Nielsen’s Nook

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Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII

B. Essential Righteousness (Mt 5:13-16)

The connecting thoughts between the Beatitudes and Jesus’ staggering statement about righteousness in Matt. 5:20 are the rest of the passage we are considering together. He begins by using two metaphors to explain the nature of true righteousness - righteousness that actually corresponds to the righteous standard of his Father - the righteousness that abundantly surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees.

1. Statements of Essence Mt. 5:13-16

Matt. 5:13-16 (ESV) 13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Jesus is making a descriptive statement about citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Just as salt in and of itself is salty, so Kingdom citizens have certain innate properties as Kingdom citizens, matters of fact, for those who are His subjects.

In other words, if you saw a white grainy substance on a table and when you tasted it you found that it was sweet, you would not conclude that the substance on the table was salt - even if it was in a saltshaker! You would make these conclusions because there are certain properties that salt has simply because it is salt. The same is true for light. Jesus is making statements of essence, describing a Kingdom citizen at their most basic level.

2. Two Approaches to Righteousness

There is a continuum of responses we can give to Jesus’ teaching on righteousness at this point. On the one hand, we can either cry out to God because we see that we are immeasurably poor in spirit, unable to bring about the essential heart change that the Law required. Or on the other hand, we can work to redefine the Law of God, to say in effect, “Define Righteousness” as if it were somehow ambiguous or vague.

The former is a description of one who has been converted by the gracious and saving power of God’s transforming Spirit. The latter is a Pharisee, who would reduce righteousness to their own subjective rules of preference; thereby contorting God’s uncreated righteous standard to the perverted standards of their own created imaginations.