But what does it mean to fulfill the will of God that’s revealed in that command, it’s not just to end somebody’s life, it’s about weaning yourself off of this habit that we have to evaluate other people’s worth. This gets very personal very quickly, the ease with which I’ll be more flippant about someone’s dignity if they’re not in the room versus if they are, that rule of if I wouldn’t say it directly to a person, I probably shouldn’t say it when they’re not in the room, that’s a dignity issue. Somehow it’s easier to treat someone with less worth if they’re not physically present and then sometimes we treat them with less worth even if they are. At the root of all of this is actually not just anger or murder, it’s about how I view other people as having worth and dignity, that’s the core issue. It makes sense why Jesus would say love God and love your neighbor fulfills the commands of the Torah, to love someone is to value their existence as precious before God and therefore precious to you, because they’re an image of God.
Whether it’s through your actions towards them or in your language about them or to them, because if you think of somebody as good for nothing, you’re actually cultivating, fostering a narrative in your mind about what or how you value that person actually matters, putting myself in the place of God as the ultimate evaluator. Jesus does not abolish the seventh command, rather he shows the deepest sense and the consummated reality of the commandment, that is, its fulfillment. Jesus gets to the heart of the matter by saying the real issue underneath murder is not the act itself and it is a wrong and devastating act, but the heart or the inner disposition of the actor not committing the physical act of murder is good and right, but it is not the true litmus test of alignment with God’s will and coming Kingdom.
For that one must examine one’s attitudes and language about other people which are just as important. For Jesus, a life that aligns with the will of God is that my actions and my thoughts towards other people are generous. So generous, that even when I’m tempted to think that I’m better than them, that my opinion about their worth actually matters, God is the one whose existence establishes the worth of other humans, because they are the image of God and relationships in the Kingdom are to mirror that reality, which means every single human I come into contact with is of ultimate sacred worth and dignity. You can tell whether or not someone really believes that with what they’re tempted to do, when they’re frustrated with somebody’s behavior.
These three sayings, it begins with anger, which is totally internal, just being angry with your brother. The second one is that anger or contempt finds expression in words, which in the first insult, you empty nothing, that’s pretty vicious, your attacking the value of another person’s life in a public way, like a public kind of shaming. The last one, you idiot. In other words, you go from internal anger to an expression of anger verbally that’s really really insulting and shameful and then it moves to a lesser insult, you idiot. It’s as if you go from most significant to least significant in terms of the action, they decrease in intensity. What’s fascinating though is that inverting that descending level of intensity, is a ascending level of intensity of the consequences, they go in reverse order.
Jesus says, if you publicly shame and try to insult the value of another person in a public way, you are accountable to the Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin would be like the supreme court in Jerusalem. There is the first mismatch, even to call somebody of public insult and then to say you will stand before the Sanhedrin, that’s the first one, where Jesus is starting to have twinkle in his eye and then the last one is the most intense mismatch, which is the slight jab, you idiot, puts you not in front of your local court, not even in front of the Sanhedrin of Israel, but in front of God’s court, that is gehenna of fire. You go from a lower human court, to the highest human court, to the Divine court and so that scrambling of our senses is to help us see, that we see huge distinctions in outward behavior, because there is a real difference between taking someone’s life and calling them an idiot.
What Jesus is doing, he’s trying to say, but there is an attitude and a posture towards the value of other human beings that underlies all these behaviors and that God takes that of utmost serious, that heart attitude. The deliberate paradox of matching hellfire with calling someone an idiot, is that ordinary insults may betray an attitude of contempt, which God takes just as seriously as the heart attitude that lead someone to take another’s life. Using the metaphor of the wellspring, murder is a way downstream response of a heart posture towards others that began way upstream and that’s what Jesus is focusing on. The shocker, the jaw-dropper, that Jesus is going for the moment of matching, calling someone an idiot with gehenna of fire.
This makes sense then, why Jesus would say, if you insulted somebody and you know they have something against you, don’t even think about trying to go present yourself in public as somebody who’s right with God, your relationship with God is completely intertwined and interdependent on the health of your relationships with other people. How you relate to other people, is how you relate to God. Jesus is trying to train us ethically, that whenever we see a command of the Torah, we assume that what’s underneath it, is some deeper core value, not choosing to end another person’s life is one way to apply love of God and love of neighbor, but it also applies just as urgently to our attitude and our language towards other people, because it’s all rooted in the same disposition towards other people, whether we treat them as having ultimate Divine worth or having little to no worth, we treat people accordingly based on that, it fulfills the Torah.
Whether it’s through your actions towards them or in your language about them or to them, because if you think of somebody as good for nothing, you’re actually cultivating, fostering a narrative in your mind about what or how you value that person actually matters, putting myself in the place of God as the ultimate evaluator. Jesus does not abolish the seventh command, rather he shows the deepest sense and the consummated reality of the commandment, that is, its fulfillment. Jesus gets to the heart of the matter by saying the real issue underneath murder is not the act itself and it is a wrong and devastating act, but the heart or the inner disposition of the actor not committing the physical act of murder is good and right, but it is not the true litmus test of alignment with God’s will and coming Kingdom.
For that one must examine one’s attitudes and language about other people which are just as important. For Jesus, a life that aligns with the will of God is that my actions and my thoughts towards other people are generous. So generous, that even when I’m tempted to think that I’m better than them, that my opinion about their worth actually matters, God is the one whose existence establishes the worth of other humans, because they are the image of God and relationships in the Kingdom are to mirror that reality, which means every single human I come into contact with is of ultimate sacred worth and dignity. You can tell whether or not someone really believes that with what they’re tempted to do, when they’re frustrated with somebody’s behavior.
These three sayings, it begins with anger, which is totally internal, just being angry with your brother. The second one is that anger or contempt finds expression in words, which in the first insult, you empty nothing, that’s pretty vicious, your attacking the value of another person’s life in a public way, like a public kind of shaming. The last one, you idiot. In other words, you go from internal anger to an expression of anger verbally that’s really really insulting and shameful and then it moves to a lesser insult, you idiot. It’s as if you go from most significant to least significant in terms of the action, they decrease in intensity. What’s fascinating though is that inverting that descending level of intensity, is a ascending level of intensity of the consequences, they go in reverse order.
Jesus says, if you publicly shame and try to insult the value of another person in a public way, you are accountable to the Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin would be like the supreme court in Jerusalem. There is the first mismatch, even to call somebody of public insult and then to say you will stand before the Sanhedrin, that’s the first one, where Jesus is starting to have twinkle in his eye and then the last one is the most intense mismatch, which is the slight jab, you idiot, puts you not in front of your local court, not even in front of the Sanhedrin of Israel, but in front of God’s court, that is gehenna of fire. You go from a lower human court, to the highest human court, to the Divine court and so that scrambling of our senses is to help us see, that we see huge distinctions in outward behavior, because there is a real difference between taking someone’s life and calling them an idiot.
What Jesus is doing, he’s trying to say, but there is an attitude and a posture towards the value of other human beings that underlies all these behaviors and that God takes that of utmost serious, that heart attitude. The deliberate paradox of matching hellfire with calling someone an idiot, is that ordinary insults may betray an attitude of contempt, which God takes just as seriously as the heart attitude that lead someone to take another’s life. Using the metaphor of the wellspring, murder is a way downstream response of a heart posture towards others that began way upstream and that’s what Jesus is focusing on. The shocker, the jaw-dropper, that Jesus is going for the moment of matching, calling someone an idiot with gehenna of fire.
This makes sense then, why Jesus would say, if you insulted somebody and you know they have something against you, don’t even think about trying to go present yourself in public as somebody who’s right with God, your relationship with God is completely intertwined and interdependent on the health of your relationships with other people. How you relate to other people, is how you relate to God. Jesus is trying to train us ethically, that whenever we see a command of the Torah, we assume that what’s underneath it, is some deeper core value, not choosing to end another person’s life is one way to apply love of God and love of neighbor, but it also applies just as urgently to our attitude and our language towards other people, because it’s all rooted in the same disposition towards other people, whether we treat them as having ultimate Divine worth or having little to no worth, we treat people accordingly based on that, it fulfills the Torah.