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Jesus’ View of Murder
00:26:26
The Bible’s prohibition against murder goes far deeper than our outward actions. From his exposition of the gospel of Matthew, today R.C. Sproul explains how Jesus’ teaching on the sixth commandment reaches to our hearts and upholds the sanctity...
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Our Lord was murdered for us because we are murderers. We've committed murder in our hearts, we've committed murder against him, but in that murder comes our salvation.
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We are all murderers. You might object to that claim, and they also objected to it in the time of Jesus, which is why he took the time to explain the full extent of the Sixth Commandment and that failing to keep that commandment begins in the heart this is the Sunday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham and I'm glad you're joining us today. We're starting a three part series this week from Matthew's gospel as R.C. sproul considers Jesus view of murder, adultery and anxiety. These sermons are from his extensive series in Matthew's Gospel and those sermons eventually became his expositional commentary on Matthew until midnight tonight. You can request this commentary when you give a donation@renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast Show Notes. Thank you for supporting this daily outreach. So what is murder and what does the sixth commandment teach us about being pro life? Here's Dr. Sproul In Matthew, chapter five, beginning in verse 21.
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You have heard that it was said to those of all you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother Racah shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hellfire. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you and leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Agree with your adversary quickly while you're on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge and the judge hands you over to the officer and you be thrown into prison, assuredly I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny. Here we find the beginning of Jesus exposition of particular laws found in the Ten Commandments, and there's a considerable amount of misunderstanding that attends his teaching on this point. Many times people read the text that you've just heard, and they see or hear Jesus standing in contradiction against the Old Testament law. But I remind you that he said, don't think for a moment that I've come to destroy the law. And so he warns us against a misunderstanding of this errant critique of the law. He's not critiquing the law of God. He is critiquing the misinterpretation of the law of God that had been the work of the scribes and the Pharisees. He starts by saying, you've heard it said to those in days of old. And that formula, you have heard it said was a formula that every Jew would understand, just as if the teacher would begin by saying, it is written that you understood that to be shorthand for the Bible says it doesn't mean that it's written anywhere, but it's written in the Bible. And the prophets would give the prefix to their oracles. Thus saith the Lord. Well, when we hear Jesus say, you've heard it said, he's referring specifically to what was called the Halakah, or the oral tradition, the tradition of the rabbis that was passed down by oral recitation from generation to generation. And it's that understanding of the superficial understanding of the law of God that Jesus is criticizing. So we see the contrast here. You've heard it said by the rabbis, but I say to you as the word of God himself. So we're going to see the difference between how the rabbis incorrectly understood the law and how Jesus himself corrects those misunderstandings. The first problem that Jesus demonstrates to us is that the rabbis had such a superficial understanding of the law that they assumed that if you refrained from committing murder in the first degree, that you had therefore obeyed the commandment, thou shalt not kill. Jesus said, wait a minute. This commandment is far more profound than the simple external act of murder in the first degree. So what's Jesus saying here is that the law, in the way it was given by Moses, was given in what we call an elliptical fashion. And what does that mean? That means that not everything that the message was communicating was set down exactly in words. But sometimes you'll read a statement in paper and a statement is made, and at the end you'll see dot, dot, dot, dot, indicating that there's something more to be contained. Now, one of the most important part of the ellipse in the law is this, that whatever the law specifically forbids, it at the same time forbids everything that is part of the broader nexus or context of that law. So that when God says you should not murder somebody, that means by extension, you should not do anything that will bring damage to your neighbor's life. Anything that is part of the whole complex of murder. Murder which reaches its it's nadir in sin that begins with unjustifiable anger, with hatred and includes insults and slander and estrangement from people that finally escalates to the point that actual murder is committed. And so Jesus said, you don't escape the weight of this law if you just refrain from murder because it means, by extension, you're not supposed to do any kind of harm to your neighbor. The other aspect of the ellipsis is this, is that whatever the law prohibits, it at the same time enjoins its opposite. And whatever the law enjoins, it at the same time prohibits its opposite. Now, what does that mean? This text that you've just heard today is one of the most important texts in all the Bible with respect to the sanctity of human life. What Jesus is saying here is that not only life is so important that we ought never to do damage by killing somebody, yet at the same time, we are to be working in a positive way to promote the safety, the welfare, and the sanctity of life. I remember not too long ago, Larry King, on one of his programs, or in one of his articles, I forget which, he made a criticism of evangelical Christians. And he said, these people, on the one hand, are opposed to abortion on demand, and on the other hand, support capital punishment. And he said, until the Christian community speaks out against capital punishment, I'm not going to take seriously their protest against abortion. And I thought that was interesting observation from somebody on the outside listening to us. And what Mr. King, of course, failed to understand is that the exact same principle governs both of these issues. The case against abortion is based upon the biblical principle of the sanctity of life. And the case for capital punishment is based on the biblical principle of the sanctity of life. When it was instituted by God in Genesis, the reason why God instituted capital punishment was because the life of a human being is regarded as being so sacred that if someone willfully, maliciously, with malice aforethought, kills another person, that person has not only made an assault against a human being, but has slaughtered a creature who bears the image of God. And so God said, when you do that, you forfeit your life because you have destroyed the sanctity of life. So the principles are both there, and they're both here in this text. Let me give you another extension that may give you a little bit of a headache trying to figure it out. But in this text, Jesus is saying that the law against murder not only prohibits actual murder, but it also prohibits potential murder. Let me say it again. What is prohibited is not just the actual killing of a human being, but those things that represent potential destruction of a human being. And in the case of abortion, it's a little bit different. In the case of abortion, you don't have the actual destruction of what some would say an actual life, but at the very minimum, you have the actual destruction of a potential life. Now, I believe it's the actual destruction of an actual life, but I'm saying at the very minimum, an embryo that is growing, left alone is moving from potentiality to actuality. And to destroy it is to actually destroy a potential life. Now it would seem to me, if Jesus says, you can go to hell for the potential destruction of an actual life, how much more serious would be to be involved in the actual destruction of a potential life? I understand they're not the same, but they're so closely related they need to have an impact on our thinking. Another thing before I proceed. Several years ago I read an essay from a scholar who was raising a skeptical voice about the ethical teaching of Jesus. He was scratching his head and he was saying in print, I don't understand why the Western world has given so much credibility to Jesus of Nazareth as an ethical teacher or as a teacher of morality when the ethic that he teaches is absurd. And he went on to say, how could anybody in their right mind say it's just as bad to hate your brother without cause as it is to murder him? If you hate him and if you slander him, you maybe hurt his feelings, but you haven't taken his life and haven't left his wife, a widow, and his children's orphans just because you insulted the man. What kind of an ethical teacher would equate these two things? By the same token, he said, what teacher in the right mind would say that it's just as bad to lust after a woman in your mind as it is actually to commit adultery? And so he was so puzzled at the teaching of Jesus, and of course, the point that he missed by a mile is that Jesus doesn't say, it's just as bad to be angry with your brother as it is to kill him. That's not what he's saying. He understands the degree of heinousness of various sins, but what he's saying, that just because you haven't gone all the way to murder does not mean that you are free from the full orbed responsibility of the law. Do you understand that? And so he spells that out further here by saying, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Whoever says to his brother Ra Ka shall be in Danger of the council. Now, we don't know for sure what that word means there, but the majority of commentators indicate that it means something like calling somebody a nincompoop or a numbskull or stupid. Now, there's a difference between being foolish and being stupid. Being stupid is where you know, you have a charley horse in the brain and you not very bright, you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And to call somebody stupid or a numbskull is very insulting, even though at times we may well deserve it. In America, you watch road rage every day and you watch how drivers respond to other drivers by using obscene gestures when they are angry with what the other driver does. In Holland, they also have a gesture to insult the person who has crossed your path. They take their index finger and point it at the middle of the head. And what that means is idiot, stupid. That's the way they do it. That's an insult. But then he goes on to say that it's not just a matter of saying rock up, but whoever says, you fool shall be in danger of hell's fire. Now what's the difference? The statement stupid is an intellectual judgment. The statement full in Hebrew categories is a moral judgment. When we see in the Old Testament, foolishness is set in contrast to wisdom. And we are told in the Old Testament that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. That is the necessary condition for any person to get wisdom is to seek it in an attitude and a posture of reverence and awe before God. Yet at the same time the Bible said it's the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. Paul expands on that in Romans 1 when he talks about human beings rejection of God's plain and manifest revelation of himself. And he says as the supreme indictment, professing themselves to be wise, they become fools and their foolish minds are darkened. So to be a fool in biblical categories may be the description of a person who has the highest IQ in the world, who is a brilliant scholar, but with all of his knowledge, all of his mental acuity, is a skeptic with respect to God. He remains rebellious, cynical to the sweetness and excellency of God, who has revealed himself so plainly that only somebody who can't stand the thought of God rejects him, not because of a lack of information, not because of a lack of evidence, but because of the hardness of the heart. Unbelief is a sin, not a mistake. It's willful, and we need to guard our hearts against that. Jesus finishes this up by saying, if you are in a state of estrangement with your brother over unjustifiable anger or slander or whatever it is that has brought this to pass. Before you go to church, before you drop your offering in the offering plate, go and get reconciled with your brother. Because what this is about is establishing a love relationship with your neighbor, with your brother and your sister. And we need to get these things settled before we have to go before the law court of God, wherein it will then be too late. But it's because none of us loves our neighbor as ourself that none of us has kept all of the implications of even this one commandment since we got out of our bed this morning. Every one of us still harbors anger to some degree that is really not justifiable. Every one of us has been guilty of slander towards our neighbor and towards our brother. In a word, we have failed to love our neighbor to the degree that we do everything we can to adorn his life. And if it were not for the murder of Christ, we would go to that place from which we would never be released. But our Lord was murdered for us. Because we are murderers. We've committed murder in our hearts. We've committed murder against Him. But in that murder comes our salvation. In his blood comes a new covenant.
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As I said at the beginning of today's episode, we are murderers. But as RC Sproul reminded us today, we have a Savior who died for murderers, who can cleanse anyone from their sin if they trust in him alone for their salvation. What a glorious gospel. What a glorious Savior. It's good to have you with us on this Sunday edition of Renewing youg Mind as we start a new series with Dr. Sproule exploring select portions of the Sermon on the Mount. You can study the entire Sermon on the Mount, in fact, the entirety of Matthew's Gospel. When you request R.C. sproul's commentary on Matthew, he'll walk you through this gospel line by line. Use it for your devotional reading or for a Bible study in Matthew. Simply request yours@renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast Show Notes before midnight tonight, we'll send it to you. To thank you for your donation in support of Renewing youg Mind and the Global Gospel Outreach of Ligonier Ministries. This offer does end tonight, so give your gift@renewingyourmind.org while there's still time. And for our global listening audience, there is an ebook edition waiting for you@renewingyourmind.org Global there's more in this series, and next time we'll Today, we'll look at Jesus view of adultery and the seventh Commandment, a commandment that sadly is broken far more often than many realize. That'll be next Sunday here on Renewing youg Mind.
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Sam.