You Have Heard It Said

“You have heard it said . . . but I say to you,” Matthew 5:21-22.

I wonder if any of us realize the significance of what Jesus said. Six different times he said, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you.” Each time he challenged the traditional understanding of the Law of Moses – about murder, about adultery, about divorce, about oaths, about retaliation, about relating to an enemy. He challenged the foundational teachings of his religious tradition.

Let’s be clear. Jesus didn’t discount those teachings. In fact, he did just the opposite. He came to fulfill the law, Matthew 5:17. That is, he came to reveal what the law meant and to live the life that the law pointed to. When Jesus said, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you,” he reinterpreted the six laws, giving them new and deeper meaning. He went beyond the law’s focus upon behavior – what not to do – to the underlying principle embodied in the law – what to do. He said to a people who built their lives around the law that the law was not fulfilled when they conformed their behavior to its demands. The law was fulfilled when they followed the principle embedded in it.

For example, the underlying principle of “You shall not murder” is recognize and respect the dignity and worth of every person, without exception. Jesus said every time we are angry with another or judge another or insult another, we discount them, robbing them of their dignity and worth. Every time we function out of us-them thinking we discount and devalue the other as less than. According to Jesus, we are guilty of murder.

This shift in focus – from the prescribed behavior to the underlying principle – is life changing. It reorients our thinking. It refocuses our religious life. It moves us beyond our natural focus on behavior to focus on the attitude and spirit residing in our hearts. It moves our emphasis from the external to the internal. It calls us to recognize, name, and address what lies in our hearts so our hearts can be cleansed and our lives transformed. It calls us beyond self-effort with its trying-harder-to-do-better resolve to an openness to God’s grace and the transforming work of the Spirit. Only God can transform our hearts.

Jesus’s statement “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you” was radically significant.

His statement “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you” has an added bonus in today’s religious climate. His words offer guidance in how to read the Bible. We are to read the Bible in the light of the life and teachings of Jesus. Our religious beliefs and understandings are to be shaped by the character of God and the ways of God that we see in Jesus’ life and teachings. Sometimes what Jesus taught calls us to surrender what our religious training taught us to believe - just as Jesus’s statement “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you” called his followers to a different, deeper understanding of their religious tradition. (See Peter’s experience in Acts 10 for an example.) 

“You have heard it said . . . but I say to you.”