the heart attitude of our lives. This higher righteousness that he’s calling the disciples to is not so that they can achieve heaven or so that they can earn heaven, but it’s because Christ has already brought the kingdom near through his person and work. The higher righteousness is only possible because of what Christ has done. There’s an interesting verse in the Gospel of John that you probably have heard of.

It’s a very popular common verse, but I’d like to quote it because I think it sheds somewhat of light here on Matthew 5.20, because they have a similar phrase, a similar way of constructing the sentence. In John 3, verse 3, Jesus says, See, that’s the same language there? Unless this, then you cannot enter the kingdom?

I think that comparing Matthew 5.20 with John 3 helps to explain the meaning of Matthew 5. Because John 3 is not saying that the new birth, having a new heart, being born again, is the legal ground of entering heaven, of going to heaven.

The same thing is being said here. Jesus is not saying that because you are a disciple of mine and because you are pursuing this heart righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, therefore that’s the legal basis upon which you get to go to heaven. That’s not what he’s saying.

Rather, the point is that it’s a necessary reality for all those who are justified. All those who are justified also have a new heart. All those who are justified are also sanctified. And so therefore, no one will go to heaven who has not also been progressively sanctified to some degree.

Jesus is saying that this higher righteousness, which is the same thing as being born again? This higher righteousness which focuses on the heart, on having this heart attitude of loving God and loving His commandments, that is the result of the new birth, isn’t it? So if you have that, if you have that heart that desires to obey God, and yes, you do fall and you do sin, but when you sin, you honor God’s commands by repenting of your sins and seeking to live in accordance with God’s commands. If you have that heart, that shows not that you are worthy to enter heaven, but that you are one for whom Christ has given you his righteousness, who has obeyed the law in your place, so that you are now shown to be a Christian, shown to be one who will go to heaven.

Those who strive to keep the law apart from this gospel logic, those who don’t see the word therefore in verse 19, who skip over therefore and just go right into, I better work on keeping every single commandment, they will never attain this higher righteousness. It’s only those who, going back to the Beatitudes in verses 3 through 12, it’s only those who are humble, who are poor in spirit, who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness, who know their sinfulness, who know their need, and who are striving to receive God’s grace in order to be more faithful to him, those are the ones who attain to this higher righteousness.

This righteousness is not the product of striving in the flesh, as though disciples merely needed to become more zealous Pharisees. It is a gift of grace. Romans 8:4 says that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us by the Spirit. Jeremiah 31:33 identifies this as a chief blessing of the new covenant: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.”

Salvation in Christ brings both justification and sanctification. In justification, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us because he kept the law in our place. In sanctification, the Spirit gives us new hearts and progressively conforms us to Christ’s image.

We should therefore read Matthew 5:19–20 in its gospel context. Jesus does not contradict grace or return us to a covenant of works. He calls those whom grace has transformed to delight in God’s law, repent when they break it, and desire increasingly to reflect the character of their King.