Matthew 5: Can you give me something to work with here?

What if Jesus took just about everything you’d been taught about God your whole life, everything you thought you knew about him, and every rule you’d ever followed in attempts to make yourself right with him and smashed it into a million pieces? After Jesus obliterates your God-view, he then begins to build for you a new framework of fresh understanding of who God really is and what God really expects.

Tap into those feelings and you’ll tap into the experience of those who heard for the first time Jesus’ words of Matthew 5. Everything is turned upside down.

• What you perceive as a life cursed is a life blessed (5:2-12).
• As God’s people, you don’t hide in a corner, but you penetrate the earth and illuminate God’s kingdom goodness for everyone ((5:13-16).
• The “righteous” example of your religious leaders, people who you think are definitely a part of God’s in-crowd, is insufficient (5:17-20).
• Everything you’ve heard from your religious tradition about what not to do on the outside flips to include even the stuff you think on the inside (5:21-33).
• Your sense of justice is upended and replaced by a practice of grace (5:38-42).
• Your love has to extend even to those who don’t love you (5:43-47).
• God loves even those who don’t love him; people you don't even like (5:43-47)!
• And, to top it all off, with your imperfections fully exposed, you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (5:48).

Good grief, Jesus! Can anyone do this? I'm more of screw up than I thought! Can you give me something to work with here?

Sounds like Jesus is setting us up for failure. Or is he?

Let me ask a rhetorical question. Could it be that instead of setting us up for failure, Jesus is lifting himself up as our fulfillment (5:17)?

And the call to perfection (probably not the best translation for our perfectionistic, performance-based society) is more accurately a call to be fully alive by loving God with all of who we are and expressing God's love to others without prejudice.

In Jesus, God’s kingdom comes. He is the Father's fulfillment…and ours.