The Oft-Abused Sermon on the Mount

3 ways to read it

The Sermon on the Mount (‘SOTM,’ Matthew 5-7, Luke 6:20-49) is the greatest sermon ever preached and one of the finest texts in all of Scripture. In it, Jesus arrived as a master teacher explaining what kind of people could be citizens in His kingdom.

The view of God, Scripture, and the believer’s life He outlined in the sermon signaled a total overhaul of the man-made religion the Jews had made of God’s Word. To be a citizen of His kingdom is to commit to the humble, devout, salt-and-light lifestyle He set forth in the SOTM.

Unfortunately, it has also become one of the most abused texts in the entire Bible, used to pigeon hole Jesus into an ideology that doesn’t fit with the rest of Scripture.

If you know what to look for, you see it all the time.

Typically, the SOTM is misused as an overly-spiritualized approach to the world. It had become the foundation text for pietism, the belief that the Christian’s only duty is their own private walk with God.

To give a few examples…

A few years ago John Piper famously (or infamously) wrote that he wasn’t sure what he would do if an assailant entered Piper’s home and was going to attack his wife. He advised Christians to not have any arms on hand for such a situation and even seemed to imply they shouldn’t even call the police to bring the attacker to justice.

Why would he say such a thing? Because of SOTM abuse. He directly cited Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek as a reason why he might stand down and let his wife be assaulted. In all his hurry to “love his enemy,” he forgot the rest of the Bible’s view toward crime. He also forgot to love his wife, his first and foremost duty.

Others use the SOTM to guilt Christians for being political. A Lipscombite reading of the SOTM would say that it’s impossible to govern according to the SOTM, and since Christians live by the SOTM we can’t get involved in governance.

But where does God hold magistrates to the SOTM? Individual Christians are to turn the other cheek to our enemies, but God explicitly gave the sword to His appointed authorities to execute justice against the wicked (Romans 13:3-4). They have long served as His way of giving the vengeance God tells Christians to wait on. As they are to reward the good and punish the wicked, and as it is impossible to know what is good or wicked without God’s standards, and since Proverbs lauds righteous rulers, it naturally follows that Christian influence in politics is a good thing.

You also see the SOTM used to justify talking points drenched in 20th century, oppressor/oppressed, Marxist Critical Theory. If you’re familiar with The Bible Project, you’ll notice it’s unmistakeable in their series of videos on the Beatitudes in the SOTM.

Some use the SOTM to chide Christians for viewing proponents of wickedness as our enemies. Just last month, Wes McAdams wrote “love your enemies” and one paragraph later, “Our neighbors are not our enemies. The devil is our enemy (Ephesians 6:11-12).” So… who are the enemies we’re supposed to love? The devil, and the devil alone?

As I’ve noted before, “love your enemies” has been twisted to mean “Don’t ever have enemies.” If you don’t even acknowledge enemies as enemies, how do you know how to lovingly engage them?

Still others use the SOTM to forbid Christians from confronting sin. “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1) is the most obvious case, but they go even further. To paraphrase something I recently read on a forum of embittered ex-Christians, “Jesus told Christians to turn the other cheek but Paul tells them they can tell people off to their faces” (alluding to Galatians 2:11). In other words, SOTM Jesus didn’t want us to openly confront blatant sin.

In sum, SOTM abuse posits that the Christian’s only valid action in the world is to sit down, shut up, keep your religion to yourself, and hope the world notices how nice you are.

But what about the rest of the Bible? What about the violence of the Old Testament? What about Jesus flipping tables in the temple? What about the apostles openly rebuking people? How does any of that fit with the SOTM?

There are a few ways to answer the tension created by this issue.

For one, you can effectively use the SOTM as a trump card against any other verse.

“Yes, David killed Goliath, but even though it seemed approved by God at the time, the SOTM says to turn the other cheek, so…”

In other words, it makes the Bible contradictory and treats the SOTM as the only truly inspired text. I kid you not, I once saw someone say that when Jesus drove out the money changers with a whip (John 2:15-17), He “wasn’t being very Christ-like in that moment.” If you ever find yourself saying the Christ’s actions weren’t Christlike, it might be time to reevaluate your Biblical interpretation method.

Second, you can argue that the SOTM represents a pivot, that either the Godhead softened between Malachi and Matthew or that Jesus came to tone down the God of the Old Testament.

This is a lite version of the heresy of Marcion, who posited that the God of the Old Testament was actually a different, evil entity. It also ignores the fact that the enemy-loving Jesus of the SOTM also flattened Jerusalem in AD 70 (as promised in Matt. 23:31-36) and will punish the rest of His enemies and the unbelieving at the judgment. In other words, saying God changed isn’t true, and it doesn’t resolve the tension.

Third, we can realize the SOTM was not written as a set of universal principles but about specific ways the individual kingdom citizen can live as salt and light.

This means the SOTM should hold tremendous sway over our personal life, our values, our religion, our interactions with others, and even our thoughts. But it does not mean it is applicable in every situation. It should be read alongside the entire Bible if we’re going to properly understand it.

That means there is a time for slaying Goliath, and a time to turn the other cheek. There is a time to “love your enemy,” and there is a time to drive people out of the temple. There is a time to pull the plank out of your own eye, and there’s a time to call God’s enemies what they are. There is a time to rebuke, and there’s a time to be a peacemaker. None of these are mutually exclusive.

Wisdom and discernment teach us how to navigate these issues, but oversimplifying and setting the Bible against itself leaves us without answers.

The Sermon on the Mount might be one of the pinnacles of the Scriptures. But that doesn’t mean it’s in opposition to the rest of them.