Matt 7:28–29 — The Divine Authority of Jesus

We have reached the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. I have greatly enjoyed examining it in detail, and I am a little sad to see it recede into the background as we move forward in Matthew’s Gospel. These final verses give us one last opportunity to linger over its teaching and allow its goodness to wash over our hearts.

After Jesus finishes speaking, Matthew records the reaction of the crowds: “The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” What was so astonishing about Jesus’ teaching? The crowds were accustomed to hearing the scribes and Pharisees explain the law and its requirements in great detail. Jesus also taught about the law, but they had never heard anyone teach as he did. His teaching was unlike that of the rabbis because he spoke with unique, divine authority.

We can see this contrast by reviewing the three main sections of the Sermon on the Mount. The first section, Matthew 5:1–16, introduces the sermon through the Beatitudes. The second and largest section, Matthew 5:17–7:12, expounds the law and concludes with the Golden Rule: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” The third section, Matthew 7:13–27, calls us to follow Christ and warns that our response to his teaching determines our eternal destiny.

Each section contrasts the teaching of Christ with that of the scribes and Pharisees. Each also directs our attention beyond the authority of a gifted teacher to the divine authority of Christ himself.

The Gospel of John repeatedly emphasizes Christ’s deity. When Jesus called God his Father, the religious leaders understood that he was making himself equal with God. We sometimes imagine that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are less concerned with Christ’s deity because they emphasize his teaching and miracles. Yet the Sermon on the Mount offers powerful, often neglected evidence that Jesus is the eternal Son of God. He assumes the divine prerogatives of Redeemer King, Lawgiver, and final Judge.

Obedience in the Context of the Gospel

In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls his disciples to obey God’s moral law, but not in the manner of the scribes and Pharisees. The Pharisees sent people directly to law-keeping apart from the power of the gospel. Jesus calls his disciples to obedience in the context of the gospel and the reality that they are already members of his saving kingdom.

The Beatitudes declare that Christ’s disciples are blessed. They have been brought out of darkness into light, and the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who mourn will be comforted. The meek will inherit the earth. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. These are assurances of the gospel.

Before Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you,” and before he explains the moral requirements of the kingdom, he announces the good news of the kingdom. His disciples may be assured of receiving mercy, seeing God, and being called sons of God. They can even rejoice when they suffer persecution for their identification with Christ: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” Heaven belongs to them.

The scribes and Pharisees did not teach in this manner. They moved directly to the law: What does it require? How must it be kept? What details must be observed? Failure would bring God’s judgment. Jesus, by contrast, teaches the law on the basis of the gospel and calls his disciples to obedience after announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom.

This order appears even before the sermon begins. Matthew 4 records Jesus preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He then calls his disciples by saying, “Follow me.” Having proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom and brought his disciples into it, Jesus sits down and teaches them the law as the gracious pattern of life within that kingdom.

The Law in the Hand of the Redeemer

Theology commonly distinguishes three uses of the law. The first exposes our sin and drives us to Christ. The second concerns the law’s role in society as a restraint upon sin within the common kingdom. The third gives those who have been redeemed a gracious guide for the Christian life. They receive the law anew from the hand of Christ, no longer as a condemning law under which they labor in guilt, but as the will of their Redeemer.

The first use remains in the background of the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus declares that anyone who is angry with his brother is liable to judgment, he reveals the guilt of those who violate God’s commandments even in the heart. Nevertheless, the third use is primary. The Beatitudes have set the table with the assurance of the gospel. Then Christ, the King who has redeemed his people, calls them to submit gladly to his will.

This is part of what made his teaching so astonishing. He teaches the law as the Redeemer King. He is not merely a king to whom we owe submission. He is the King who purchased us, brought us into his kingdom, called us to follow him, and assured us that the kingdom of heaven is ours. Our obedience is therefore a gracious response to redemption.

This obedience includes continual confession and repentance. The law still functions as a mirror, showing believers where they fall short and where they need to grow. We ask for grace to die increasingly to sin and live increasingly unto righteousness. Yet we do so as people who have already received the assurance of the gospel.

The True Meaning of the Law

In the second major section of the sermon, Matthew 5:17–7:12, Jesus teaches the true meaning of the law in its depth and fullness. Paradoxically, the Pharisees, though consumed with keeping the law, had to domesticate it. They toned it down and presented it as something people could fulfill in their own strength.

Their approach emphasized what we might call quantitative fulfillment. Rabbinic traditions recorded in works such as the Mishnah and Talmud developed detailed rules for keeping the commandments. Consider the Sabbath. How far might a person walk before violating it? Walking within one’s house was clearly permissible, but what about a mile or five miles? Such reasoning produced the category of a “Sabbath day’s journey,” a precise boundary that could be observed and checked off.

Jesus moves beyond this quantitative approach and teaches qualitative fulfillment. He penetrates to the heart and reveals the law’s inward depth, thereby driving us to the cross for forgiveness. A person cannot claim to have kept the sixth commandment merely because he has never physically murdered anyone. Jesus teaches that contemptuous anger against a brother violates the commandment’s true intent.

The same inward focus appears throughout the sermon. Jesus teaches us to trust our heavenly Father rather than pursue earthly things as the Gentiles do. His commands not to be anxious, to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness, and to store treasures in heaven expound the first commandment. To have no other gods means trusting God alone rather than placing our confidence in created things.

The Pharisees made the law manageable enough for natural people to fulfill outwardly and then declare that they had succeeded. Jesus reveals its demands upon the heart. Do you truly trust God, or have you made something else your idol? Do you truly love your neighbor as yourself, or are you seeking your own desires at your neighbor’s expense?

“But I Say to You”

Jesus also speaks with unprecedented authority. Six times he says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old … but I say to you.” No ordinary rabbi spoke this way. The scribes appealed to human authorities and traditions: one rabbi offered this interpretation, another took a different position, and their competing judgments had to be weighed. Jesus does not ground his teaching in the authority of Gamaliel, Hillel, or any other human teacher. He speaks on his own authority.

Only God possesses the authority to declare absolutely what is true and what his law requires. God gave the law at Mount Sinai, and the law is rooted in his eternally holy character. When Christ says, “But I say to you,” his deity shines through. The majestic King issues commandments to God’s people on the basis of his own divine authority.

Jesus introduces this section by saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” His repeated contrasts might initially sound like a rejection of what God formerly revealed, but Jesus explicitly denies that conclusion. He fulfills the law by revealing its true meaning and the depth of its requirements.

The moral content of the Ten Commandments does not change from the old covenant to the new. Christ takes up that same moral law and issues it from the hand of the Redeemer. It is the law of Christ because the eternal Son of God, our Savior and King, gives it to his redeemed people.

Our Response and Eternal Destiny

In the sermon’s concluding section, Jesus calls his disciples to follow him in both faith and obedience. Faith and its fruit are closely connected, but they remain distinct. The fruit of faith is the obedience to which Jesus calls us. Faith itself is coming to Christ, trusting him, and believing in him.

Jesus uses several images to express this relationship. First, there are the gate and the path. Christ is the narrow gate, and entering through it represents faith. Once a person has entered, there is a path leading to glory: the life of following the Lord, repenting of sin, seeking grace, and striving by the Spirit’s power to die to sin and live to righteousness.

The second image is the tree and its fruit. Christ is the source of life. As he says elsewhere, “I am the vine; you are the branches.” Unless we abide in him, we cannot bear fruit. The third image is the rock and the house. Christ is the foundation, and we build upon him as we grow in obedience. The house stands, not because of its size, beauty, design, or materials, but because it is founded upon the rock.

Once again, Jesus speaks as no scribe or Pharisee ever could: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Only Jesus can insist that our eternal destiny depends upon our response to his words. We must respond in faith by entering the gate and building upon the rock, and we must respond with the obedience that is faith’s fruit.

The Lawgiver and Final Judge

Jesus teaches the law not only as the divine Lawgiver but also as the final Judge. The Lawgiver is the Judge, and the Judge is the Lawgiver. He is the one before whom every person will stand on the day of judgment. Jesus says:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”

This is divine authority. The very passage to which liberal and modernist Christians have appealed in order to find a merely human teacher presents Jesus as the Judge of all humanity. They have tried to replace the Christ of the creeds—God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever, the second person of the Trinity—with an ethical teacher who offers practical wisdom for a good life. Yet the Sermon on the Mount does not permit that reconstruction.

Machen on the Deity of Christ

J. Gresham Machen addressed this problem during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth century. Many influential mainline churches were adopting modernist theology and trying to separate Jesus’ ethics from historic Christian doctrine. Modernists wished to move away from what they called metaphysics and theology and simply obey Jesus’ commands. They treated the Sermon on the Mount as a program for Christian living independent of the supposed niceties of orthodox theology.

Machen answered that they themselves had chosen the Sermon on the Mount as their favorite passage. They could not object if it were examined carefully to determine whether it actually taught the nondoctrinal religion they advocated. He directed attention especially to Matthew 7:21–23.

Do these verses teach that what a person believes about Jesus is unimportant? Machen argues that the exact opposite is true. The scene is the last judgment, and Jesus presents himself as the one seated upon the judgment seat. He says, “I never knew you; depart from me.” The eternal fate of every person depends upon his decision.

Machen said:

I beg you to think of that for a moment, my friends. Jesus of Nazareth certainly did believe that he would sit upon the judgment seat of God at the terrible last Judgment Day, that his word would be final, and that life in his presence would be heaven and departure from him would be hell. What has become of the weak, sentimental, purely human, purely ethical Jesus of modern reconstruction? What has become of your Jesus who was a simple teacher of righteousness and advanced no claim to be God?

—“The Sermon on the Mount and the Deity of Christ,” in Things Unseen (Westminster Seminary Press, 2020), p. 105.

Many people speak approvingly of Jesus in a patronizing manner. They praise his command to turn the other cheek or his teaching about love. They suggest that society would improve if everyone followed his ethics. Yet they do not recognize who Jesus claims to be. They are not astonished as the crowds were astonished when he taught as one possessing authority.

Machen therefore presses the personal question: What will you do with Jesus? Do not offer him mild approval. Do not treat him merely as a religious genius or the founder of one of the world’s religions. Receive him as Savior, trust in his atoning blood, and confess with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”