Peter Witkowski Sermon on the Mount

Meekness & Mercy: God’s Design for Interpersonal Relationships

“Its not fair.” We have all heard the expression as our kids stomp off to bed, protesting the latest perceived parental injustice. They are not the only ones.

The adults in the room have also appealed to the phrase. When our boss asks us to stay an hour late, we talk about how unfair so and so is. When Bob takes our tool, we want it back. We don’t want his; just ours. We don’t expect Sally to come to both the wedding and the bridal shower. But since we went to her wedding, we expect her to attend at least one of our events. Nothing crazy; just what we are owed. We long for fairness.

A Slap for A Slap

The God of the Bible affirms that the idea of fairness and equity should govern human legal systems. The judicial system should handout punishment that is proportional to the crime the person has committed. The punishment should consider neither the criminal’s nor the victim’s social standing (Lev. 24:17-22). Moses instructs the first judges of the new Israelite nation to do the following: “then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” Punishment was never to exceed the harm caused by the crime. The justice system should be just.

Because the idea of fairness works well when applied to the courts, the religious leaders of Jesus’s day believed fairness could serve as the perfect ethic for interpersonal relationships. If the guy sitting next to you in school posts an unflattering picture of you on Instagram, you could post a Tik Tok video mocking his outdated shoes. Two videos would be excessive, but one would be permitted. If your brother bit you, you could bite him back. And if your boss took credit for your new idea, you had the right to talk behind his back for a day. Slap for slap, insult for insult, and hurt for hurt.

The Better Way

Though this idea of an eye for an eye resonates with the human heart, it stands at odds with the ethic of the kingdom of God. Instead of telling his followers to fight insult with insult, Jesus commands Christians to fight the fires of Hell with the grace filled foam of meekness and generosity. Jesus says, “But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil (Matt 5:44).” 

Jesus shifts personal relationships from the ethic of fairness and equity to the ethic of meekness and generosity because this is the basis of his interactions with us. When Jesus saves, he saves through his merciful and generous love. Where he to give us what we deserved, he would dispense punishment and death. But he does not send bolts of lightening to usher us into the fires of hell the moment we think our first bad thought. He lives, dies, and rises again to pay the penalty for that evil thought and all our sins. The apostle Peter sums up the gospel writing, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed (2 Pt 2:24).” Moreover, we were not actively seeking Jesus. We were lost sheep like those who walked under Jesus’s cross mocking our savior. Jesus patiently endures these insults and then brings us into the sheep fold. Jesus does not fight fire with fire. He does not treat us fairly. He does something far greater.  He triumphs over sin, enduring it and generously extending grace to overcome it.

Because of the cross, Christians should resist the urge to fight fire with fire (Matt 5:38-44).  When someone insults the believer with a slap across the cheek, Jesus tells his listeners to turn the other cheek. Instead of responding with their own pithy putdown, they quietly endure evil. If their business partner wrongfully sues to gain more shares of their company, Jesus tells the believer to quickly go to court and settle. When the government demands that you carry a soldier’s equipment for a mile or that you must give your land to the new freeway development, the Christian should go settle, going the extra mile to preserve peace. And if a friend or family members ask for $1000 because they recently lost their job, the believer writes the check without asking for repayment or giving the stink eye. The believer does not stand upon the principle of fairness, for he realizes that his salvation, his spouse, his reputation, and his stuff come from God’s mercy. Moreover, he knows that God will justly deal with all sin one day. Either the penalty for sins will be covered in the blood of the cross or it will be extracted from the wicked in Hell. God will also restore what the righteous have lost a million times over. The Christian does not have to fight fire with fire for she is a child of the king. He will prosecute vengeance and preserve our reward19

Is Government Bad?

Though the Christian should not respond to relational violence with his own aggression, he can still lay claim to government structures for protection in cases of extreme violence. Just as God instituted divorce as a merciful means of saving innocent spouses from being entrapped to an adulterer, God instituted governments to protect innocent people from vicious displays of violence. In other words, the reality that most people do not operate according to the ethic of Jesus necessitates the existence of the of government. When the ethic of non-violence fails to prevent a person from doing great harm, those in jeopardy should call the police and appeal to the justice system. Paul did as much when the Jews attempted to wrongfully condemn him to death.  The apostle Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 13:4, “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Women being terrorized by an abuser can seek a restraining order and police protection. Soldiers can defend their shores from invasion. A store owner being robbed can call the police. Christians can appeal to government for help as the Apostle Paul did repeatedly. God ordained human governments for the good of his people.

But even in this sphere, the believer should not seek vengeance. A police officer who comes to a shoplifting call and pays for the teenager’s $15 of stolen food to prevent him from spending months in juvenile detention has lived out the ethic of Jesus. Meekness and generosity belong in every sphere of life, including government.

May God help us all to generously extend mercy!

Peter Witkowski Sermon on the Mount

Why Liars Need Promises & You Don’t

Promises exists because truth does not. We swear by heaven that this time we will do what we say because we did not follow through all those other times.

But when people use oaths, their listeners should not assume that they have entered a no-spin zone. In Jesus’s day, the religious leaders had created a whole system of disingenuous oaths that could be sworn by Al than honorable person. For example, if a dishonest painter wanted to convince his clients that he would keep his contract while having no intention of doing so, he would swear by the temple. If the owners of the home took him to court, they would have no case because his oath based on the temple was meaningless. If however the painter swore by the gold on the temple, he would have to put on his big boy pants and finish the house or face the legal consequences. That was a real oath. Confusing, yes?

Jesus was not amused by this tangled mess of words and condemned the pharisees’ manipulative games saying, “But I say to you,

“Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil (Matt 5:34-37).”

In other words, Jesus calls us to reject oaths and to embrace the plain, simple, and unnuanced words of truth.

Oaths and Sovereignty

Jesus condemns the practice of swearing oaths because God is omnipresent. He exits outside of time and space, observing all human interactions throughout the globe in the now. King David famously notes in Psalm 139:7-8: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” God does not need an invitation to preside over our actions. He and his ethic remain in place regardless of whether we recognize his presence with our words.

Moreover, his ethic is an ethic of unadulterated truth. Psalm 119:160 declares, “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.” Jesus holds his humanity and his followers to his ethic, making truth-telling one of the ten commandments. Exodus 20:16 states, “You shall not bear false witness.” The apostle Paul concurs writing,

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with it practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:9-10).”

Men and women who lie stand in opposition to the loving goodness of God. Even those who seek to excuse their sins through manipulative oaths to God will find themselves the recipients of his heavenly displeasure and eternal judgement. As Jesus notes later in the gospel of Matthew, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (12:36-37).” Idle, worthless, deceptive words will be judged by the standard of truth regardless of where or how they are spoken. Jesus is the God of truth today and forever.

The Dangers of Pinky Promises

Many souls understand the danger of swearing by God. Every time they utter a white lie and then swear by god that they are telling the truth, they peak up at the sky to make sure a lightning bolt is not on its way. To side step judgment while creating an oath, they swear on their grandmother’s grave or on their mother’s legacy as a cook that such and such is true. They may even get super series and pull out the pinky promise.

Jesus condemns all these earthly promises as well, noting that men and women, “cannot make one hair white or black.” Despite our boasts, we cannot enforce divine justice. If the boyfriend promises you that you are his one and only girl and then violates that promise the next Friday night when he takes your best friend to dinner, he is powerless to enforce the consequences of his promise “to drop dead.” While God can send floods, plagues, and armies to uphold his covenants, the sleazy boyfriend cannot. Even good promises like a trip to Disney World cannot be accomplished through human effort alone. As James notes in James 4:15, “Instead you ought to say, “if they Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” Those who make promises on their mother’s grave are foolish. And those who look for and accept such promises are equally foolish. Men and women remain powerless to accomplish their will.

Plain Speech

Instead of appealing to oaths to assure our listeners, those who know Jesus should always speak the simple truth. They should state the truth plainly in love. God speaks this way. He told the prophet Isaiah, “I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right.” Because the spirit of Christ resides in the believer, she too will plainly speak what is true and right in all settings for God reigns everywhere.

The Dress Dilemma

At this point, some Christians will raise their hand to object, noting that at times lies will do less harm than the truth. For example, if a husband tells his wife that she does indeed look fat in her new dress when asked, his date night might end right there and then. Hello leftover hotdogs! To keep the evening moving along, he lies and tells her that she looks great. Hello Ribeye! But at this moment, he has sinned against his wife, preferring himself above her. In seeking to sidestep a controversial statement, he has opened his wife up to criticism from their waitress, a coworker, and a host of other people who will also notice that her dress is not a winner. When one of them bluntly tells her the plain truth, she will be doubly hurt by her husband. She will have been both publicly shamed and lied to. The trust between the husband-and-wife fractures. The next time he tells her she looks great, he will have to swear a little oath to overcome her doubt. All this proves once again that oaths exists because the truth does not. Lies always destroy.

Are Wedding Vows Sinful?

Lastly, some sensitive souls have read Jesus’s words and concluded that military, legal, and marital oaths constitute a violation of God’s law. However, the simple swearing of an oath is not a sin. In Matthew 26:63-64, Jesus testified under oath that he was the Son of Man. Moreover, God made oaths with Noah, Abraham, and Moses.

Oaths exists because the kingdom of earth is saturated with false speech. For a sinful, broken society to function, sinful men and women in the kingdom of man must create ways to differentiate between when they are speaking falsely and when they are speaking truthfully. To create this space, they employ oaths to signify that what follows breaks from their normal pattern of false speech. With this understanding in play, Christians can take legal and formal oaths because they have already committed to the ethic of truth at conversion. An human oath simply codifies in human terms the Christian’s previous spiritual commitment to truth telling. The Christian is free to take oath. But he is not free to talk in a way that necessitates he give his listeners the assurances of promises. In her daily speech, the believer’s words should also be the simple truth. Her yes should always yes and her no should always no. May Hod help us all to speak the truth in love.

Peter Witkowski Sermon on the Mount

Divorce: What Does Jesus Think?

According to some religious people, you can have the sexual ethic of an out-of-control frat boy and still never sleep with anyone other your spouse. In first century Judaism, religious leaders happened upon this arrangement through the practice of no fault divorce. If the leader’s wife gained weight, nagged too much, or simply became a bore, the men of that era would march down to the local town council, file a complaint listing one of the afore mentioned criticisms, and then return home with a divorce certificate. That night, they would push their wife to the curb. The following morning, they would go out and marry their secretary, enjoying ‘marital’ intimacy with their new and improve spouse. The whole thing was legal and condoned by the religious community. These men never officially cheated on anyone and yet, were free to engage new sexual partners as often as they had the inclination. Selfishness masquerading as personal happiness had been both sanctified and institutionalized.

Is Divorce Good?

Jesus, however, was not impressed with this arrangement. Jesus opposed divorce because it stands in violated the ethic of the Kingdom of God. Marriage exists to picture Christ’s love for the church. Though the Church stumbles into error, becomes selfish, Jesus never abandon his bride. He pursues her, cares for her, sanctifies her, and sacrifices for her. When a man and a woman marry, they commit to pursuing, caring, sanctifying, and sacrificing for their spouse even when life is unpleasant. They commit to building a relationship that resembles Jesus’s love for his people.

When a man divorces his wife because he has grown distant from her, he defies the notions of meekness, mercy, and peacemaking that Jesus prioritized. When a woman divorces her husband because he was a bore and then marries her neighbor because he promises more relational excitement and better sexual intimacy, she too defies the commands of God. Instead of pursuing their spouses, sacrificing for them, and humbly overlooking their faults, the people in the above scenarios boast in their abilities, extend merciless condemnation, and lay downs ultimatums that if not fulfilled will free them to pursue a new sexual partner. In short, people divorce because they refuse to love their spouse. Jesus always loves.

The results of divorce evidence that divorce results from an absence of love. A recent Huffington Post article noted that the divorce process produces the following emotions: shock, pain, anger, angst, sadness, anxiety, embarrassment, and shame. Instead of liberating or enriching the soul, divorce destroys the hearts of all involved. The prophet Malachi sums up the brutal nature of divorce writing,

“Let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts.” So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless.

Divorce produces results at odds with the revealed will of God. With this in mind, we can understand why Jesus says,

“everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Matt 5:32b).”

While sex remains an intimate part of marriage it is not the totality of marriage covenant. According to Genesis 2:24, marriage exists to foster spiritual, physical, and emotional connection between one man and one women as long as they both shall live. In Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus affirmed the Genesis creation mandate, stating,

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

Is Divorce Every Ok?

Though Jesus stands against divorce, he does allow his followers to initiate divorce if their spouse has engaged in sexual intimacy with someone else. When a husband walks in on his wife in bed with another man or woman, his marriage covenant has been shattered by his spouse’s unfaithfulness. The apostle Paul notes, “Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” In other words, sexual immorality reorients the marriage pact from the husband to the person having the affair with the wife. The marriage is over the moment she cheats. Jesus understands that the brokenness of the world can profoundly touch our lives through no fault of our own and provides the hurting with a means of gracious deliverance from sin.

At this juncture, the husband may either pursue his wife or he may divorce her. As a pastor, my heart aligns with John Stott who said,

“I have made it a rule never to speak with anyone about divorce, until I have first spoken with them about two other subjects, namely marriage and reconciliation.”

Reconciliation should always be explored. But if the husband says, “no” and wants to move forward with a divorce, he has the freedom in Christ to divorce his unfaithful wife and to marry a new bride. But even in this case, sin still necessitates the divorce. Had the wife been faithful, the husband would never have filed divorce papers.

Moreover, the believing spouse bears no guilt if her spouse chooses to leave the marriage. If a wife finds herself staring at divorce papers even though she has never cheated and has fought to foster a healthy marriage, she is free to allow her unbelieving husband to go. Paul writes, “But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace (1 Cor 7:15).” If a husband leaves his marriage because he finds his wife dull, the wife left behind has not sinned and is free to remarry.

How the Church Helps

Church discipline proves helpful in assessing such abandonment. If a husband threatens to leave his wife for reasons not tied to sexual sin, the local church should intervene, working through the steps of church discipline found in Matthew 18. If the man refuses to listen to the pleas of his wife and then to the pleas of his wife and the leaders of the church, the leaders of the church should take the case to the whole church. If the husband still refuses to reconcile with his wife, the church should excommunicate him. Jesus says, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Once the church labels the man and unbeliever and the divorce is complete, the woman attains the freedom to remarry. The congregation can openly affirm her faith and love for others. They church can provide her with counseling and help her cover the cost of restarting her life. Conversely, they can call the husband to repentance and faith. When properly exercised, church polity proves to be a powerful tool for believers walking through the complexities of divorce.

Because of sin, Jesus allows the believer to divorce his or her spouse after the spouse commits a sexual sin that annuls their marriage vows. Jesus also allows believers to let their unbelieving spouses divorce them.

What About?

Because the human heart struggles to live out the kingdom ethic of Jesus, a host of other divorce scenarios exist. Wives who hold down great jobs and manage the family find themselves married to deadbeat husbands who live and sleep in the garage playing video games. Husbands wake up next to wives who ruthlessly insult and malign them week after week. Other women find their marriage to be a constant source of misery for their husband does nothing but rave angerly at their kids. Others lament their marriage because their wife’s atheistic views prevent them from being in ministry. In all these cases and more, divorce seems preferable to a lifetime of marital pain. Many in such marriages assume that Jesus would sanction their divorce.

But according to Jesus, those who divorce because their marriage has become a profound source of misery commit adultery. Instead of divorcing, the believing spouse should remain in the marriage, extending grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, and peace to the offending spouse. As Paul notes, “For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife (1 Cor 7:16)?” If the unbelieving spouse is willing to stay in the marriage and has not committed sexual sin, the believing spouse must not divorce. By staying he or she brings the hope and blessing of God to bear on the marriage.

If abuse is involved, the legal authorities should be involved and the church should do anything and everything to keep the wife and kids save. Safety is a prerequisite for reconciliation.

Singleness is Pretty Good

Jesus’s understanding of divorce and its implication for less than happy marriages proves hard to stomach for many. Even his disciples thought as much, telling Jesus, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” Indeed, singleness is to be preferred to a bad marriage. Singleness is not a blight on the soul. Rather it is a gift through which spiritual ministry can flow. As noted above, marriage is a profound blessing when entered into by two souls committed to the kingdom ethic through faith. But the glory of Christian marriage does not negate the glory of singleness. Paul notes, “So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better (1 Cor 7:38).”

Final Thoughts

If men and women exchange marriage partners like a sex-crazed college student, they have not discovered morality. They have simply rebranded and institutionalized adultery, employing divorce as a social mechanism of dignified violence. May God give us the grace needed to value singleness and to uphold the kingdom ethic of love and marriage.