Matthew 5:21-26

Anger is an old foe of mine. I have struggled with anger for most of my life. It’s been mostly self-directed – with a few exceptions along the way. As I think I’ve mentioned in a previous sermon. I am a reactor on a life-long journey to become a responder. While I am much more aware of my triggers these days, I can still be reactive at times.

One way I have come to describe my anger over the years is that it can feel like a pinball of anger ricocheting around my soul. I’d like to think that at least sometimes it’s righteous anger but mostly it’s me wanting what I want when I want it.

When I was much younger, I got into a fight and went into a blind rage, and put another young man into the hospital. It terrified me because I had no idea where the rage came from. The end result is it likely moved me toward trusting Jesus because I realized I couldn’t trust myself. And it even affected my early days of marriage. When Linda and I disagreed I shut down because I was afraid of what might happen.

All that to say, I’m a fellow traveler—not someone who has it all together.

So, let’s see what Jesus has to say about our anger. Matthew 5:21-26 is one of the premier relational passages in the whole Bible.

It is the first of six commands in Matthew 5 that theologians call The Six Antitheses (Matthew 5:21-48). Sometimes these are called the Six Intensifiers, because that’s what Jesus is doing. All six of these commands begin with the words, “You have heard it said, but I say to you…”

This phrase was actually quite common for Rabbis to use. What they were usually trying to say is, “You thought it meant only this, but actually it means this…”[1] What Jesus is doing with these six commands is pointing to a way of life that is much much deeper and more expansive than just the words of the command itself. Jesus is not changing the meaning; He’s intensifying the meaning.

Jesus wants His hearers to search out the wisdom underneath the command. It’s actually a lot like reading the book of Proverbs (Wisdom Literature). We can read a proverb and think to ourselves, “There’s a lot more here than there appears to be at first glance.”

What Jesus is saying with these six commands, is that God’s wisdom can be found in every Law of the OT and Jesus is showing us how to dig for and find that wisdom. Jesus agrees with these six commands from the OT and goes on to apply them in very practical ways and reveal the deeper intentions of the OT Law.

In these six commands, Jesus is not so much reinterpreting the OT Law, but He is correcting the long-term misunderstandings of the OT Law.[2] Last week it was pointed out that the followers of Jesus are to be a city set on a hill (5:14) and in these verses that follow Jesus is teaching about the kind of human community and relationships that we ought to be intent on developing. The basic problem of the Pharisees and other religious teachers—and I would say, the basic problem of the human condition, lies in the contradiction between our outward professions, our acts of piety, and the condition of our hearts. Jesus addresses this contradiction later on in Mathew 23:23 where He says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” The scribes and Pharisees had become experts in the minutia of the OT Law instead of delving into the matters of the heart.[3] It would be incorrect to say that Jesus is replacing the OT Law rather, He is showing His disciples that, the Law, rightly understood, goes much further than what the scribes and the Pharisees had taught them.[4]

So, with all that said, let’s consider Matthew 5:21-26…

“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT MURDER,’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be answerable to the court.’ ²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be answerable to the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be answerable to the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. ²³ Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you ²⁴ leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. ²⁵ Come to good terms with your accuser quickly, while you are with him on the way to court, so that your accuser will not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you will not be thrown into prison. ²⁶ Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last [cent].” 

And here’s the big idea: To maintain right[eous] relationships, we receive God’s grace to battle our anger and contempt at the heart level.

With the notion that Jesus came to actually turn the world right side up, I think this passage addresses three ways this happens as we learn how to process our anger (and contempt) biblically.

1. Right-Side-Up Reckoning (Vs. 21-22)
2. Right-Side-Up Reconciliation (Vs. 23-24)
3. Right-Side-Up Recompense (Vs. 25-26)
4. Application: Remember the Way of Righteousness

Let’s consider them one at a time…

1. Right-Side-Up Reckoning (Vs 21-22)

“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT MURDER,’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be answerable to the court.’ ²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be answerable to the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be answerable to the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” 

So, the first thing we see here is that Jesus is equating anger with murder (righteous vs. unrighteous anger – Jesus in the Temple / Eph 4:26). Martyn Lloyd-Jones said in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount that we are only to be angry at sin. We also see here that both murder and anger are answerable to the local court.

What we have here is unrighteous anger followed by two insults. The Greek word for “you good-for-nothing” is raca, which literally means ‘empty-headed.’ Dallas Willard points out that raca may have “originated from the sound one makes to collect spittle from the throat in order to spit.” And the Greek word for the phrase, “you fool” is the same word (mōros) we get our English word moron.

What’s most interesting here is that while the descriptions of the behaviors decrease in intensity – from murder to anger to empty-headed, to moron, YET notice the consequences increase from being accountable to what amounts to the local court, then to the Supreme Court, and then if we call someone a moron, we could end up in the fiery hell!

Can you imagine what the congregation listening to Jesus must have been thinking? (And I hope you’re a little bit freaked out as well.) Remember, Jesus just said, in v. 20, that the righteousness of His followers MUST EXCEED the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.

Tim Mackey from the BibleProject said of this verse, that Jesus “is scrambling our sense of values” to make the point that He is just as concerned with the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb 4:12) as He is with any outward action or activity. That’s heavy.

And there’s even a deeper meaning to grab a hold of here… Insults, anger, and murder are all declarations of contempt that devalue a person who was made in the image of God. The late Dallas Willard, writes that “contempt is to think or speak of someone in such a degrading way that they are dehumanized. It spits on the deep need to belong and is inherently poisonous. It stabs the soul to its core and deflates its powers of life. Contempt can hurt so badly and destroy so deeply that murder would almost be a mercy.”

In these verses, Jesus is teaching us to see in ourselves all the ways our anger and insults devalue and express contempt for people as we, or when we, sit in judgment of another’s worth. The scribes and Pharisees simply did not understand the deeper purpose of the Law.

2. Right-Side-Up Reconciliation (Vs. 23-24)

“Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you ²⁴ leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.”

Biblical scholars would say the context here is that you have just insulted your brother and are now presenting your offering to the Lord. The one who initiates the reconciliation here is the one who has wronged the other person.[5] What Jesus is saying is that God only welcomes offerings from those who are acting justly (Gen 4:4–7; Pr 15:8; Isa 1:11–17; Jer 6:20; Am 5:21–24).[6] This is a distinct reference to Cain and Able.

3. Right-Side-Up Recompense (Vs. 25-26)

“Come to good terms with your accuser quickly, while you are with him on the way to court, so that your accuser will not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you will not be thrown into prison. ²⁶ Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last [cent].”

Jesus is saying that we need to seek reconciliation quickly. And that failure to reconcile will have disastrous consequences on a human level, but even more so if we are not reconciled to God.[7] Jesus is also addressing the problem of conflict in the larger society—in this case legal conflict, which (as we know) has only proliferated in our current cultural context. Followers of Jesus are to consistently pursue, and seek to assist with, heart level reconciliation in all areas of life.[8]

Application: Remember the Way of Righteousness

To make our way to practical application we must first go back to Matthew 5:20: “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I hope that today’s passage helps you to see that righteousness, from the perspective of Jesus, has much more to do with the intent of the heart than any outward compliance or activity. Matthew 5:20 is the thesis statement of the whole sermon. The main point of the SOTM is that Jesus is explaining that our righteousness comes most unexpectedly—it’s the right-side-up way.

To partake of the righteousness that Jesus is challenging us to live by, we must go back and put into practice the first three Beatitudes, remembering there is an emptying and then a filling in our spiritual formation (or sanctification) process.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his commentary states, “Keep showing up at Mat 5:3.”

Blessed are the poor in spirit… To enter into God’s kingdom, we are invited to admit that we have come to the end of ourselves and need God’s help and care.

Blessed are those who mourn… As we are honest about our own sinful tendencies there will be a transforming grief, or repentance, that surfaces – not only for our own lives, but also for the injustice, greed, and suffering that grips our world.

Blessed are the meek…Grieving over sin and suffering places us in a humble learning posture (remember, disciple means learner).

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…Spiritual hunger and thirst is the desire to be empty of those things that don’t reflect God and initiate a deep deep longing for wholeness in our lives. And it’s out of that longing that God supplies His empowering grace to do IN us and THROUGH what we have not been able to do on our own.

Exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, then, is a matter of seeking to worship, honor, serve, and responsively obey God from a fundamentally changed heart. This is a heart that reaches beyond the legalistic boundaries of the law to allow the Holy Spirit to have complete and total access to our hearts that will fill us afresh with mercy, purity, and peace.

[1] NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible Notes.

[2] ESV Global Study Bible Notes.

[3] Gospel Transformation Study Bible Notes.

[4] Pillar New Testament Commentary.

[5] ESV Global Study Bible Notes.

[6] NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible Notes.

[7] ESV Global Study Bible Notes.

[8] Reformation Study Bible Notes.