There is a prerequisite to entering the Kingdom of Heaven (God) in addition to being born again (John 3:3,5); it is the requirement of righteousness. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:20). A qualification for entrance into the future Kingdom is a present righteousness - that exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees. What kind of righteousness is this?
It is the righteousness that results from God's reign in our lives. Through faith in Jesus Christ, His death, burial and resurrection in our behalf, resulting in the new birth, the Kingdom of God gives us that which it demands; otherwise we could not attain it. The Scribes, as professional students of religion, and their disciples - the Pharisees - were motivated by the sole concern of achieving righteousness. A whole body of law and tradition had been developed to define right and wrong. If men should not work on the Sabbath, then what is work? They went on and on, with every matter of the Law, as if conformity to God's will is defined in all the smallest nuances of the Law. We would need to know that if salvation depended on obeying the Law, an impossible task. Yet the righteousness required of the Kingdom is greater.
Old Testament Law, rabbinic tradition, and even modern law recognize that there are different kinds of homicide, resulting in different degrees of guilt and punishment. Yet Jesus goes beyond that when He said, "...that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire" (Matthew 5:22). The oldest texts do not even qualify the anger as "being without cause." The oldest texts make it clear that Jesus was saying that anger is sin, even as murder is sin. The only difference is that anger is the baby, while murder is the full-grown monster.
Jesus went beyond the Scribe's and Pharisee's emphasis on outward actions and focused on the attitude of the heart. Most of us can say, "I've never murdered someone," but can we say (in honesty), "I've never harbored bitterness, hatred or anger toward anyone?" When we answer truthfully, Jesus then says that we are condemned before God as a sinner. You see, Kingdom righteousness says, "What you are is more important than what you do." Only God can change what someone is; only the gift of God can give what He requires.
Jesus illustrates this principle again with the "Law of Purity." The Law forbade illicit sexual relationships. If one stayed away from such relationships, by conduct they were righteous. But the standard of the Kingdom is higher, demanding that there be no lust in a person's heart. Righteousness with regards to sexual purity begins in the heart, and the proliferation of pornography, first in magazines and films, now on the Internet, has proven that time and again.
I once knew a man who struggled with these matters, and who, in ignorance, took seriously this and following verses. "If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell" (Matthew 5:29). He literally plucked out his eye and cut off his hand. Though he suffered much pain, that did not set him free. A man with one blind eye and one amputated limb is not free from lust, for sin lodges in the heart and not in the eye or the hand. Only Christ can create in a man a new heart. The righteousness which God demands of us, He must give to us, or we are lost. As desperate as a man must be to cut off his hand, so desperate must be the sinner to search out the grace of God. Apart from the grace of God there is no salvation, only condemnation.
Be encouraged - that grace is available to anyone who would cry out for it. A way has been provided to enter into the Kingdom, both the present aspect of it, and the future. The way is Jesus! "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man can come to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6)
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