Jesus is opening our eyes to the ways that the false self can run amok. The false self, the ego, is in a constant state of hunger and desire. It is always offended and angry. It cannot help but to treat other people as two-dimensional objects fit only for its own pleasure and consumption. It feeds on using people, and using speech to manipulate for its own purposes. And so Jesus tells us – don’t be angry, don’t lust, don’t treat people like they’re disposable, and don’t use your words to manipulate them (Matthew 5:21-37).
Jesus is showing us how the false self wants to twist us, and he’s inviting us into a happy life that is out from under the control of the false self. Unfortunately, the Church has traditionally taken these teachings from Jesus and turned them into yet more legalistic, burdensome demands. Do not lust and don’t get divorced have been turned into flat, joyless commands that have become not invitations to joy, but to shame.
But Jesus intends no shame to occur on account of his words. In fact, a legalistic use of his words is the exact opposite of his stated purpose. He’s calling us to a deeper righteousness than those who settle for a shallow, legalistic kind of rule-following (5:20). Rest assured, any reading of Matthew 5 that creates a spiritual anxiety is not hearing Jesus as he wants to be heard. While the Church has fostered too much shame and disapproval in regards to sex and divorce, Jesus is inviting us into joy. Sexual desire is a biological function created by God. The fact that humans experience it is a good thing. At the same time, joy is not found in lingering fantasies about things and people we find attractive. That way lies an endless hunger. Nor is it found in moving on from a marriage just because the grass looks greener elsewhere. What may appear as a straightforward commandment is actually his way of sticking up for women who are dropped by their husbands for no real reason, which creates a chain reaction of adultery that would have been avoided if he had chosen faithfulness instead.
Here’s the prescription: the outright extermination of desire. Start cutting things off. Wherever desire is going unchecked, it gets checked (start chopping off body parts if you have to!). Here on the mount, we are subjecting ourselves to the fumigating presence and wisdom of Christ so that the bacteria of constant desire cannot survive. To be students of the Sermon on the Mount means there is no way for the false self to survive and outrun the wisdom of Jesus. Here on the mount, Jesus is beginning to suffocate the false self with all its hunger and cravings. And when Jesus gets us all the way to the cross, he’s going to finish it off.
Here is the happiest life, church – not the life in which Jesus gives us everything we want, but in which Jesus teaches us how to stop wanting in the first place. With just a few moments of reflection, what are the things you spend your time desiring? What are the things you wish to possess? What are the outcomes from which you wish to benefit? What are the ways in which you desire that others would perceive you? And what do all those things look like when you bring them here to the feet of Jesus and in his presence speak the words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want?”