"Just the Red Letters"
A pastor asked me: The Great Commission says that we should teach people to obey everything that Jesus commanded. What is it talking about – the Sermon on the Mount? Should we go through the four Gospels and focus on what Jesus said? In some Bibles, these words are printed in red. Is that where we should look when we want to define our mission?
Matthew puts the Sermon on the Mount in a prominent place in his Gospel – it’s the first of five major sections of Jesus’ teachings. But much of it is not a command. When Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness” (Matthew 5:10), he wasn’t commanding us to be persecuted. When he said, “You are the salt of the earth” (verse 13), he was making a statement of fact, not a command.
Jesus said, “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (verse 28). That’s not a command, either. In grammar, it is an indicative verb, not an imperative. It is making a statement of fact, although the implications are not hard to see. Jesus was building on the framework of an Old Testament command. He implied the validity of the old command but the letter of the law didn’t go far enough. We cannot limit ourselves to the exact words used in the Old Testament – we need to look at the principle, of what God wants in the heart.
However, we cannot limit ourselves to the exact words that Jesus used, either. He was giving an illustration, not a complete list of forbidden behaviors. For one thing, he said nothing about those who look at men lustfully. He says nothing about what might be called emotional adultery, where we become dissatisfied with our spouse for not living up to some relational ideal. We want our spouse to have a better body, a better way with words, a better spirituality, a better use of time. Even if these longings do not lead us to sexual adultery, they are hurting the relationship that God wants marriage to be.
When we look for the commands of Jesus, we cannot limit ourselves to the exact words that he used. We cannot look for the minimum. That in itself would suggest a reluctance on our part, but it’s not surprising – it is the way we all start, and none of us has become perfect in the heart.
If the commands of Jesus are the only thing we teach, it’s not going to come across like good news to most people. “I have good news for you – you should stop doing this, start doing that.” Something is missing in this message.
The good news is not just that God’s in charge and we have the privilege of obeying him. Both of those are true, but there’s more to the message of Jesus than that. The good news is that God accepts us as his friends even though we aren’t very good about doing what he wants. He wants us in his family even when we aren’t very sure we want to be there.
In the Great Commission, Jesus mentions making disciples before he mentions teaching people to obey. The two ideas are related, but we can’t equate them. We make disciples by preaching forgiveness first, and response next. Both are part of the Great Commission. We have to address the question, “What’s in it for me?” The disciples asked it, Jesus answered it, and the answer is given for all of us (Matthew 19:27-29).
We should read the red letters, but we need to think a little deeper than what they say on the surface. We need to see principles, ideas, a vision of what life could be. We look for whole-hearted response, not a minimum.
We need more than the red letters. Jesus did not teach merely by the words he used. He took, by most estimates, more than three years to teach his disciples. He didn’t just give them a list of things to do. He gave them a life to watch; he wanted them to “do as I have done” (John 13:15). Although that command is set in a specific context, it was Jesus’ approach to making and shaping his disciples. They were to do not just what Jesus directly commanded, but they were to approach life the way he did.
In his teachings, Jesus set high standards. Our righteousness should be more thorough than what the Pharisees taught (Matthew 5:20). Why would thousands of people want to listen to a sermon like that? It is because of the example that Jesus set. Richard Burridge put it like this: Jesus set the bar high, and he accepted everyone who fell short of it. The goal is to be more like God, and no one has reached that goal. The good news is that God loves us and wants us anyway.
He doesn’t take away the goal, as if he doesn’t care about what we do. The message has two parts: “Neither do I condemn you…. Go now and leave your life of sin.” We are to forgive seven times seventy times, and then some, while we also teach that people should not sin. We are to do the one, and not leave the other undone.
Jesus commissioned his disciples to continue his ministry. But we cannot look at the Great Commission and say, What’s the minimum we need to do here? What are we required to do?
We are required to be generous in forgiveness. We don’t do very well at that, but Jesus forgives us anyway and he continues to tell us that we are required to be forgiving. Forgiveness and obedience are a never-ending loop. If obedience isn’t needed, there’s nothing to forgive.
We need more than red letters. That’s why the New Testament has more than the Gospels. Luke tells a story in the book of Acts, and the disciples were not restricted to the words in red. Nor did they repeat them as if that’s the sum total of what we are to preach.
When Paul wrote letters to his churches, he didn’t just stick to the words in red. He was explaining the implications of the gospel, how it is to be fleshed out in a Greco-Roman culture. He writes about forgiveness, and he gives commands; he expects his readers to accept those commands as authoritative. He believes that if Jesus were in that situation, then this is what he’d say. This is how the church took it; this is what it means when the church accepted his writings as part of the canon, part of the Scriptures, the things that are written for our instruction. They are words of Jesus, too – they may be in black, but they should be read.
There is no simple list of things we are to preach and teach. What Jesus gave was an example, not a formula. We need the guidance of the Spirit, a bit of humility, a bit of work, and a bit of forgiveness as we participate in the Great Commission.
Michael Morrison, GCS News, Fall 2024