Jesus does not simply tell us to keep our giving hidden from other people. He goes further, into territory that almost sounds impossible. He says do not even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. This is hyperbole, the same kind of striking image he...
Many of us read this passage and think, I would never literally blow a trumpet. That may be true. But Jesus is naming a hunger that does not always need a public square to feed it. Some of us are performing for an internal audience. We do good things so that we can...
There is a single word in this verse that should stop us cold. The word is “received.” In the Greek, this is a commercial term, the language of a paid receipt. Leon Morris and Robert Mounce both observe that it carries the force of “paid in...
After describing the character of the kingdom in the Beatitudes and the call to be salt and light in Matthew 5, Jesus pivots in chapter six to the practice of the kingdom. He does not begin with a new command. He begins with a warning about motive. The verb translated...
Most of us read verse 48 and feel the sermon collapse on top of us. Perfect? That settles it. I am out. But the commentators are unified here. The Greek teleos does not mean sinless. It means whole, complete, mature, undivided. France traces it back to the Hebrew...
