Matthew 5:21

You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment." But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be liable to judgment, and whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says, "You fool!" will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5:21–26)

When Jesus moves the law from "don't murder" to "don't be angry," our self-congratulation collapses—and the work of the heart begins.

From Actions to the Heart

We've been working through the Sermon on the Mount, the longest continuous teaching we have from Jesus in Scripture. After the Beatitudes, Jesus moves into a section about the law and what stands behind it. Today that means anger, grudges, and all those things we love to address in our own lives.

Jesus begins with the old standard, the law which is good—from the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20: "You shall not murder." This is a standard most of us can keep most of the time. I made it all the way here this morning without breaking it. It's a hurdle so low that we often use it to minimize other things: "Well, it's not like I killed someone."

That's because the law, as it pertains to human interaction, only deals with our actions—murder, theft, adultery, lies. The law is not concerned with the why; it asks only whether you did X. So we could pat ourselves on the back for not murdering anyone on the way to church—except that Jesus changes everything.

Jesus says anyone who is angry without cause at their brother or sister, insults them, or calls them an unkind name (our equivalent would be "idiot") has sinned and faces judgment. He took it from actions alone to the attitudes of the heart. It is no longer enough to seem good or look good—we actually have to be good. That's a whole new ballgame.

He Knows Our Hearts

Maybe right now, sitting in your chair, you're thinking, "Oh, man." Jesus knows our hearts. I'm not teaching this as someone who has arrived. As I prepared this week, God made sure I really understood it. I had plenty of opportunity to see the ugly side and to repent, sitting there saying, "Lord, you are faithful, and it is painful."

He can judge our motives and the thoughts behind our actions. We don't have that luxury. We don't know people's motives. But he sees the reactions we have on the inside, and we're held accountable for them. No longer can we get away with smiling on the way into church after yelling at each other in the car on the way there.

Jesus lays out two scenarios. The first is a person on the way to the altar to offer a gift to God. The second is a person on the way to a courtroom. They have one thing in common: in both situations, God assumes the guilt of the party in question. There's no example here for when we were perfect and holy—because God knows our heart, and we are often the guilty party.

Don't Assume Motives

As humans, we can only discern actions. I don't know why you did what you did; I only know what you did. I don't know the thought behind the driver who did that dumb thing—see how I did that? Even there I'm making a judgment call. All I can deal with is what they did.

This is where we wreck just about everything in our relationships. We start to assume motive. We start to figure out, "Oh, that's why they did that." But we don't have that luxury.

That brings us to point one: because we cannot know the heart of others—and most of the time even our own—we need to make sure we don't assume people's reasons or motives. We're not qualified to decide why somebody did something that hurt us. We can only know what they did.

We still can and should address something that hurts us. I'm not saying we let it fly. But what I address is what they did, not why I think they did it. I can go and say, "Hey, what you said there really hurt. Why did you do that?"—and then be willing to listen. Evil assumptions are the quickest way to kill any human relationship.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:7)

We're called to believe the best—in our spouse, our children, our parents, our teachers, employers, pastors, and even those who have hurt us—because we don't know their motives.

Owning What Is Ours

If we can't assume motivations from others, where does our focus need to be? On ourselves, not them. We are free moral agents. We own our actions, reactions, thoughts, and opinions, and those are what we'll be held accountable for, no matter what someone else has done.

I can't blame my spouse for making me mad—that's me. I can't blame my kids for me losing my temper; that's the painful one for me. I can't look at them and say, "Look what you made me do," because that was my choice, my reaction. They may have done something wrong, but the reaction is mine.

The only person we have a ghost of a chance of truly understanding is ourselves—and we're not even very good at that. The only person we have a chance of changing is ourselves. Ask any parent if they can control their children, and they'll tell you there's no way. I can teach, reward, punish, beg, and bribe, but I cannot control them—and I shouldn't.

If God gives us the freedom to choose to follow him or not, we have to give that same freedom to our children. We teach them the right way and hold them to standards, but there's no switch we get to flip to make people do the right thing. If God chose not to exert control but to offer us a choice, then we shouldn't be trying to control, manipulate, or bully others. That's not how God operates, and it's not how we should either.

At the Altar: A Loving Scouring

Picture the first-century worshiper on the way to the altar, sacrifice tucked under his arm, a line of people waiting, priests up ahead. This is an act of worship, drawing close to God. And right there, the Holy Spirit starts pointing out spiritual boogers.

If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you... (Matthew 5:23)

Notice the focus: remembering that we have wronged somebody—not remembering all the things horrible people have done to us. Drawing close to God is a time for him to lovingly examine our hearts and mold us to be more like him. It's not a time for a pride-filled pity party where we savor every wrong done to us and ask God to join us in the swamp.

Becoming more Christlike is a scouring process at the hand of a loving Savior. When my son Max turned one, we were at the mall at McDonald's. He lunged against the stroller restraints, caught the edge of a tray, and a cup of McDonald's coffee came down on his head. He had a heavy shirt on, and that's where he got burned. Someone called paramedics, who said two words I'll never forget: "Life flight." A helicopter landed in the parking lot and flew Max and my wife to Children's Hospital.

Part of healing from burns is scouring the wound so you don't end up with debilitating scar tissue. Max was in there a week. If you know Max, you know he's a rock—he played lineman in football. The doctor said he didn't cry; he just yelled at them at one year old. God will lovingly scour us to make us more like him. He will allow pain if it's for our benefit, because he's playing a long game—concerned with our eternal destiny, not our momentary comfort.

Leave Your Gift and Go

Leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:24)

He calls us to stop right there—sacrifice in hand, people behind, priests in front—and go make it right. He didn't say, "When you get home, deal with it." He said stop. Don't try to draw close to me in worship if you know you have something to take care of.

And the standard is that this is someone we've wronged by God's standard, regardless of how they've treated us. Even if they've done something "wronger"—I know that's not a word—it doesn't excuse what we've done. My reaction is my own; her reaction is hers. We don't get to blame somebody else.

That brings us to point two: the Christian doesn't strive to get even; the Christian strives to become like Jesus. Jesus was horribly wronged and forgave. He was wronged and showed love. He was wronged and gave his life for the very ones who wronged him.

When Mel Gibson made The Passion of the Christ, in the scene where the nails were driven into Jesus' hands, those were Mel Gibson's own hands on the hammer and the nail—because he knew it was his sin that put him there. It was us that put him there, and yet Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." He could have started over—seven days, just say the word—but he didn't, because he loves us.

Sometimes we say, "Well, I'm not Jesus." No, you're not—but with an attitude like that you won't get any more like him either. He said, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." It doesn't mean it's easy. It means we'll struggle, but we have the opportunity to do better.

The Price of Pride

The second example is different.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. (Matthew 5:25)

This isn't someone willingly drawing close to God. This is someone under compulsion being dragged to the judge. Sometimes, either because we're unwilling or because we don't even see it, we've hurt people and refuse to deal with it. So Jesus says: come to terms quickly. Otherwise things only get harder to set right.

Notice the escalation: it moves from two people, to two people and a judge, to an officer, to jail, to a whole prison. Waiting makes things worse. Grievances become grudges, and grudges become generational feuds.

When I was nine or ten, we visited my grandma in Iowa. I come from a strong Dutch background, and Dutch people don't usually have screaming arguments—everything is handled with a polite "well, that's the way you feel." But on that trip my mom and my grandma had a screaming argument, spit flying. The adults scattered and the kids got sent upstairs, where we listened through the floor registers, terrified, because grandmas are supposed to be cookies and hugs. It was never dealt with.

Fast forward about a decade. I brought the woman who would become my wife over to meet my grandma. By then the grievance had boiled over to the whole family. There I sat, nineteen years old, and my grandma wouldn't speak to us, wouldn't make eye contact, wouldn't acknowledge we were there. We left after ten minutes. I saw her one more time after that, at our wedding—and even then it wasn't, "Hey, grandma." It was just, hmm.

Don't wait for these things to become prisons. It doesn't need to be that way. Handle it instead like bringing your gift to the altar—a process that draws you closer to God and the people he's placed in your life.

A Time to Reconcile

So let's actually do what Jesus asked. Prayerfully make a list of the people you need to reconcile with—not people who have wronged you, but people you need to make things right with: people you've hurt or slandered, or held anger or a grudge against.

Point three: if we don't address our transgressions, they only get stronger and choke the joy and worship out of our life. You've seen this happen. So take a few minutes. Some of you may need to ask forgiveness of the person sitting next to you—remember, this is for you, not to remind the person next to you that they need to ask you. Some may need to send a text or even get up and make a phone call. You have a pastoral pass on the rest of the service—if you need to call someone to make it right, do it.

Unfortunately, some will be too stubborn to make the call, send the text, or even write the list. That's a true shame, because it shows you've elevated your pride over Jesus, and that's not a position you want to be in. Ask forgiveness from the people you've wronged, even if they were "wronger."

This is a painfully humbling process. But God himself wrote in James 4:10 that if we humble ourselves in his sight, he will lift us up. We're approaching the holidays—a time focused on gratitude and on celebrating the birth of our Savior. Let's make it a time when we can, without reservation, bring our gifts to God, reconcile with those we've hurt, and celebrate Thanksgiving in peace and Christmas in joy.

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, as we address some of the things we find in our hearts, the things we've done to others, as we give up our rights to judge people erroneously and to assume motives, I pray that you would bring us comfort, healing, and peace, Lord Jesus. For those we need to reach out to, give us the courage to be the first to say we're sorry. Help us to own our own actions and reactions. Help us to truly show the grace and forgiveness you've shown us. As we go out from here, make us lights to our families, examples to our friends and coworkers—salt and light in a world that so desperately needs it. We pray these things in your name. Amen.