![]() This teaching will become essential to the gospel of Jesus. Second, and key to many of the illustrations in the Sermon on the Mount, is the idea that no person is worthy of heaven. Despite outward appearances, their supposed "perfection" did not reach their hearts. First, He implies that the scribes and Pharisees were not truly righteous enough to be allowed into the kingdom. In making His earlier statements, Jesus teaches two points, one immediate and part of a broader sense of what it means to be saved as a Christian. Since the scribes and Pharisees were their culture's role models of extreme righteousness for many everyday Jewish people, how could anyone hope to get into the kingdom of heaven? Now Christ begins to expand on His meaning by discussing the connection between sins of action and sins of attitude. ![]() He declared that unless a person's righteousness exceeds or surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, he or she would never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20). In the preceding verse, Jesus set what seemed like an impossibly high standard. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |