The Hyperboles of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount

Some of you may have read my paper on the hyperboles of Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount. In this writing, we will discuss the implication of considering the hyperboles in the Sermon as hyperboles and not as commands we must obey. Some people who continue sinning after believing in Christ tend to argue in the following manner to evade responsibility for their sins. They say, “We may be homosexuals, but you are also an adulterer.” Then, you will reply, “We do not do adultery.” They will say, “Have you not read The Sermon on the Mount? Even if you look at a woman lustfully, it is equivalent to adultery.” Thus, they equate their homosexuality with your lustful eyes to evade responsibility for their sins. 

 

Well, how do you respond to such an argument? First, we must understand a misleading interpretation of The Sermon on the Mount. It goes like this, “We all are sinners. We sin differently. Some may look at women lustfully. Others may get angry and use abusive language occasionally. In effect, all of us are sinful. We need a Savior. Only Christ can redeem us from this condition. After we receive Christ by faith, God forgives our sins. However, we must conform our behavior to the standards set in The Sermon on the Mount, including the hyperboles. It may seem impossible, but Jesus in us makes it possible.” Do you notice the problem? The majority of us cannot and do not. Why? Because this is how we convince people of their sinfulness and need for a Savior.

 

However, there is a significant flaw in this argument. The flaw is twofold. First, we interpret the hyperboles of Jesus as something we must obey literally. We do this by disregarding the genre and why Jesus used them in the first place. Second, we think Jesus came to make us obey everything set out in The Sermon on the Mount, including the hyperbolical statements. This way of thinking obscures the real point of the hyperboles in the Sermon. Let us examine this in detail. The first point: why did Jesus use the hyperboles? Was he trying to equate all sinners? Or was he trying to bring the self-righteous Pharisees and known sinners of his day to level ground? And, if so, in what sense and to what extent?

 

The first idea is that Jesus was equating all sinners and all kinds of sins. It is a misconception. Jesus was not trying to equate sinful thoughts with sinful actions. In other words, Jesus was not equating adultery with lustful looks. Some of you may look surprised, for that is how our preachers have taught us hitherto. However, Jesus did bring his listeners –the self-righteous Pharisees and the known sinners– to a level ground. 

 

Even so, the difference lies in interpreting how Jesus was equating the Pharisees and Lawyers with the insurrectionists, tax collectors, and adulterers. Once again, I repeat, Jesus was not equating sinful thoughts with sinful actions as many of us assume. Instead, he equated two diverse groups of people regarding the level of their comparative righteousness. 

 

Many scholars have noted that the fault of many interpreters of the Sermon of the Mount is that they disregard its context. The context of the Sermon is Jesus’ talk with his contemporaries. We cannot pull this Sermon out of its context and interpret it as a universal law that everyone everywhere must obey literally. In its context, Jesus is criticizing the harsh and extended human laws of the religious Jews who used them as a weapon to label others as sinners and ostracize them from their community. 

 

For instance, suppose somebody like a tax collector dined with pagans regularly. The religious Jews argued that such a person was an idolater, and they needed to exclude him from their community. Why? The idea was the pagans offered their food to idols, and therefore, pious Jews forbid other Jews from participating in pagan feasts. And, if somebody associated with the pagans in this manner, they considered them also as pagans: outcasts. 

 

However, we must also examine how this thinking came about among the Jews to know the context in more detail. The religious Jews believed that the exile resulted from their collective sins, mainly idol worship. Therefore, they assumed that their obedience to the Torah could fully reverse the effects of exile. The Ten Commandments of the Torah essentially had two parts. 

 

We may summarise the five commands as “Love God more than anything else.” The second part was about loving others as we love ourselves. We may consider the first part as the God side of the commandment and the second part as the people side of the commandment. The Jews believed that God exiled them because of their collective disobedience to the first three commands: Worship God only, make no idols, and observe the Sabbath. 

 

Therefore, Jewish lawyers extended these commands. It was an over-correction. They exaggerated the first two commands –do not worship idols and worship God only– to the extent that they excommunicated not only those who ate with pagans but also those who ate with those who ate with pagans. Pagans worshipped idols, and the religious Jews equated those who participated in their feasts with idol worshippers. 

 

Who were these people? The tax-collectors. The Jews believed that the idol-worshipping Gentiles, mixed-breed Samaritans, and traitor tax collectors who associated with pagans would not inherit life in the coming age. Hence, they also outcasted those who dined with the tax collectors. The Jews also made Sabbath laws look ridiculous by exaggerating what not to do that day, like quenching a fire. 

 

Thus, the religious Jews of Jesus’ time had exaggerated every command on God’s side. They did this partly to hasten the coming of the Lord to rescue them from Roman oppression and partly to create a hierarchy that would benefit them in their society. In reality, the Pharisees and lawyers only feigned obedience. They had failed to keep the people’s side of the commandments miserably. They did not show genuine compassion for the weak. They did not work to bring the outcasts back into the community. 

 

But they maintained an external appearance of religiosity –a fake righteousness. They fasted twice weekly, prayed long prayers, and did generosity only to show others. Their hearts were not right with God. They had no love for God or others. They loved money and fame. They never showed mercy to the repentant backsliders or generosity to deformed and underprivileged individuals. Their zeal was misplaced. It was about “we are holier than them.” 

 

Now, it is in this context that Jesus preached a Sermon filled with hyperboles. For instance, Jesus’ discourse on murder exemplifies how he made this possible-to-obey command near impossible. Jesus told people in his hyperboles that if you insult others in anger, it is equivalent to murder. God will roast you in hellfire if you call someone a fool in anger (Matthew 5:22). He did this to help the religious Jews understand what they were doing to the commoners by exaggerating the –Love God– aspect of the commandment. Jesus asked the religious Jews that if they could not obey his extended commands on the people’s side of the ten commands, how can they expect the commoners to obey their extended demands on God’s side of the Torah? 

 

Jesus used the hyperboles to retaliate against the over-corrected, exaggerated laws of the religious Jews of his time. Therefore, Jesus exaggerated the people’s side of the commandment –Love others– the side the hard-hearted Pharisees and lawyers often ignored completely. Jesus was not telling people that if they said abusive words to others in anger once in their lifetime or after their conversion, God would excommunicate them from life in the age to come. 

 

Instead, he was pointing out to the religious Jews of his time their mistake of exaggerating God’s laws to the extent that they became burdensome and impossible to obey for the commoners. Jesus did not intend for people to keep the hyperboles of The Sermon on the Mount literally. Otherwise, I wonder where Jesus himself would be if we took this literally. Jesus called the religious Jews, “You blind fools,” in anger (Matthew 23:17).

 

Some preachers today think everything in the Sermon of the Mount, including the hyperboles, is meant for literal obedience. These preachers seem like the disciples of the Pharisees whom Jesus opposed. Stated differently, these preachers use the hyperboles in the Sermon on the Mount to do what the Pharisees of Jesus’ time did with the Ten Commandments. Jesus used these hyperboles to question and correct the exaggerated commands of the Pharisees and lawyers. 

 

However, today’s holiness preachers use Jesus' hyperboles to harass the commoner by making God's commands burdensome. Besides, we have people who think that Jesus has now equated sinful thoughts with sins using hyperboles. Therefore, we can justify our literal sins like adultery and homosexuality that the Bible prohibits by equating other people’s adulterous looks with our literal adultery. Both are wrong. 

 

Jesus was not equating sinful thoughts with literal sins like adultery. He was using a figure-of-speech, a hyperbole, to exaggerate a command within the Ten Commandments that his opponents, the Pharisees and Lawyers, had overlooked. He was doing it to show them the problem of exaggerating God’s commands beyond what people can obey. Jesus was telling them, 

 

“Pharisees, you cast out people from the synagogue by labeling them as idolaters for just eating with Gentiles. Now, I tell you, what if God extends his command of adultery and says that an adulterous look is enough to cast you out of the people in the age to come? How does it feel? Likewise, what if God extends his command of murder and says that an abusive word in anger is equal to murder and is sufficient to cast you into a lake of fire? How would that feel? That is how you are making the tax collectors feel when you cast them out of your synagogues. However, God has sent me to bring the sinners back into his fold.”

 

Thus, Jesus is bringing both factions –the self-righteous Jews and the tax collectors– to level ground. Caution! Jesus is not doing it by equating two types of sin: sinful thoughts and actions. That is not his point. It is a false equivalence. Instead, he is pointing out to the Pharisees their mistake of exaggerating God’s laws by extending the other side of the law beyond what it says. The two groups of today that I mentioned –holiness preachers and homosexuals– have both got it wrong. Jesus never meant the hyperboles for literal obedience. When people interpret the hyperboles literally, both extremes seem sensible. 

 

The homosexual would use Jesus' Sermon to excuse himself and evade responsibility for his sins by equating adultery with adulterous looks. Let me warn you, the sins we do with the body have graver consequences than sinful thoughts or temptations. Of course, temptation precedes the literal sin. However, if you conquer the temptation and do not do what gratifies the flesh, you have not sinned. 

 

Let me repeat: thinking about a sin is not a sin. If so, every lawyer, judge, and movie watcher who sees or thinks of a murder would be guilty of murder. Nobody punishes a person for a murder if they see a murder on television or in reality. You are accountable only if you commit a murder. The same is true for adultery and homosexuality. Otherwise, the long lists of Paul in the epistles and John in Revelation that mention the sinners excluded from the age to come would make no sense.

 

Further, the holiness preacher also uses Jesus' Sermon in the same manner to highlight the significance of mental sins and their consequences. Thus, they do to us what the Pharisees did to others using the law of Moses by using the law of Jesus. They exaggerate the requirements of God by interpreting the hyperboles literally. Let me ask the holiness preacher, “Did Jesus ever break any command of God?” No, right. 

 

However, in Matthew 23, the same Matthew says that Jesus angrily called his contemporaries, “You fools.” We know Jesus has no sin. Therefore, the purpose of the hyperbole has to be something else. It is to help the Pharisees and Lawyers understand that exaggerating God’s side of the command, making people obey it, and harassing those who do not obey will not hasten the coming of the Lord. Instead, it would create roadblocks for God’s love to trickle down into the hearts of those who seek him sincerely.

 

In sum, Jesus was not extending the existing law or the Ten Commandments. He was advocating and defending the law. He said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17)."  However, he accused the Pharisees of extending the commandments beyond their scope. Jesus used the hyperboles to point out to the Pharisees and lawyers that their extending of the inconsequential aspects of the law was unlawful. The self-righteous Pharisees demanded the commoners to abide by the lofty standards they had set. Nevertheless, the Pharisees and the lawyers never lived by the same standards in other aspects of the law. That is why Jesus used hyperbolic extensions of the people's side -Love others- of the law to debunk their hypocrisy.

 

Through his hyperboles, Jesus told them that both Pharisees and Tax Collectors would fail to obey the extended and exaggerated commandments. The Tax Collectors cannot follow the extended food laws that the Pharisees had imposed by taking the law text out of its context. Similarly, the Pharisees cannot obey Jesus' new set of extended commandments regarding murder and adultery. Thus, he brought them to level ground. Notice that Jesus did not equate different kinds of sins -mental and literal. Nor was Jesus equating the volume and quality of the sins of Pharisees with the Tax Collectors' sins. Instead, he equated people's inability to obey extended commands beyond the scope of God's law -the Ten Commandments.