By showing the depths of God’s law, how unrighteous anger leads to and is equivalent with murder, Jesus is not adding anything to what came before. Though it might seem as if he is doing so, already in the laws given through Moses there was an implicit assumption that our inner life is just as important to God as external actions. In fact, when we read through some of the rabbinical reflections on the Ten Commandments, we see that they also recognized that an unrighteous and vengeful anger lay at the heart of murder. Jesus is not coming forward with anything particularly new.

He is, however, affirming that standard for life in God’s kingdom is perfection. God expects his people to be perfect as he is perfect. Perfection is the standard to which we must aspire if we belong to the kingdom. Perfection is the standard to which we must encourage one another.

In the pursuit of perfection, the encouragement and aspiration are important. As citizens of the kingdom, we want to, we aspire to be perfect as our Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). But we do not make the mistake of thinking that our efforts are the basis of our relationship with God. Remember that the giving of the law, both by Moses and Jesus, comes in response to and not as the cause of God’s grace (see Exodus 20:1–2). The King has come to bring the kingdom. Jesus has come to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17–18). He knows that we are murderers by nature. He knows that it is our sinful tendency to think that we are very important with the result that we get angry at every slight and every perceived slight. He knows that the seed for murder lies in our heart, that wicked desires and thoughts continue to fester and that we are deserving of hell.

The wickedness of humanity is not new to Jesus. He knows us completely; he sees into the depths of our hearts and still he has chosen to love us (see Ephesians 1:3–14). Chosen to come and make us part of his kingdom. Chosen to come and die on a cross where he would be punished for all the times where we have hated and broken God’s law. Chosen to come and live among sinful men so that he can meet the perfection that the Father requires and impute his righteousness to us.

This is the good news if you are a believer in Christ. You have nothing to prove before God. Your efforts and desires are not the basis of your relationship. You might very well have a big problem with unrighteous anger. Perhaps you shouted at someone before coming to worship, or maybe your heart and mind are full of vengeful thoughts because of something that happened earlier in the week. You have said things that were meant to hurt, you have done things that were meant to hurt. You have taken out your frustrations on others. And that is okay. Okay, not in the sense that it is in keeping with God’s will, but okay in the sense that it has not resulted in your expulsion from the kingdom. The good news of the gospel is that Christ has come to save murderers like you and me. We can still be in the kingdom of God, even though we have a historic problem with anger, even though we continue to struggle with the same.

At the same time, we must realize that Jesus wants to and is going to change us. By his Spirit, if we are citizens of his kingdom, he will work his law in us and make us strong to obey it. He is going to deal with our anger problem, he is not going to leave it as it is (see Galatians 5:16–25), by reminding us of what he has done, how he has kept the law for us, and by teaching us how to behave in response to his grace. These are three of the primary ways in which Jesus by his Spirit will deal with our anger problem.