We end the week by stepping back to see the whole passage as a unit, and by looking at the One who fulfilled every word of it. Matthew 5:21–26 presents us with four ascending steps: stop the act of murder, stop the attitude of anger and contempt, go to the offended brother, go to the enemy. By the end of the passage, we realize that most of us have been failing on multiple fronts simultaneously. We carry contempt we have nursed for years. We have let relationships wither and die because going first felt like losing. We have told ourselves there are some enemies we will never forgive.
And then we look at Jesus. The one who gave these commands is the only one who ever perfectly kept them. He never harbored contempt for anyone. He never refused to pursue peace. When the Pharisees questioned him, he answered with patience. When his disciples failed him, he restored them. When Judas came to betray him in the garden, Jesus called him “friend.” When the soldiers nailed him to the cross, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He walked step four all the way to Calvary.
Jesus is not simply a moral example in the Sermon on the Mount. He is the fulfillment of everything the law was pointing toward. He embodies perfect righteousness, perfect peacemaking, perfect love. And because he does, his death is not the failure of his mission. It is the accomplishment of it. He went first, all the way to death, so that the enmity between God and fallen humanity could be put away forever.
The gospel declaration that closes this week is this: you are not called to earn peace with God by your peacemaking with others. You are called to make peace with others because you have already received the peace with God that Christ purchased at infinite cost. He went first. He bore the contempt, the unjust judgment, the violence, and the rejection that your sin deserved. And now, because of his righteousness credited to you and his Spirit living in you, you have the power to begin, just begin, to live as a peacemaker. Not perfectly. Not without failure. But with the gospel at your back and the Spirit in you, you can go first.