Today I’m going to summarize chapter 2 of Studies In The Sermon On The Mount
Chapter 2 deals with Jesus’ exposition of the law in Matthew 5:21-42. Be sure to read the Scripture passages that correspond with each chapter, as the book doesn’t actually quote much Scripture verbatim, but rather lists the verse numbers at the beginning of each section. Keep your Bible handy while you are reading, as you will need to refer back to the Sermon on the Mount frequently to understand what the book is talking about.
Oswald Chambers uses three words to describe and categorize this section of Scripture: purity, practice, and persecution.
Purity
Jesus Christ demands purity, yet there are many misconceptions about what purity is. “No one is born pure: purity is the outcome of conflict.” Jesus gives us a pure heart through His redemptive work. If that is true for us it will work itself out in actual conduct. Purity comes from having Jesus Christ’s disposition in us. “Jesus Christ demands that the heart of a disciple be fathomlessly pure . . .”
Jesus demands that we be pure in motive. “I may never be angry in deed, but Jesus Christ demands the impossibility of anger in disposition. The motive of my motives, the spring of my dreams, must be so right that right deeds will follow naturally.” We must have an entirely new nature. We cannot become pure by trying to submit a sinful disposition to rules and regulations, nor can purity be imitated. “By the marvelous atonement of Jesus Christ applied to me by the Holy Spirit, God can purify the springs of my unconscious life until the temper of my mind is unblameable in His sight.”
Jesus teaches us to initiate reconciliation, no matter how humiliating it is. “If it is important enough for the Holy Spirit to have brought it to your mind, that is the thing He is detecting. . . . if my disposition has been altered, I will obey Jesus at all costs.”
Jesus Christ goes to the root of the matter in dealing with all kinds of sordid sin. He insists on real purity, not just a sense of propriety. He demands a sterling purity, one that only He Himself can give. “If Jesus Christ can make us only prudish, we would be horrified if we had to go and work amongst the moral abominations of heathendom; but with the purity Jesus Christ puts in He can take us where He went Himself and make us capable of facing the vilest moral corruption, unspotted. He will keep us as pure as He is Himself.”
“There is nothing more heroic or more grand than the Christian life. Spirituality is not a sweet tendency towards piety in people who have not enough life in them to be bad; spirituality is the possession of the life of God that is masculine in its strength, and He will make spiritual the most corrupt, twisted, sin-stained life in He be obeyed. Chastity is strong and fierce, and the man or woman who is going to be chaste for Jesus Christ’s sake has a gloriously sterling job ahead.”
The basis of the spiritual life is the sacrifice of the natural life. This means cutting off things that we perceive to be necessary, as Jesus figuratively states. “The only right Christians have is the right to give up our rights.”
Practice
Regeneration brings new habits. We must start new habits immediately. Discipline is necessary to change habits. Failure to practice what Christ teaches is a result of a lack of personal discipline. This will show itself in our words. “Jesus is saying that our conversation should spring from such a basis of His Spirit in us that everyone who listens is built up by it.”
Persecution
The true Christian has a meekness that is contemptible in the eyes of the world, therefore he will be slapped and insulted. “The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on Jesus Christ’s errands, no time is to be taken in standing up for ourselves. Personal insult will be an occasion in the saint for revealing the incredible sweetness of the Lord Jesus.”
Jesus teaches us to go beyond what is expected, to do what is not our duty. This is only possible through the life of the Son of God. “Every time I insist upon my rights I hurt the Son of God.”
Jesus also commands us to give to those who ask, not because they deserve it or because we feel sorry for them. “We can always find a hundred and one reasons for not obeying our Lord’s commands, because we will trust our reasoning rather than His reason, and our reason does not take God into calculation. How does civilization argue? ‘Do these people deserve what I am giving them?’ As soon as you talk like that, the Spirit of God says, Who are you? Do you deserve more than other people the blessings you have?”
There was a tremendous amount to absorb in this chapter. After I compiled all my notes, I realized that this summary would not be as concise as I thought it would be. Come back next week for part 3!
