An Impossible Standard?

If we approach the Sermon on the Mount only or mainly as a means by which we see our sinfulness, we’ve not taken the sermon on its own terms. Martyn Lloyd-Jones saw the situation clearly:

Is it not true to say of many of us that in actual practice our view of the doctrine of grace is such that we scarcely ever take the plain teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ seriously? We have so emphasized the teaching that all is of grace and that we ought not to try to imitate His example in order to make ourselves Christians, that we are virtually in the position of ignoring His teaching altogether and of saying that it has nothing to do with us because we are under grace. Now I wonder how seriously we take the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The best way of concentrating on the question is, I think, to face the Sermon on the Mount.¹

Lloyd-Jones is exactly right. We’ve turned the Sermon on the Mount into a giant spanking spoon—good for making you squeal in pain, but not a welcome instrument or a way of life. The Great Commission, then, becomes a summons to teach the nations everything Jesus has said—which, of course, they cannot do, and he doesn’t expect them to observe.

But isn’t the Sermon on the Mount an impossible standard? Who among us never worries, never lusts, never gets angry, never lies, is never a hypocrite, and always loves his enemies, always follows the Golden Rule, and always serves God alone? Here it’s good to recall the distinction between true obedience and perfect obedience. There is a way to insist on genuine obedience as a way of life without doubling down on never sinning and always doing what is right. Besides that helpful theological category, however, notice four things in the text pointing us away from thinking Jesus means to give us an impossible discipleship plan.

First, Jesus presents us with bracing either/or options at several points in his sermon. We can take the narrow gate or the wide gate, the easy path or the hard path, the way of life or the way of death (Matt. 7:13–14). We can be healthy trees bearing good fruit or diseased trees bearing bad fruit (Matt. 7:17–20). We can build our house on the rock and be secure or build our house on the sand and be destroyed (Matt. 7:24–27). The stakes could not be higher. If we are no more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:20). If we murder in our hearts, we are liable to the hell of fire (Matt. 5:22). If we give ourselves over to lust, we will end up in hell (Matt. 5:29). If we don’t do the will of our Father, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 7:21). We must not give up hope of obeying Jesus’s commands, lest we give up the hope of heaven.

Too many Christians instinctively set aside the commands of Scripture as utterly impossible to obey on any level. The danger with this mindset is not only that we might be disheartened when we shouldn’t be, but that we might not be warned when we should be. Once we convince ourselves that failure is the norm—“No one really obeys Jesus. No one really builds his house on the rock. No one really is pure of heart. No one really enters the narrow gate.