Interpreting the Ethics of the Sermon on the Mount

There is no or little denial that Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount provide a stirring ethical challenge to all, Christians and non-Christians alike. Even Mahatma Gandhi appreciated its teaching and the high morality found within. But a bigger and more pressing question remains before one can accurately apply the ethical teachings - how should we understand and interpret the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount in the first place? With what hermeneutical rule should we bear in mind as we read the Sermon?

Graham Stanton has presented what I think are the five key questions for a right interpretation or hermeneutical approach (from his article ‘Sermon on the Mount/Plain’ in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels). I have rephrased the questions slightly, tweaked the order in which they appear, and provided some comments on each of them.

1) Is the Sermon directed to all people or only to Christians? Of the prominent theologians that I have read concerning their interpretation of the Sermon - Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Bonhoeffer and John Stott (and just in case you were wondering, this reading comes from a useful book The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries (ed. Jeffrey Greenman, Timothy Larsen and Stephen Spencer; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007)), all agree that the whole Sermon or at least a majority of it applies only to Christians. This makes sense in light of the Scriptural text – Jesus sees the crowds, he goes up on the mountain, and (only) the disciples come to him, and he begins teaching them (Matt 5:1-2). The sermon is also bracketed by two sections of narratives which emphasise the theme of the calling of Jesus and discipleship (Matt 4:18-22 and Matt 8:18-22). This is a particular important point especially for Bonhoeffer, whose hermeneutical approach to the ethics of the Sermon could be summarised as an Ethics of Discipleship (The Cost of Discipleship – see my earlier posts on him here and here). This means that all hermeneutical interpretations of the Sermon belonging to liberalism – where the Sermon is thought to be the essential map for building a progressive and (moral) civilization – is blown out of the water. For a discipleship-approach presupposes that we need Jesus as our Saviour, whereas liberalism presupposes that we merely need Jesus as at best a transformer of our decaying morality. Nonetheless, I agree with John Stott, for whom the central understanding of the Sermon can be characterised by the term ‘Christian counter-culture’. While the Sermon pertains to Christians, it will bring us into contact and in fact abrasion with the wider world, simply because the Sermon is so counter-culture to the ethos of our day and age.

2) Is the sermon for all time? Or only for an interim age, be it an age that has past us or is coming? (Question of eschatology and the application of the Sermon) There are further variations to the above question. Some view that the sermon is valid only for an interim age before the coming of the Spirit (which means we today have gone past that age). Others view it as an ethic of the interim age for Israel before the return of Christ, while others view it as an ethic for Israel for all time. But one thing is common. All these variations share a common mother thought – that of dispensationalism. Carson presents some compelling reasons why this is not the case (The Sermon on the Mount (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001 ed.), 168-170). The main reason is that the dispensationalist approach to the Sermon relies so heavily on the larger dispensationalist theological framework that it obscures the reading of the text. In another words, rather than the Scriptural text of the Sermon leading to or confirming our theological framework, the Dispensationalist framework tends to ‘twist’ our reading of the Sermon in a certain way. I admit that the same accusation can be made of us who hold to a more ‘biblical-theological’ approach of reading Scripture. The challenge is to adopt (what one of the lecturers in College called) the heuristic approach to reading the bible – where we come to the bible with our theological systems, but in reading Scripture, we genuinely allow the words of Scripture to challenge our theological system and if need be, we are epistemically humble enough to change our theological systems. It would be straining our reading of the Scriptural text of the Sermon to suggest that either a temporal application of the ethics or an application applicable to only Israel is on view. Passages like Matt 5:17-20 and 24 with their emphasis on ‘anyone’ and ‘everyone’ more likely points to the direction that Jesus had in mind not only the hearers of the Sermon on that day, but also anyone who would eventually come to hear these precious words of his. The wider context of Matthew also does not support a Dispensationalist view (esp. Matt 28:18-20 where the disciples are told to go to the nations and where part of that includes teaching them ‘everything’ Jesus has commanded them).

Related to this point, even Kyle Fedler’s description of the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount as ‘kingdom ethics’ require careful qualification (Exploring Christian Ethics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 168-172). Fedler sees the Sermon as representing ‘a kind of “kingdom ethic,” a portrait of what ethics in the (future) kingdom of God will resemble’ (p.171). To his credit, Fedler disagrees with Reinhold Niebuhr’s analysis that in the Sermon Jesus holds up an impossible ideal for ethics; and he agrees more with Glen Stassen’s proposal that Jesus, while holding up a high ideal, nonetheless provided ‘practice norms’ or practical guidelines for transforming ourselves and our relationships such that we can start participating in this ‘eschatological deliverance that begins now’ (p.172). My discomfort with Fedler’s view is his presupposition that as Jesus was speaking the Sermon, he had in mind solely or even primarily the approach of the end-times. I think it would be more right to state that Jesus had in mind the kingdom of God (Matt 4:17 and the frequent reference to ‘kingdom’ in the Sermon) and what it means to follow him in this Kingdom (Matt 5:17-20, Matt 7:24). In another words, if we want to describe the Sermon as ‘Kingdom Ethics’, we need to qualify what we mean exactly in terms of the ‘eschatological horizon’ of the Kingdom. Otherwise, we might end up unintentionally weakening the ethical force of the Sermon by relegating it to the ‘not-yet’ eschatological horizon. My own preference and persuasion is that eschatology is not the sole or even primary consideration of Jesus as he spoke the Sermon. Something else is.

3) Is the Sermon meant to be taken literally in all that it’s saying? While many would jump at first response and say, “Of course not!” the answer is a bit trickier than that. Many in the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition have taken seriously the words of Jesus here, and such seriousness has been manifested in their die-hard commitment to pacifism. I agree with Carson here that while being sympathetic to their views, two points lead me to stand on different ground. The first is that such a view fails to account or accommodate the rhetorical devices Jesus might have used in his Sermon to bring out his point – e.g. hyperbole or exaggeration to shock us hearers to the point or principle he’s making. While the shocking statements or hyperbole itself could be a possible application of the point Jesus is making, it would be wrong to confuse the application with the point or principle itself. Secondly, the Sermon by itself is not a final comment on issues such as war and capital punishment. Other biblical considerations that are derived from a reading of the whole corpus of Scripture need to be considered as well. It would also be good to familiarise oneself with the long Christian tradition of political reflection.

4) What’s the relationship of Jesus to the Sermon? Is he merely the speaker of the Sermon, speaking of an ethic external to himself? Is he radically presenting new teaching, or merely interpreting and clarifying the Law of Moses? The key passage to explore in this regard would be Matt 5:17-20, and a lot depends on the interpretation of the word ‘fulfill’. Does it mean to ‘confirm’? To ‘bring about something new by abolishing the old’? Or does it mean ‘to bring something to its full intended goal or purpose’? It is the third meaning of the word that is most likely on view. In another words, as Carson states, “Jesus did not conceive of his life and ministry in terms of opposition to the Old Testament, but in terms of bringing to fruition that toward which it points. Thus, the Law and the Prophets, far from being abolished, find their valid continuity in terms of their out-working in Jesus.” (Sermon, 42 (italics his)). The six examples Jesus gives from 5:21-47 all further work out this guiding principle.

But we must ask further – is that all there is to the Christological significance in the Sermon? Here, we wholeheartedly agree with the insights of Bonhoeffer who refused to separate the words of the Sermon from the preacher of the Sermon. “The one who preached the Sermon and the Sermon are one” (Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 231). He states, “the sayings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are the interpretation of his existence, and thus the interpretation of that reality in which history finds its fulfilment in God’s becoming human, in the reconciliation of the world with God.” (Ethics, 235). In another words, Jesus doesn’t just speak the words or the ethics of the Sermon as someone external to it, but he speaks as someone who embodies the ethics in his very own life. As the one who brings in the Kingdom of God, Jesus exemplifies in his own life what life and behaviour in this Kingdom will look like. And it is only because Jesus is such that we who follow as his disciples have any chance of living out the ethics of this Kingdom he has brought in. In another words, correct ethical interpretation of the Ethics of the Sermon must be necessarily first and foremost Christological.

5) What’s the relationship between the Sermon and Paul’s gospel of grace? Is the sermon intended to make the readers of listeners aware of their need of grace? Or does the Sermon presuppose God’s forgiveness and acceptance of the sinner and therefore set out demands for true discipleship? I am delighted to state that none of the major interpreters of the Sermon that I’ve read (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Bonhoeffer and Stott) interpret the Sermon in the first way. Even Luther, who would probably have been the prime suspect, interpreted the Sermon in terms of his two-kingdoms theology. As Susan Schreiner comments:

“According to Luther Christians always had to distinguish the two kingdoms [...] ordained by God. The two kingdoms correspond to the two relationships in which the Christian stands: the spiritual kingdom involves the Christian before God; the earthly kingdom involves the Christian before the neighbour. [Before God] the Christian stands in a passive or receptive relationship. Here the Christian receives only faith and justification by that faith. [...] [Before neighbour], the Christian is always active in works of love.” (The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries, 114)

For Luther, the Sermon relates to the Christian before men in the earthly kingdom. We ‘cannot understand the Sermon on the Mount unless we are first grounded in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Having been justified, the believer should then turn to the Sermon in order to find ethical instructions about living the life of faith’ (p.111). More than anything else, Luther’s interpretation comes closer to the second approach mentioned above than the first.

Calvin, on the other hand, holds to the tension between gospel and law within the Sermon in his interpretation. He cleverly distinguishes between the two, but he does not make them antithetical. For Calvin, ‘the gospel of Christ cannot replace or alter [the] law without affronting the God who gave the law and sent Christ’ (Stephen Spencer, The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries, 152). Calvin’s ethical hermeneutics involves him keeping law and gospel together.

For John Wesley, the emphasis of the Sermon was on what he termed ‘gracious holiness’ – holiness inspired by and born out of grace. As Mark Noll observes,

“The great marvel of Wesley’s thirteen discourses is how consistently they maintain both and exalted view of divine grace and a full dedication to active holiness – and without compromising one by the other. [...] [He has expounded] with rentless energy the bonded scriptural message of purity of heart bestowed by grace and sanctification of life pursued through works.” (The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries, 179.)

Perhaps a hermeneutic of the Ethics of the Sermon will involve holding both law and gospel together. While not totally being able to articulate the clear and precise correspondence between the two (as presented in the Sermon), perhaps the more important thing is to ensure that our hermeneutic holds onto both components.

Finally, in pulling things to a close, what can we say as about the hermeneutics of Ethics in the Sermon? I’m suggesting the following:

Jesus, in bringing in God’s Kingdom, tells us what life, norms and behaviour in that kingdom looks like. He not only speaks it, but both speaker and speech are one. His own life embodies the Sermon and in that way, as his disciples and followers in this Kingdom, our interpretation of the Ethics must begin with him. And as we follow after him, we soon discover it is a journey of costly grace. Costly because obedience to the Sermon is called for; the requirements of the Kingdom are pressed upon our hearts; and discipleship and witness is intrinsic to the Sermon. But grace because it is Jesus we are obeying, the one who has first and foremost fulfilled the requirements of the Kingdom and the requirements of his own words! And it is also grace because in giving up our life, we actually find it, or more correctly, we actually find it being given to us.