How does our righteousness need to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees?

Explanation:

Jesus explains to the crowd that he fulfills the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17). The law and the prophets contain the will of God and point to Jesus. Jesus fulfills them both because they point to Jesus, and because he lives according to the will of God perfectly. Since Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, he is also the authoritative interpreter of it.⁶ Jesus is about to interpret the law so that his listeners will understand its true depth. Before doing this, he explains that unless their righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. The implication is that the way the scribes and the Pharisees interpret and apply the law is not correct, and since Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, they ought to listen carefully.

In what follows, Jesus identifies various commandments and explains them with a new depth of insight (Matthew 5:21–47), demonstrating the true ethical intent of the law.⁷ Jesus summarizes his explication of the law with the statement, You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Thus, the righteous demands of the law are nothing less than perfection.⁸ The scribes and Pharisees are no strangers to the regulations of the law, but they misunderstood its radical call for inward holiness. Unless God’s standard of holiness is met, one will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Counterargument:

The trouble with this view is that if one must be perfect to enter the kingdom of heaven, then no one will enter. We know from elsewhere in Scripture that all people sin. For example, in Genesis 6 we read that as humans multiplied and spread over the earth, God saw that the wickedness of man was great, and every intention of the heart was only evil continuously (Genesis 6:5). Also, in Jeremiah 17:9 we read that the heart is deceitful above all else. Further, in the New Testament Paul explains that all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

If God is perfectly holy and all have sinned, how can anyone enter into the kingdom of heaven? For to enter the kingdom of heaven entails perfection, but perfection entails not sinning. Since all humans have sinned, no human is perfect, and therefore no human will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Response to counterargument:

It is true that no person will enter the kingdom of heaven unless they are perfect, and that no human is perfect. Still, there is a remedy for this problem because the righteousness of Christ will be imputed to those who place their faith in him. This is explained by Paul in Romans 4 when he says that God will count faith in Jesus Christ as righteousness (Romans 4:5).

Of course, in Matthew 5:20 Jesus is not teaching us about the imputation of righteousness through faith in him. Rather, he is teaching us the standard of righteousness required by the law of God and fulfilled in him.⁹ God’s righteous demands are not set aside by Jesus’ ministry, rather, they are upheld.

Explanation:

The scribes and Pharisees were the Jewish scholars and experts, especially in regard to the law, during the first century AD.¹⁰ These were the men who interpreted and enforced the Jewish laws. If you were to ask a first-century Jew to identify the most righteous members of their community, they would point to the scribes and Pharisees (also likely the priests and Sadducees). That the scribes and Pharisees were the keepers of the law was well-known, even to Herod, who conferred with the scribes to determine where the Christ was to be born (Matthew 2:4).¹¹

The scribes and Pharisees turn up at various times in Matthew’s Gospel, and Jesus will expose their perspective with a scathing rebuke in Matthew 23. There Jesus tells the people to practice what the scribes and Pharisees teach, but not to emulate their behaviour (Matthew 23:3). The reason is, they preach but do not practice. Their behaviour is an outward show that overlooks the intent of the law. Most relevant to this discussion is Jesus’ statement in Matthew 23:23 where he exclaims, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Here, Jesus exposes the diminished quality of the scribes and Pharisees' so-called righteousness.¹² Therefore, unless one’s righteousness exceeds the scribes and Pharisees, one will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Counterargument:

According to this argument one is only required to exceed the scribes and Pharisees’ righteousness, but this does not necessarily imply perfection. In fact, Matthew records Jesus' statement with the Greek verb περισσεύω (to exceed) and the comparative adjective πλεῖον. The latter is normally used in the context of quantity.¹³ Thus, Jesus is saying that unless one’s righteousness is measurably higher than the scribes and Pharisees, one will not enter the kingdom of heaven.¹⁴ Perfection might be the ultimate standard, but it does not appear to be a requirement.

Response to counterargument:

The notion that one simply has to exceed the scribes and Pharisees but does not necessarily need to be perfect in order to enter the kingdom of heaven misunderstands the conditions of the kingdom of heaven. God is holy and perfect, which means that he requires perfection. The book of Hebrews explains that the laws and regulations of the old covenant could never take away sins because the people could not help but sin (Hebrews 10:1–2). Of course, the problem here is that unless one is perfected one is not cleansed of their sins, but perfection cannot come through the sacrifice of bulls and goats (Hebrews 10:2). This meant that a better covenant was needed, and this covenant was enacted by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ obeyed God perfectly, so that he stands in the presence of God. He also offers to perfect those who believe in him through forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 10:14–18). Thus, entrance into the kingdom of heaven requires no less than perfection, and this perfection is only achieved by Jesus Christ.

Possible weaknesses:

One possible weakness of this view is that it sounds overly legalistic. We know that Jesus scolds the Pharisees for being legalistic. Jesus also makes clear that he came for the sinner and not the righteous (Matthew 9:13). Thus, it is hard to see how Jesus could mean that unless our righteousness is perfect we cannot enter the kingdom. For this seems to endorse the legalism of the Pharisees, and the notion that Jesus came for the righteous. Of course, these matters can be resolved by considering Jesus’ statement against the Gospel of Matthew and the rest of New Testament as a whole. (Such resolutions were alluded to in the counterarguments.)

Explanation: We need to understand Matthew 5:20 in light of Matthew 5:19. In Matthew 5:19 Jesus says that whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments will be least in the kingdom of heaven. What does these commandments refer to? In the original, Matthew uses οὖν to introduce Jesus’ statement. Οὖν can be translated therefore, which means it is often used to recall what precedes it. What precedes Matthew 5:19 is what we often refer to as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1–16). There, in general, Jesus explains to the crowd that the meek, the lowly, and the peacemaker are the children of God who will see the kingdom of heaven. Thus, in Matthew 5:19, when Jesus says, Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments…will be called least in the kingdom, he is referring to the Beatitudes.¹⁵

Knowing that these commandments refers to the Beatitudes will inform our understanding of Matthew 5:20. There Jesus says that unless one’s righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, one will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We know that the scribes and Pharisees taught the law of God, so what could Jesus mean? He means that one must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees by holding to both the law and the commandments Jesus explained in the Beatitudes.¹⁶

Counterargument:

There are some issues with this view. First, it is hard to see that Jesus would characterize the Beatitudes as commands. The Beatitudes are not commands, but something more like truth statements and instructions of encouragement.

Second, when Jesus says therefore, whoever relaxes the least of these commandments this is not directly preceded by the Beatitudes, which end at Matthew 5:12, but is directly preceded by Matthew 5:17–18. By Matthew 5:17 Jesus has completed the Beatitudes and explains that he is the fulfillment of the law. Next, in Matthew 5:18 he states that not one iota will drop from the law until all is accomplished. These verses are the antecedent to the conjunctive particle οὖν (therefore) in verse Matthew 5:19. Jesus is saying, since not one iota will drop from the law until all is accomplished, one must not relax the law. In other words, it is much more likely that οὖν refers to the law and the prophets than to the Beatitudes.

Third, we should not think that Jesus condones the scribes and Pharisees’ view of the law, or that he adds more commands in the form of the Beatitudes for them to follow. First, Jesus rebukes the scribes and Pharisees for their treatment of the law (Matthew 23:23). That is because they pay attention to certain details but overlook matters of justice and mercy (Matthew 23:23). Second, there is no reason to think that Jesus adds to the law, although he does explain its depth more fully (Matthew 5:21–48).^17,18

Jesus’ point is that unless one understands the law correctly, according to Jesus’ depth of insight, and not according to the example of the scribes and Pharisees, one will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Possible weaknesses:

The problem with this view is that it does not fit with the immediate context or with Matthew’s Gospel as a whole. First, according to the flow of the narrative, by Matthew 5:17 Jesus is finished with the Beatitudes, and goes on to deal with the law. We also know from Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus is critical of the scribes and Pharisees’ understanding of the law. The suggestion that the scribes and Pharisees understood the law correctly runs counter to the whole of the Gospel of Matthew.