“You Have Heard It Said… But I Tell You” (1 of 2)

The Six Antitheses and the Higher Law of the Kingdom — Matthew 5:17–48

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them.”

— Matthew 5:17 (NET)

The Most Audacious Teaching in the Sermon

Matthew 5:17–48 contains what scholars call the Antitheses — six paired statements in which Jesus first quotes or paraphrases the existing Law or tradition and then deepens, extends, or radicalizes it. Each pair follows the same formula: “You have heard it said... but I tell you.”

Nothing like this had ever been spoken in Israel. Teachers commented on the Law. They explained it, applied it, built fences around it. They did not stand before it and say “But I tell you” — not in their own name, not from their own authority. That was either the prerogative of God or the crime of blasphemy. The crowd’s stunned response at the end of the Sermon (Matthew 7:28–29) was partly a response to this specific move. Jesus did not comment on the Law. He spoke to the Law from above it, as the One who gave it — and now sat on a hillside and clarified His own original intent.

Matthew 5:17 is the hinge on which all six Antitheses turn. Jesus is not abolishing the Law. He is fulfilling it — which means He is bringing it to its complete and intended expression. The Law prohibited murder. The Law’s intent was the protection of human dignity and life rooted in the image of God in every person. Jesus goes to the root: the anger and contempt from which murder grows. He is not making the Law harder for the sake of difficulty. He is revealing what the Law was always about.

The Six Antitheses

Antithesis One: Murder and Anger (Matthew 5:21–26)

YOU HAVE HEARD IT SAID… You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.	BUT I TELL YOU… Anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. Matthew 5:22

The Law prohibited the act. Jesus prohibits the root. Anger — not the momentary flash that passes through a person and is confessed — but the settled, nursing, contemptuous anger that regards another person as worthless (“Raca” — Aramaic for “empty one”) or as a fool — this anger is murder waiting for opportunity.

The practical command that follows is urgent: “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” (5:23–24) Reconciliation before worship. Not after. Not when it is convenient. Now. Unresolved anger poisons prayer. The Father does not receive the worship of a person who is simultaneously nursing contempt for another image-bearer.

Antithesis Two: Adultery and Lust (Matthew 5:27–30)

YOU HAVE HEARD IT SAID… You shall not commit adultery.	BUT I TELL YOU… Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:28

The same move: from the act to the root. Lust — the deliberate, cultivated, indulged looking at another person as an object of sexual gratification rather than as an image-bearer of God — is the adultery the Law prohibited, committed in the imagination before it is committed in the body.

The prescription is the radical amputation language from Volume I Part Two: “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.” (5:29) Not literally — the problem is not the eye but the heart behind it. But radically: whatever is feeding the lust, cut it off. Whatever is enabling the sin, remove it. The pornography. The apps. The relationships that blur the lines. The entertainment that normalizes the sexualization of image-bearers. Hell is a more serious consequence than discomfort. Take the discomfort.

Antithesis Three: Divorce (Matthew 5:31–32)

YOU HAVE HEARD IT SAID… Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.	BUT I TELL YOU… Anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Matthew 5:32

This is one of the hardest statements in the Sermon and one of the most consistently avoided in contemporary preaching. Jesus will address it in greater depth in Matthew 19:3–12, where the Pharisees press Him further, and Part Six of this volume will treat it fully. Here, the key point in the context of the Antitheses is this: Moses permitted divorce because of the hardness of human hearts (Matthew 19:8). It was a concession to the broken condition of fallen humanity, not God’s original design. Jesus goes back to the design. The Kingdom standard is not what broken humanity can manage. It is what God intended at creation when He said “The two will become one flesh.”